Goli otok

"After one month in isolation, I was forced to work as a carpenter. The working conditions were very hard. There was a deep snow, ice and freezing temperatures," said Bajraktari.

"Most of us had no blankets. Some had a blanket of [size] one metre by one metre. The windows had no glass and my cell filled up with snow. The food was disgusting."

"When I came to [daily newspaper] Borba in 1990, he was a reporter and political analyst, and known for writing a couple of pamphlets, one of which I remember was about the people from Goli Otok [political prison in Socialist Yugoslavia]," Gunjic recalled.

An exhibition of new images from Goli Otok go on display at the Cultural Centre of Belgrade on Thursday evening gives a contemporary view of the former prison camp, which photographer Milomir Kovacevic described as "the biggest 'stain' on Yugoslavia, communism, the [Communist] Party and [Josip Broz] Tito".

The buildings are crumbling, some have turned into small businesses - there is a car mechanic shop, a bodega, a storage facility of some kind, an abandoned, overgrown and depressing-looking children's playground, and an office of the ruling political party. The shiny new Usce shopping centre glitters through the treetops.

Two Croatian NGOs, the Ante Zemljar association and Documenta - Centre for Dealing with the Past, held a commemorative event on Tuesday to mark the 70th anniversary of the arrival of the first prisoners on Goli Otok (Naked Island) in the Adriatic Sea off Croatia's northern coast.

Bosnian photographer Milomir Kovacevic's disturbing photographs of the former Yugoslav communist-era prison camp on Goli otok have gone on show in Sibenik as a part of an alternative festival in the Croatian town.

Historian and former senior official of the SFR Yugoslavia Latinka Perovic said that the anniversary of the Informbiro Resolution is not talked about in Serbia today and that this is not at a coincidence at all primarily because of Russia's role in Serbia.

Over 1,300 people have signed a not-quite-serious online petition to re-open the infamous Yugoslav Communist-era prison camp on Goli Otok [Bare Island] - but not to punish political dissidents.

They say the camp inmates should be criminals of a different type - people who have robbed the country of its wealth and impoverished society.

Director Tiha K. Gudac’s documentary was inspired by her grandfather’s experience of being imprisoned at the notorious Communist-era Goli Otok jail camp on a Croatian island.

BELGRADE - By a decree of Russian President Vladimir Putin, 14 Serbian World War II veterans have been decorated on occasion of Defender of the Fatherland Day, a national holiday in the Russian Federation.

Russian Ambassador to Serbia Alexander Chepurin presented the decorations late Thursday at a ceremonial reception he hosted to mark the Defender of the Fatherland Day.