On the occasion of the 23 August – the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of All Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes during the 20th Century, the Centre for Civic Education (CCE) uses the opportunity to pay respect to the victims of serious human rights violations in these regimes and to express the empathy with their families.
Unfortunately, Montenegro remains consistent in suppressing unpleasant issues from the past or their occasional and selective opening without recognizing the importance of adequate facing with them, which is necessary for the sustainability of society based on sound grounds. The CCE is constantly pointing to this issue through dealing with different periods of recent Montenegrin history and insisting on modernizing formal education system in this section so that new generations can obtain credible aand factual framework. We remind again that Montenegro had the largest number of political prisoners in the notorious camp on Goli otok in Croatia, where the opponents of the Communist regime were tormented and killed. To date, no law has been introduced in Montenegro to rehabilitate and compensate prisoners of Goli otok or members of their close family, although the Government has promised to include this issue in its agenda, and to which the Declaration adopded in the Montenegrin Parliament is binding it.
Political division of Montenegro can not be justification for inadequate treatment of consequences of the crime. The competent institutions must establish permanent memory of the victims of political repression of socialist and communist regimes in Yugoslavia, which would also contribute to building of the most necessary culture of memory within Montenegrin society.
We also remind that the Montenegrin Parliament adopted the 2006 Resolution of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly on the international verdict of crimes of Totalitarian Communist Systems and the Resolution on the Removal of the Heritage of Former Communist Totalitarian Systems. Furthermore, the European Parliament made recommendation pointing out that each country should set the time and manner of marking memories of victims of totalitarian regimes and align it to their own history and tradition.
Tamara Milaš, CCE Programme associate