Investigation of Communists’ War Crimes Divides Montenegro

The Higher State Prosecution launched an investigation into the mass killings in July 2019, and political parties and civic activists called on the authorities to exhume the remains from the cave and identify the victims.

Allegations about a mass burial site in the cave had been published even further back, in 2007, by Montenegrin weekly magazine Revija D. A man called Radomir Radulovic from Niksic said his father and grandfather were killed in March 1942 and their bodies were dumped there.

"My father Stanko and grandfather Spasoje were killed by Partisans in front of our house. Their bodies were thrown in the Kotor cave, like other locals who opposed the Communists. But in Communist Yugoslavia, we were not allowed to talk about Partisan war crimes," Radulovic said.

'No political will for investigations' Democratic Front MP Budimir Aleksic at a parliament session in Podgorica. Photo: Parliament of Montenegro.

During World War II, after Yugoslavia was invaded and partitioned by the Axis powers in April 1941, Montenegro was occupied by fascist Italy. The Italian occupation continued until September 1943, and then Montenegro was occupied by German forces until December 1944.

In Montenegro, the Italians and Germans collaborated with the monarchist, pro-Serb Chetnik movement. In northern parts of the country, some local ethnic Albanians and Bosniaks collaborated with German forces, either as part of the Albanian nationalist paramilitary movement Balli Kombetar or as part of local Muslim militia units. They fought the Yugoslav Partisans, led by Josip Broz Tito.

After World War II, Communist Yugoslavia erected monuments to Partisan soldiers and victims of the Nazis and their collaborators, but crimes...