Zaharije Ostojić

Several historians have criticised the Serbian authorities after Chetnik movement leader Dragoslav 'Draza' Mihailovic's picture was displayed alongside that of Partisan leader Josip Broz Tito at a state-sponsored event at the National Theatre in Belgrade on Sunday to commemorate Victory Day in World War II.

The controversial Chetnik rally in Visegrad has been cancelled after the Interior Ministry in Bosnia's Serb-dominated Republika Srpska entity on Wednesday issued a ban on all public gatherings until March 30 in an attempt to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

"The overall economic and legitimacy crisis after Tito's death in the 1980s created a favourable atmosphere for criticising the Partisan myth and creating positive images about their [the Partisans'] enemies [the Chetniks]," Djureinovic, who has a PhD in history from Justus Liebig University in Giessen and works with the Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Centre, told BIRN in an interview.

The Serbian Orthodox Church’s plan to hold a mass for the killed leader of the World War II Chetnik movement, Draza Mihailovic, has been called a “provocation” by the Montenegrin authorities.

A court overturned the first-instance verdict rehabilitating World War II Serb Chetnik leader Nikola Kalabic, who was declared a “national enemy” by the Yugoslav judiciary, ordering the case to be reheard from the start.