The Democratic Union of Croats in Vojvodina (DSHV) has said that the opening of the Museum dedicated to the Chetnik commander Dragoljub Mihailovic in Belgrade is disturbing for local Croats, and that it is a consequence of harmful revisionist processes in Serbia.

In the former family home of the Chetnik Duke Mihailovic, a memorial room and a sculpture were inaugurated on Wednesday, organised by the Naša Drina association and the Veterans’ Organisation of Serbia and Srpska.

On this occasion, the DSHV points out that this is another in a series of controversial consequences of the revision of the past, a consequence that has a disturbing effect on the local Croats. This is because the Chetnik movement was not only part of the collaborationist forces of the German and Italian occupiers, but it also committed atrocities against the Croats during the Second World War, the party said in a press release on Saturday.

The DSHV reminds that the revisionist processes in Serbia started after 2000 and in them historical truths and interpretations were subordinated to current political needs.

During the rule of the democratic parties in Serbia from 2000 to 2012, the Chetniks were revitalized and the role of the Chetniks in the Second World War was revised, which was directly confirmed by the adoption of the law on the equalisation of the rights of Chetniks and partisans in 2004, according to the press release.

It is added that the process of revisionism of history has consequently brought with it a whole wave of court processes for the rehabilitation of collaborators of the occupiers, changing the names of streets, and changing the content of school textbooks.

In other words, the new, nationalist culture of memory in Serbia has created images and representations of the Chetniks that do not correspond to historical truths, the DSHV said, adding that this had and still has serious consequences both on inter-ethnic relations and on the building of trust in the territory of the former Yugoslavia .

The Republic of Serbia and the Serbs as a people, the DSHV says, have a sufficiently honorable and long tradition of anti-fascism that it not only does not need historical revisionism, but it also causes damage in terms of internal political relations.

The unveiling of the monument and the opening of the memorial room to the leader of the Chetnik movement Dragoljub Draza Mihailovic in Belgrade on Thursday was condemned by the Croatian Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, which said it was absolutely unacceptable, worrying and in complete contradiction to EU membership, which Serbia cites as its strategic goal.