Memory Activism and Digital Practices after Conflict: Unwanted Memories 9789048554515

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Memory Activism and Digital Practices after Conflict

Heritage and Memory Studies This ground-breaking series examines the dynamics of heritage and memory from transnational, interdisciplinary and integrated approaches. Monographs or edited volumes critically interrogate the politics of heritage and dynamics of memory, as well as the theoretical implications of landscapes and mass violence, nationalism and ethnicity, heritage preservation and conservation, archaeology and (dark) tourism, diaspora and postcolonial memory, the power of aesthetics and the art of absence and forgetting, mourning and performative re-enactments in the present. Series Editors Ihab Saloul and Rob van der Laarse, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands Advisory Board Patrizia Violi, University of Bologna, Italy Britt Baillie, Cambridge University, United Kingdom Michael Rothberg, University of Illinois, USA Marianne Hirsch, Columbia University, USA Frank van Vree, NIOD and University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Memory Activism and Digital Practices after Conflict Unwanted Memories

Orli Fridman

Amsterdam University Press

Cover image: ‘Forget to Remember’ by Heather Fulton (www.hfulton.ca) Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout isbn 978 94 6372 346 6 e-isbn 978 90 4855 451 5 (pdf) doi 10.5117/9789463723466 nur 686 © Orli Fridman / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2022 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher.



Table of Contents

Preface

9

Acknowledgements

13

Introduction

15

Memory Activism and Alternative Commemorative Practices after Conflict

Memory activism and memory of activism after conflict Agentic activism: a positive turn in memory studies, a local turn in peace and conflict studies Non-state commemorations: alternative commemorative events after conflict Generational belonging in memory activism Outline of the book

16 20 23 25 30

1 Unwanted Memories of (the Wars of) the 1990s Referencing the 1990s The recent past is still present Memory politics and public knowledge of the wars of the 1990s The 1990s in the state calendar and state-sponsored commemorations Memory activism after conflict: remembering the wars of the 1990s in Serbia

37 38 42 46

2 ‘Not in My Name’

71

From Anti-War to Memory Activism: The First Generation

Memory activism as an extension of anti-war activism and the emergence of an alternative civic calendar Commemorating Srebrenica in Belgrade: 10 July on the alternative calendar Generational commemorative legacy 3 ‘Too Young to Remember, Determined Never to Forget’ The Second Generation

A new generation, a new slogan Continuity and change in the commemoration of Srebrenica in Belgrade

53 62

72 81 88 97 99 102

The burden of a silenced past: remembering the Suva Reka massacre and mass graves in Batajnica Beyond annual commemorations: remembering Batajnica through alternative education and art The Batajnica Memorial Initiative Memory walks: marking and visiting sites of suppressed memory Memory activism as protest: opposing the public glorification of war crimes 4 Hashtag Memory Activism

Digital Memory Practices and Online Commemorations

#Hashtag #memoryactivism #Sedamhiljada: from a hashtag to a banned commemoration #NisuNašiHeroji: generational mnemonic claims and the postYugoslav space as a region of memory #JesteSeDesilo: disseminating knowledge as an act of silence breaking #WhiteArmbandDay: from local to regional and transnational memory activism 5 Regions of Memory

The Post-Yugoslav Space as a Region of Memory Activism

Regions of memory and of memory activism Regional cooperation as a ‘crowded playground’ Regional networks of joint action and joint claims Remembering Yugoslavia and the anti-fascist struggle Regional platforms for engagement with memories of the wars of the 1990s Commemorative solidarity and the wars of the 1990s

106 113 117 120 122 131 132 134 139 145 152 161 165 167 169 174 177 185

Epilogue

197

Appendices Appendix 1: YIHR Transitional Justice Calendar Appendix 2: March 2010 YIHR Announcement of ‘Action to commemorate crimes committed in Kosovo in March and April 1999’ Appendix 3: CPI Brochure: ‘Program of guided tours to places of “Suppressed memories”’

203 203

Unwanted Pasts in an Unresolved Present

204 205

Appendix 4: Women’s Court Invitation to Hear Public Testimonies in Sarajevo, May 2015

207

Bibliography

209

Index

231

List of Figures Figure 1 The divided Republic Square, 10 July 2009 Figure 2 The Women in Black-led commemoration on Republic Square on 10 July (left); the commemoration in front of the National Assembly on 11 July (right) Figure 3 The Suva Reka commemoration on 26 March 2016 Figure 4 The street action on 26 March 2019 in Belgrade Figure 5 Tweets by Dušan Mašić on 17 April 2015 (left), and on 18 April 2015 (right) with the hashtag #sedamhiljada Figure 6 Graffiti that appeared in Belgrade after the #sedamhiljada commemorative event was banned Figure 7 The logo designed by Mirko Ilić for the #sedamhiljada campaign Figure 8 Twitter post by YIHR Serbia, 10 December 2017 Figure 9 Image posted on the YIHR Facebook page, showing the #JesteSeDesilo hashtag, with text announcing the launch of the War in Serbia website, 1 June 2020 Figure 10 A Twitter post marking the 31 May 2017 online #WhiteArmbandDay commemoration Figure 11 A Twitter post sharing images of the 31 May 2017 onsite commemoration of White Armband Day in Prijedor, Bosnia and Herzegovina, using the #WhiteArmbandDay hashtag Figure 12 Drawing by Midhat Kapetanović of Vučko, Zagi, and the Pobednik (left to right), posted on Instagram on 11 July 2020

87 104 109 111 135 138 138 141 147 154

155 188

Appendix 4: Women’s Court Invitation to Hear Public Testimonies in Sarajevo, May 2015

207

Bibliography

209

Index

231

List of Figures Figure 1 The divided Republic Square, 10 July 2009 Figure 2 The Women in Black-led commemoration on Republic Square on 10 July (left); the commemoration in front of the National Assembly on 11 July (right) Figure 3 The Suva Reka commemoration on 26 March 2016 Figure 4 The street action on 26 March 2019 in Belgrade Figure 5 Tweets by Dušan Mašić on 17 April 2015 (left), and on 18 April 2015 (right) with the hashtag #sedamhiljada Figure 6 Graffiti that appeared in Belgrade after the #sedamhiljada commemorative event was banned Figure 7 The logo designed by Mirko Ilić for the #sedamhiljada campaign Figure 8 Twitter post by YIHR Serbia, 10 December 2017 Figure 9 Image posted on the YIHR Facebook page, showing the #JesteSeDesilo hashtag, with text announcing the launch of the War in Serbia website, 1 June 2020 Figure 10 A Twitter post marking the 31 May 2017 online #WhiteArmbandDay commemoration Figure 11 A Twitter post sharing images of the 31 May 2017 onsite commemoration of White Armband Day in Prijedor, Bosnia and Herzegovina, using the #WhiteArmbandDay hashtag Figure 12 Drawing by Midhat Kapetanović of Vučko, Zagi, and the Pobednik (left to right), posted on Instagram on 11 July 2020

87 104 109 111 135 138 138 141 147 154

155 188

Preface The ‘Arab House’ was one of the weekly meeting points for the youth movement I was a member of while growing up in Israel in the 1970s and 1980s. Deserted and derelict, it stood on the outskirts of our city where we entered the orange groves, one of many unnoticed structures that dotted our landscape; bare, desolate, or covered in graffiti. We saw through these objects, never engaging with their histories or pasts. I cannot recall ever bothering to wonder who named our meeting point the ‘Arab House’, or why that relic of a house was given that name. Did anyone ever live there? What was the history of the Arab House? We simply never asked. It would take me many more years to begin to engage with critical questions about the silence that surrounded ‘Arab Houses’ across the country, which were becoming more visible as I grew more politically aware. Those houses came to represent the Palestinian Nakba, and how it was concealed right there before our eyes, within Israeli landscapes and narratives. Years later, in the mid-to-late 1990s, during coursework for my master’s degree at Tel Aviv University, I was first introduced to what would become the field of memory studies. This forced me to ask difficult questions about ‘Arab Houses’, among other things. It was also then that I became acquainted with the notion of collective memory, which I have been drawn to ever since. I embarked on a small-scale research project to explore the claims and joint actions of descendants of the destroyed village of Ikrith, in the upper Galilee – where a promise was made by authorities in 1948 that its Palestinian residents would be allowed to return after the war, but that promise was never fulfilled. As the Ikrith activists and their families planned their action for the date that Israel celebrated its Day of Independence, this became my first experience with alternative commemoration as an act of civic protest. So strong was my mnemonic upbringing and socialization at that time that taking part in alternative commemorative events generated a sense of profound uneasiness in me. Eventually and inevitably, though, my exposure to these actions led to a departure from the comfortable collective consensus of Israel’s master commemorative narrative and rituals. Peeling back the layers of social injustices that had been maintained over the years by structures of silence and denial meant that not only were ‘Arab Houses’ visible to me everywhere, but also, and to an even greater degree, the lack of empathy and blindness that had been produced by the sense of righteous victimization on which my generation was raised. In the political atmosphere of the early

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2000s, following the final collapse of the Oslo Process, the space for critical inquiries in Israeli society was significantly shrinking, but it was impossible to unbecome politically aware. Thus, my own political journey has introduced me to Palestinian counter-memories that extend from places near to where I grew up, yet which were unknown to me. It has also revealed the struggle within Israeli society – where civic action to resist the occupation, and engagement with the Palestinian Nakba demanding its place within Jewish-Israeli collective memory and narratives, are unwanted, unwelcomed, marginalized, and regarded as acts of betrayal. Witnessing this in my own society has in many ways informed and shaped my search for comparative perspectives, for actors and groups beyond Israel who dare to ask about unwanted pasts, and demand to know, see, and acknowledge the pain of others, openly confronting the structures that enable ‘states of denial’. This set me on an intellectual journey that took me away from the Middle East in the early 2000s, through the US – where I undertook a PhD in the field of peace and conflict studies – and to the Balkans and Serbia, for my dissertation research. But what was meant to be a short-term engagement has become a life-long venture. In Serbia, I have often been asked, ‘How come you’re here?’ (Otkud ti tu?); meaning, why is Serbia the topic of my academic inquiry? Indeed, this was the first question many people asked me in my early days in Belgrade. At the time, my reasoning was linked to previous experience in political education with encounters between groups in conflict, having worked with Israelis and Palestinians, and later with students from the successor states of the former Yugoslavia. As the wars in post-Yugoslav states were coming to an end, violence was on the rise in Israel and Palestine, where the Second Intifada was unfolding; and as the Israeli occupation deepened in the years that followed, the Israeli public turned its eyes away, pacified by the rhetoric of self-victimization entangled with denial. In the participants from Serbia, I recognized this rhetoric in the narratives they shared about the wars in the former Yugoslavia. At the time, I thought my position as an outsider would allow me to conduct research in Serbia that could broaden my view, that I could ask more questions and look more analytically at my inquiry into alternative and counter-memories in societies in conflict, as this had become too emotional and politically charged in my own country, where taking a civic stand against the Israeli occupation was marked as disloyalty. Yet I remained in Belgrade, and years later, my view of Serbia is no longer that of an outsider – though I am not really an insider, either. Am I still a guest? An observer? Am I

Preface

11

becoming a local? Can we ever become local, even when we adopt new cultures and languages, or new memoryscapes in our own research? These questions are no longer solely academic for me, and the position of memory activists in Serbia, who are also marked as disloyal, is no longer a question I can approach only from afar. The future and destiny of people in Serbia has become entwined with mine. My academic research into the social dynamics of official denial has long emphasized a comparative perspective, and my early inquiries explored the prevalence of networks of anti-denial groups and their civic actions worldwide, in places like Argentina and South Africa, as well as in Serbia. But in Serbia, I was inspired to study the anti-war activism that emerged in the 1990s, and its legacy in the aftermath of the wars. An awareness that had developed with my own choice to see those relics of ‘Arab Houses’ in Israel allowed me to trace the similar political journeys of anti-war activists in the Balkans. Over time, memory activism from below has become the frame for my analysis of alternative commemorative rituals shaped by local actors in Serbia and the region, first in civic street actions and later in hashtag memory activism. Notably, I have used the framework I present here in the context of Serbia and the post-Yugoslav region in other recent works, which have taken me back to the memoryscapes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The study of ‘unwanted memories’ – those unseen relics of destroyed villages or ethnically cleansed communities – requires us, to some degree, to step outside of our own societal boundaries, to ignore what one is permitted to ask, see, name, point out, or choose to remember. I borrow the term ‘unwanted memories’ from some of the activists I have studied over almost two decades in Serbia. Tamara Šmidling and Jasmina Lazović, both with the Belgrade-based Center for Public History, have used it when discussing their work, referring to memories of the 1990s as ‘unwanted and suppressed’. With that in mind, and guided by my own experience with unwanted memories and with the pasts concealed right in front of us, this book traces the actions of memory activists from several generations, some of whom have come to work with memory as a continuation of their earlier engagement with anti-war or peace activism. It examines how they understand their own actions and claims, how they choose to frame and position them, and the ways in which generational belonging informs their activism and their political imagination.

Acknowledgements Throughout this journey of mine in the Balkans, which began in the early 2000s and is still ongoing, I have been fortunate enough to meet many people full of passion and commitment. I have encountered diverse opinions and ideologies, beliefs and expectations, disillusions, and disappointments, all of which I hope I have accurately represented and given voice to in the chapters of this book. I am deeply grateful to everyone who participated in this study, offering me endless hours of their time and generously sharing their thoughts, allowing me open access to their actions and debates, and answering my never-ending questions and inquiries with patience. I especially want to thank Marko Milosavljević, Anita Mitić, Jasmina Lazović, Sofija Todorović, and Jovana Prusina, who spoke with me at length about their experiences and provided many insights into their generational claims and hopes. I also thank Jasmina Tešanović, the first member of the Women in Black I met, in my very early days in Belgrade, whose work and voice shaped my first conceptions of the group’s feminist anti-war activism; I also thank Staša Zajović, Lepa Mlađenović and many other members of the group. Jelena Krstić, Sandra Orlović, Miloš Ćirić, and others from this generation have shed light for me on the power of action from below. At my two academic institutions, I am thankful to John Levin from the School of International Training (SIT) library for so kindly and meticulously helping me access literature from afar. And in Belgrade, discussions with students in my Memory and Conflict course, which I teach at the Faculty of Media and Communications (FMK), have helped me understand the world views and aspirations of the younger generation in Serbia, born during and after the 1990s. I am thankful to Luna Đorđević for the years she worked with me so closely as a research assistant, and to Emilija Marić, too. I thank Kimberly Storr for her meticulous editorial work with me in the final stages of this book. In Amsterdam University Press I found great encouragement and support in my exchange with Ihab Saloul which I am most grateful to. I thank Irene van Rossum, Victoria Blud, and Jaap Wagenaar for a most pleasant experience and exchange and for your dedication. I have gained tremendous knowledge from many great conversations with friends and colleagues as well. They have challenged me to face the shortcomings and strengths of my arguments and offered important insights on various drafts of the book chapters. Thank you to Srdjan Hercigonja, Srdjan Atanasovski, Jelena Lončar, Jelisaveta Blagojević, Nemanja Džuverović and Jasna Dragović-Soso for carefully reading my early drafts and offering

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your valuable comments at various stages of my writing. Thank you, too, to Tamar Katriel, Vlada Petrović, and Ashley Mears for reviewing and commenting encouragingly on the initial book proposal. Special thanks to Katarina Ristić for meaningful conversations that often went far beyond our shared field of study. I’m grateful to Maxine David for engaging with and commenting on versions of my book title and to Maram Masarwi, Victor Tricot and Sarah Gensburger for sending additional waves of trust in the process of finishing up this project. Thank you, Katarina Subašić, for your never-ending encouragement and support throughout my writing, and Abigail Jacobson for good advice and many years of friendship. My deepest thanks to my sisters Iris and Roni for your beautiful sisterhood and friendship, and everlasting trust in me; to my mother for all your loving support; and to Aleks and Miloš for being part of my Belgrade family. Above all, thank you Snežana for this most worthy and joyful shared life journey, and for the discovery of so much more that is ‘unseen’. Without you, this book would not make the same sense to me.

Introduction Memory Activism and Alternative Commemorative Practices after Conflict Abstract This chapter introduces the book’s inquiries into the mnemonic practices and claims of memory activists as they engage with remembrance and alternative knowledge production of otherwise silenced and unwanted pasts. It presents a framework for the analysis of non-state commemorations as alternative commemorative events, as they become apparent in the aftermath of war and violence. By utilizing Ann Rigney’s memory-activism nexus (2018), it examines the ways in which memory activists, as local actors, claim agency and space by establishing alternative commemorative events marked on alternative calendars. Finally, the methodological approach of this study is discussed, and a generational lens is proposed as a means of delving deeper into the shifts in and nuances of the practices of memory activists. Keywords: alternative commemoration, alternative calendars, memory activism, generational lens, agency, commemorative solidarity

It was on 10 July 2004 that I first joined the Women in Black in their hourlong silent vigil in Republic Square in downtown Belgrade. On that warm summer evening, in the heart of their city, they gathered as they have been doing since 1996, to commemorate the ninth anniversary of mass crimes committed in Srebrenica and to remember the victims as victims of genocide. At the time, I was studying the group’s anti-war activism and its legacy, which I thought had turned towards peace activism. Yet, as I was observing the commemorative event that summer, and in the summers that followed, and later in other annual commemorations I was able to join and document throughout the years, it became clear to me: anti-war activists had already begun to profoundly engage with questions that demanded they

Fridman, Orli, Memory Activism and Digital Practices after Conflict: Unwanted Memories. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463723466_intro

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look backwards, into the very recent past – to memory, counter-memory, and alternative commemorations. In the coming years, I was able to identify the creation of those alternative commemorations as part of what I present here as the foundation of an alternative civic commemorative calendar in Serbia, which has established an annual cycle of remembrance related to memory of the wars that followed the break-up of Yugoslavia. This work is central to the inquiry of this book: the work and mnemonic practices and claims of memory activists as they engage with remembrance and alternative knowledge production of otherwise silenced and unwanted pasts. In other words, the work of memory activists traced in this book is the work of those who labour with memory (Jelin 2003). I embark on this effort by proposing a framework for the study of mnemonic practices as seen in memory activism through engagement with alternative commemorations. I examine the ways in which memory activists, as local actors, claim agency and space by establishing alternative commemorative events marked on alternative calendars. Through an examination of counter-memories generated by non-state actors, I utilize Ann Rigney’s memory-activism nexus (2018), allowing for actions and demands from below – as put forward by memory activists – to be placed at the forefront of our engagement with the study of alternative commemorations. Such alternative commemorative events are the primary focus of this study, which analyses the strategies and practices of actors as activists in the study of memory activism, onsite as well as online. As the discussion of memory activism and its formation after conflict unfolds in this text, I also introduce a framework for the analysis of nonstate commemorations as alternative commemorative events, as these become apparent in the aftermath of war and violence. I then present my methodological approach, proposing a generational lens as a means of delving deeper and gaining more insight into the shifts in and nuances of the practices of memory activists. I argue that this approach is key to further advancing the memory-activism nexus.

Memory activism and memory of activism after conflict Memory work, like any other kind of physical or mental labour, is embedded in complex class, gender, and power relations that ‘determine what is remembered or forgotten, by whom and for what end’ (Gillis 1994, 3). The idea that memory, and its construction, involves labour is hardly new. As Elizabeth Jelin (2003) has argued in State Repression and the Labors of

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Memory, ‘to assert that memory involves labor is to incorporate it into the activity that generates and transforms the social world’ (5). Jelin examined social disputes over memories that occur ‘when human beings are actively involved in the process of symbolic transformation and elaboration of meaning of the past. Human beings who “labor” on and with memories of the past’ (2003, 5). Throughout this book, I take a special interest in the dynamics and practices such labour entails, as I document and explore the work of memory activists in Serbia as they engage with unwanted memories of the wars of the 1990s. These are placed alongside other related mnemonic themes and events from the past, open to interpretation in today’s Serbia and across the post-Yugoslav region. At first glance, as Rigney (2018) has noted, memory and activism may seem as if they are poles apart, with the former oriented towards the past and the latter towards the future. On second glance, however, there is no doubt that they are deeply entangled (371). This linkage of memory and activism has become more visible in recent years as a growing area of research. My aim in this book is to contribute to ongoing discussions in memory activism through analysis of the practices shaping alternative commemorations and alternative civic calendars. Rigney (2018) has mapped out the memory-activism nexus that is essential to my inquiry; this nexus centres the interplay between memory activism, memory of activism, and memory in activism. While memory activism reflects how actors struggle to produce cultural memory to steer and shape future remembrance, memory of activism traces the ways earlier struggles are culturally recollected (see Reading and Katriel 2015), and memory in activism concerns the ways in which the cultural memory of earlier struggles informs new movements in the present (see Chigney 2018). Empirical evidence from Serbia presented in this book will shed light on and advance discussions about the first two of these notions: memory activism that has materialized after 2000, out of the feminist anti-war activism of the 1990s; and memory of activism that has only more recently been integrated into the work of a new generation of memory activists. As it has begun to emerge in Serbia, memory of activism engages with the remembrance of legacies of anti-war activism that took place in the 1990s. Both memory activism and memory of activism emphasize the centrality and importance of civic action and of work with civic memories. As this study shows, analysis of the creation of alternative civic calendars and their role in memory activism – as the foundation of engagement with countermemories – facilitates an understanding and framing of this labour. I will return to the importance of civic memories and of memory activism as a

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civic action from below, but first I define memory activism and outline its contours as examined throughout this book. Recent studies position memory activism as activism oriented towards the past, but seeking change in the future. In her study of memory activism as a knowledge-based effort for consciousness-raising in Israel-Palestine, Yifat Gutman (2017) underlines efforts for political change undertaken outside the channels of the state. While the political motivation behind memory-activist initiatives may vary widely, this book is focused on the work of memory activists aiming to advance change towards peace and reconciliation in the aftermath of violent conflict.1 When employed as a strategy of peace activism, memory activism is considered to be oriented towards first the past, then the future. Aiming to advance our understanding of memory activism as a strand of peace activism, I build my argument on Gutman’s definition of memory activism as the strategic commemoration of a contested past outside state channels ‘in order to influence public debate, primarily towards greater equality, plurality, and reconciliation’ (2017, 55). In the case of Serbia, there are various mnemonic actors working with the support and blessing of the state on issues related to the legacies of the wars of the 1990s, yet my interest is in the work and mnemonic practices of those actors who produce and promote alternative and counter-memories to those sponsored by the state. More specifically, I trace the ways in which memory activists assert and engage with oppositional knowledge in public spaces, as they establish alternative commemorative rituals and alternative calendars. The creation of oppositional knowledge rests on ‘the production and dissemination of alternative understandings and visions’, which Coy et al. (2008) argue can shift ‘the normative centre of society’ (para 5.7). Such past-oriented politics challenges social movements and peace activism, which have traditionally been future oriented. Yet, while peace activists often ‘bracket contested and polarizing pasts in order to highlight common ground’ (Goldfarb as cited in Gutman 2017, 55), the perspective of memory activists on the past tends to underscore divisions and bring various contested or controversial worldviews to the forefront. As Jelin (2003) has observed, controversies regarding knowledge and meaning of the past surface at the very moment events take place – and even more so in the aftermath of conflict, war, repressive authoritarian rule, or 1 With the growth of right-wing populism worldwide, more attention has been given in recent studies to the rise of illiberal memory (Rosenfeld 2021; Pisanty 2021), the role of far-right activists in memory politics (Bull and Hansen 2016), and to memory work in nationalist movements (Vermeersch 2019).

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mass atrocities. Though violence may end, and armed conflict may cease, clashes often continue over narratives and representations of the past. The past becomes a contested sphere and social disputes arise over memories, their social legitimization, and claims to ‘truth’. Once memories become the object of conflict and struggle, in what Kuljić has called ‘civil wars of memory’ (2009), various actors may generate meanings of the past framed by the power relations in which their actions are embedded (Jelin 2003). Mnemonic actors may be state actors generating hegemonic frameworks to administrate memory of past events (McQuaid and Gensburger 2019), or non-state actors as memory activists. This book features the latter – activists who insist on civic and alternative memories, typically generated from the bottom up in opposition to the state.2 This engagement of memory activists with memory can be manifested as protest. And as Wüstenberg (2017) has shown, in cases where activists employ contentious tactics, they may intentionally seek to provoke a reaction from wider society. Memory as protest may then entail the commemorative work of memory activists, as they put forward content that challenges prevailing notions of what is considered acceptable remembrance in public space, in a search for change. By emphasizing the role and significance of memory activism as a strand of peace activism in societies after conflict and of civic claims and actions, I seek to address the following questions: How does the social organization of memory shape processes of post-conflict remembrance? What is the role of memory activists and of alternative commemorative events in these processes of constructing the past following violence and war? And what is the role of memory activism in generating civic engagement, empathy, and hope after conflict? In discussing the dynamics of memory work and memory activism, and the tensions between state-sponsored and alternative counter-memories, this text underlines the importance and role of spaces of memory as vibrant arenas of political struggle, civic activism, and hope. Memory regimes and mnemonic actors, monuments and museums, state calendars, commemorative actions, and commemorative events are all part of the social organization of memory, mirroring the administration of memory and memory policy (Gensburger and Lefranc 2020). These shape the politics of memory (Kubik and Bernhard 2014) during and after conflict. I approach this realm of memory politics 2 In other case studies, as Jenny Wüstenberg (2017) shows in her analysis of memory activism in Germany, memory movements may emerge in opposition to the state but eventually come to engage deeply with state institutions and even become increasingly integrated with the state over time.

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as a space of civic activity, as I trace civic forms of mnemonic articulations manifested in the action and claims of memory activists from below.

Agentic activism: a positive turn in memory studies, a local turn in peace and conflict studies As a field, memory studies has long gravitated towards violence and its collective legacies. Reading and Katriel note in Cultural Memories of NonViolent Struggles (2015) that the field has placed a great deal of emphasis on examining the cultural memories of war and atrocity, but much less focus on the cultural memories of nonviolent struggle (1). Ann Rigney (2018) has advanced this discussion by setting up a new research agenda, introducing a ‘positive turn’ in memory studies that aims to capture transmission of positivity (370). Acknowledging the hope in activism, and the ‘civic virtue’ in memory of activism, allows for a broader framework in which we can critically engage in documenting and analysing the work of memory activists. Hope, as it informs civic action and motivates the struggle for a better life, ‘helps reframe historical violence as a struggle for a cause rather than a matter of victimization; as a matter of civic engagement rather than paranoia’ (Rigney 2018, 371). By placing hope in the memory-activism nexus and recognizing its potential to mobilize notions of agency rather than merely of victimhood, we can approach memory activists as active citizens and even as ‘willful subjects’ (Ahmed 2014 as quoted in Rigney 2018, 373). In fact, Reading and Katriel (2015) propose an alternative line of memory work in which the linkage between struggle and violence is disrupted and ‘agency comes to be associated with the rejection of violence.’ They stress the role of memory work in the constitution of human agency, resistance, and resilience. Agency constitutes a bridge between my two fields of study – memory studies and peace and conf lict studies – and its signif icance in the memory-activism nexus reflects ongoing discussions about the ‘local turn’ and a focus on the local,3 as well as the power of action from below which stands at the heart of critiques of the liberal peace project (Mac Ginty and Richmond 2013; Richmond 2006). For example, the study of 3 Two distinct local turns are discussed in the literature on peacebuilding and peace activism. The first began in the early 1990s with the work of John Paul Lederach, and the second emerged with the work of the critical school in peace and conflict studies (Paffenholz 2015). Mostly, these turns indicate a move towards further examination of the civic emancipatory variation of peace, which methodologically encompasses the top-down and bottom-up practices and initiatives (Richmond 2006).

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‘everyday peace’ and of ‘bottom-up peace’ recognizes the agency and significance of actors at the sub-state level (Mac Ginty and Firchow 2016). Similarly, the study of alternative commemorative events, the core of the work of the memory activists I outline here, draws our attention to bottom-up actions that occur outside the channels of the state, and to the agency of actors engaged in reinterpreting the past as they put forward memory-related demands. When analysed in the context of societies marked by official states of denial and a silencing of the past, this frames the work of memory activists as they claim space to shape memoryscapes from below. Official denial, as Stanley Cohen (2001) defined it in his study of the typologies of denial, is not a personal matter but is built into the ideological façade of a state. In such cases, ‘the social conditions that give rise to atrocities merge into the official techniques for denying these realities’ (Cohen 2001, 10). Activists are engaged in anti-denial work when they labour with memories that are portrayed differently from those put forward by the state, and insist on local commemorative initiatives and actions related to crimes or atrocities that would otherwise be erased and consequently remain absent from public debate. Various practices – from alternative commemorative events marked on alternative calendars and the establishment of alternative commemorative rituals, to demands for monuments to be built or plaques to be placed, to the production of art or educational materials that inform the public about silenced past events – allow people to interact with this history. These commemorative claims are often made onsite, at the locations past atrocities occurred, such as where mass crimes were committed or concentration camps were established. Yet more recently, these claims also manifest online, as part of the hashtag memory activism that has accompanied the digital turn in memory studies (see Chapter 4), allowing us to analyse internet-based commemorations as digital mnemonic practices. In establishing platforms for alternative commemorations, activists form what Athena Athanasiou (2017) has called networks of ‘commemorative solidarity’ as well as camaraderie with the ‘other’ community. Hope can be incorporated into discussions of memory politics when victims from the ‘other side’ – who have often been marked as a dehumanized ethnic enemy – are acknowledged within mnemonic regimes that insist on remembering and commemorating only victims from their ‘own side’. I approach the work of actors who are forming such networks of commemorative solidarity, and thus of hope, as the work of creating platforms that claim space for greater tolerance and compassion towards ‘the other’; which can be situated within platforms for peace formation.

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In his ongoing exploration of the relationship between various forms of conflict and peace, Oliver Richmond (2013) has engaged with local forms of peacebuilding that he identifies as peace formation. According to Richmond, by looking at smaller scale and often invisible local attempts at peace formation, some answers emerge to the pressing question of ‘how large-scale peacebuilding may be significantly improved and made more representative of the lives, needs, rights and ambitions of its subjects’ (2013, 380). As part of his critique of the liberal peace framework, he has highlighted the problem that peace is often made internationally, with local participation but not local impetus. He defines peace formation as ‘the processes where … local agents of peacebuilding … find ways of establishing peace processes and dynamic local forms of peace … which occurs through … politicized processes representing resistance and critical agency’ (Richmond 2013, 383). Though he is well aware of the danger of romanticizing the local, Richmond underlines peace formation as locally situated in the political, social, economic, and historical contexts of a conflict and featuring contributors driven to act by an emancipatory notion of peace (2013, 386). Such actors, even if very few and marginalized, differ from external actors in their local agency – meaning, in their ‘capacity related to critical, discursive agency and social praxis’ (Foucault as quoted in Richmond 2013, 387). Accordingly, the aim of such actors is not merely to establish a liberal peace but to lead society towards a more emancipatory and empathic form of peace in both local and international contexts (Richmond 2013, 388). To that end, I show how memory activists in Serbia, in their local and then regional mnemonic actions and claims, and whether occurring online or onsite, can be viewed as a driving force of empathy and commemorative solidarity against silence, denial, and the glorification of war crimes. Further, I argue that the emancipatory element in the local turn in peace and conflict studies can be traced in this case in an uncompromising rejection of victimization narratives and in alternative commemorative action emerging from below, and I show how such actions framed as civic actions – despite their current marginality, internal divisions, and weaknesses – constitute and construct networks of peace formation towards emancipatory peace. Memory activism, in both its local and regional forms (see Chapter 5), and in its networks of commemorative solidarity, can therefore be placed among other emerging and growing networks seeking to establish regional solidarity. In order to contextualize these networks’ acts of alternative commemoration, and to clearly articulate their role and position within the analysis of memory activism as a political civic action from below, I next turn to existing frameworks for the study of commemorations.

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Non-state commemorations: alternative commemorative events after conflict The second half of the twentieth century was marked by the appearance of a growing body of literature exploring the social construction of collective memory and the role of commemorative rituals and narratives in contemporary social life, and their impact on the political sphere. As John Gillis (1994) argued, any commemorative activity is, by definition, both social and political, for it involves the coordination of individual and group memories, the results of which may appear consensual when they are in fact the product of processes of intense contest and struggle (5). In her seminal book Recovered Roots (1995), Yael Zerubavel advanced our understanding of the concept of commemorations as central to the dynamics of memory change. According to her, through commemorative rituals such as the celebration of a communal festival, participation in a memorial service, or observance of a holiday, ‘groups create, articulate, and negotiate their shared memories of particular events’ (Zerubavel 1995, 5). It is the recurrence of commemorative performances and mnemonic rituals that contributes to an overall sense of continuity of collective memory. Thus, understanding commemorations themselves is one way to gain insight into how societies deal with their violent past(s), or even more broadly, with difficult pasts involving disputes, tensions, and conflict or trauma (Vinitzky-Seroussi 2009). Schwartz (2001) describes commemoration as the tangible public presentation and articulation of collective memory, which may include written texts (e.g., poems and eulogies), music (e.g., anthems and inspirational songs), icons, monuments, shrines, naming practices (e.g., streets), history books, museums, and mnemonic rituals. While these are most often created and promoted by state institutions and state actors, in this text, my interest is in commemorative events that are alternative, occurring outside state channels and led by non-state actors – in this case, memory activists who engage publicly with the production and dissemination of alternative content related to counter-memories of difficult pasts. In Serbia, this entails commemorative events that break through silence and denial, especially actions that call out and stand against the glorification of war crimes. It is the work of activists who choose to uncover suppressed and otherwise unwanted memories by forming networks of commemorative solidarity. To trace alternative commemorations, one must explore the social timeline(s) constructed by mnemonic communities, such as families, ethnic groups, and nations (E. Zerubavel 2003a, 2003b; Irwin-Zarecka 1994); or in this study, anti-nationalist and anti-war memory activists. Examining

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calendars as ‘sites of memory’ (Nora 1989) allows us to better grasp the processes at work in the social organization of memory, particularly as it relates to the establishment of commemorative holidays and rituals after conflict. In his analysis of national calendars, Eviatar Zerubavel (2003a) showed how the institutionalization of commemorative holidays helps establish an annual cycle of remembrance, noting that our social environments affect not only what we remember but also when we remember it. This kind of ‘mnemonic editing’ of a group’s past may also imply the mnemonic obliteration of entire populations, groups, or events (E. Zerubavel 2003b). Hence, this act of editing is crucial to the study of state-sponsored and alternative commemorative events alike, as it shapes memory in post-war societies, impacting not only processes of conflict management but of peace formation as well. Indeed, in the aftermath of conflict, fragmented and contested narratives, as well as memories about past perpetrators or victims, dates of victory and defeat, and dates of mass war crimes and atrocities, can be marked on or completely omitted from the calendar. Two forms of commemoration of difficult pasts are thus likely to emerge, depending on the political context, with multivocal commemoration more common in consensual political cultures, and fragmented commemoration more common in conflicted political settings (Vinitzky-Seroussi 2009 and 2002). Fragmented commemoration is at the heart of my inquiry and may include multiple commemorations in different spaces and times where diverse discourses of the past are voiced and aimed at disparate audiences (Vinitzky-Seroussi 2002, 32). In such cases, the commemoration of the past becomes contested territory where groups engaged in political conflict promote competing views of the past in order to gain control over the political centre (Y. Zerubavel 1995). The past is then openly contested, as rival parties (rival mnemonic communities) engage in a battle over its interpretation. These mnemonic battles (Y. Zerubavel 1995; E. Zerubavel 2003b) may involve entire groups and are often fought in public forums. Because fragmented commemorations entail the framing of narratives of difficult pasts, each act of commemoration reproduces a commemorative narrative – a story about a particular past that imparts a moral message to group members. By reconstructing only segments of the past, this narrative is thus fragmentary in nature. Yet, together, these contribute to the formation of a master commemorative narrative that structures collective memory (Y. Zerubavel 1995). This master commemorative narrative is focused on the distinct social identity of a group, its historical development, and the formation of a nation, so that the power of collective memory does not lie in its accurate and systematic mapping of the past but in establishing the

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symbols that articulate and reinforce a particular ideological stance in the present. As framed by Vinitzky-Seroussi (2002), commemorative narratives, especially those of painful pasts, may consist of three components: 1) commemoration of the protagonist(s); 2) commemoration of an event itself; and 3) commemoration of an event’s context (35). Accordingly, analysis of fragmented commemorative practices as they emerge must be accompanied by an exploration of time, how spaces are chosen, and which discourses prevail. In a fragmented arena of competing views of the past, the establishment of alternative commemorative events and the creation of alternative calendars become a vibrant ground for analysis. For when memory activists engage in memory work in the aftermath of conflict, they challenge hegemonic and state-sponsored memory and interpretations of the past. Often engaged in what is conceived as a struggle against oblivion, silence, and denial, these activists insist on remembering and reminding others about the past, so as not to repeat it.

Generational belonging in memory activism By tracing the creation of networks of commemorative solidarity through the case of memory activism in Serbia as a continuation of anti-war activism, it is possible to more broadly examine the creation of alternative commemorative practices in fragmented societies. In many societies where internal divisions manifest in participation in commemorations that take place outside state channels, such networks of commemorative solidarity shed light on the presence of unwanted memories that are otherwise silenced, denied, and gradually erased from public knowledge over years. Thus, many memory activists view their work, practices, and claims through the lens of their generational belonging. This led me to conduct field research over a longer period, extending several phases of fieldwork across a span of nearly two decades, stretching from 2004 to 2020. A generational lens guided my inquiry into both memory activism and memory of activism, in relation to the unwanted memories of the wars of the 1990s. As I followed changes and innovations in mnemonic practices over time, I was able to centre my analysis on the nuances of generational mnemonic claims when positioned as counter-memories, from below. Through direct and participant observation conducted as I joined silent vigils of the Women in Black in Belgrade, beginning in 2004, I asserted the importance of alternative commemorative practices and calendars in

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the study of memory activism. Joining street actions in other towns and accompanying the Women in Black on their annual journey to Potočari in Bosnia and Herzegovina on 11 July (from 2004 to 2007) allowed me to point to those commemorations as rituals that are in fact repeated yearly. As of 2004, I also began following and documenting the actions of the Youth Initiative for Human Rights (YIHR), which was then a new NGO in Serbia. As the organization developed into a regional actor, I followed the work of their other branches as well, mostly in Croatia and Kosovo, as they generated regional networks of commemorative solidarity, forming what I call a ‘region of memory activism’ (see Chapter 5). 4 Through this generational lens, I demonstrate the non-static nature of memory activism as civic engagement. In the late 2010s, for example, following the creation of the Centre for Public History (Centar za primenjenu istoriju, hereafter CPI) in Belgrade, I traced their memory work and was able to situate it within other pre-existing networks of action. By following their programme of guided tours to sites of suppressed memories and joining a 2019 tour to Batajnica, on the outskirts of Belgrade, I observed and documented the way they interact with hidden and unwanted pasts in their own city’s silenced memoryscapes. My previous inquiry into the study of anti-war activism as it was transforming into memory activism has also facilitated my broader analysis here in the context of actions taken by other groups and actors in Serbian civil society, the work of whom I followed in earlier phases of my research. As I previously argued (Fridman 2011), in the early 2000s, the interconnectivity of the work of the Women in Black – which often took place at the Center for Cultural Decontamination (CZKD) – with documentation and knowledge production at the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) and the alternative educational programme at the Center for Women’s Studies created a network of actors engaged in the commemorative practices I analyse in this text through the framework of memory activism. The generational dynamics of memory activism are exemplified in some ways by the slogan ‘Not in my name’, which accompanied the actions of the Women in Black throughout the 1990s and has continued to mark their mnemonic position and claim well into the 2000s. I show how this slogan allowed the group to articulate their generation’s anti-war positions, but also how, in the decade following the wars, their actions evolved into a fight against denial and oblivion in their society. As I traced memory 4 Though I discuss and feature the group’s engagement with memory activism here, on other occasions I was also able to capture and analyse their work related to Serb-Albanian relations, which goes beyond merely mnemonic issues (Fridman 2013, 2020).

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activism through the documentation of alternative commemorative events, I identified shifts in mnemonic claims, tactics, and practices from below, as they were revealed through the generational belonging of activists. This culminated in 2015, when younger activists came forward with a new slogan, arguing that they were ‘Too young to remember, determined never to forget.’ Around the same time, memory activism was becoming more visible online and as a form of hashtag activism on social media platforms. Later in this book, I introduce the #hashtag #memoryactivism framework for analysing the specific ways memory activists use hashtags, an effort that crystallized as I followed their activism using the hashtag #NisuNašiHeroji (#NotOurHeroes), and which revealed how generational belonging shaped their claims. This phase of my fieldwork extended well into 2020 and took place on the internet as I traced and documented the growing presence of online commemorations and digital commemorative practices. I approached a number of hashtags as case studies, introducing the analysis of hashtags as another form of mnemonic practice utilized by memory activists. As I analysed social media platforms from this angle, I was able to show how these digital platforms have become not only new methodological sites for field research, but also – and crucially – additional sites for the study of memory contestations. By choosing to trace the online engagement of activists through hashtags as they became digital media users, I also demonstrate how this digital form of content dissemination allows for the production of alternative knowledge through online memory activism. In addition to the participant observation I conducted at commemorative events and on guided tours, I also conducted semi-structured interviews accompanied by many hours of conversation, as well as a discourse analysis of documents, visual materials, and online platforms that have become commemorative platforms to unwanted and otherwise silenced memories of the past. Over the course of all the phases of my data collection, I conducted some 100 in-depth interviews with activists, as well as with their opponents and supporters. Interviewees included the founders, members, and former members of groups I have followed and write about here, as well as digital media users and the activists behind certain hashtags. As I spent more time examining changes in the practices of memory activists in Serbia, the generational lens applied to the wars of the 1990s and to experiences of the violent dissolution of Yugoslavia brought certain patterns into clearer focus. Approaching memory activists through their generational belonging in fact brings in several biological generations in which people experienced and engaged with the events of the 1990s – they may have been adults, young adults, or children, or even born after the wars

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ended. Through analysis of my data, I have identified a first and second generation of memory activists, as well as what I consider an in-between generation. The first generation was clearly drawn to memory activism through earlier intense engagement with anti-war activism, having come of age in socialist Yugoslavia and having experienced the 1990s as adults. The second generation, born in the early or late 1990s, carries almost no living memories or experience of the wars in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, though some may recall the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia (then rump Yugoslavia) and the war in Kosovo. For this second generation, life in socialist Yugoslavia belongs to their parents, and knowledge about its break-up is something they had to critically educate themselves about, as this topic was not necessarily openly discussed in their households nor taught in schools they attended. I have also come to recognize an in-between generation, who were born during the last decade of socialist Yugoslavia, came of age in the 1990s, and experienced the wars as children or teenagers. Clearly, these generations of memory activists do not act separately, but interact with and learn from one another in actions that both continue and evolve their practices and forms of engagement with legacies of the 1990s. In utilizing the generational lens as my methodological framework for the study of memory activism, I take inspiration from the work of other memory studies scholars who have traced the dynamics of memory across generations. I found particularly useful the works of authors who detail other cases of societies that have emerged from periods of difficult and violent pasts, such as writings on post-dictatorship Spain (Aguilar and Ramirez-Barat 2019) or the post-dictatorship generation in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay (Ros 2012). These informed my methodological inquiry as I was framing the generational belonging of memory activists in terms of how it shaped their commemorative practices. I also took inspiration from a number of post-Yugoslav studies that adopt a generational lens and claim a variety of generational positionings. In The last Yugoslav Generation, for instance, Ljubica Spasovska (2017) studied the generation that came into adulthood in the final decade of Yugoslavia (1981-1991) as she explored how Yugoslav youth in the 1980s attempted to rearticulate, question, and rethink Yugoslav socialism and the very notion of Yugoslavism. Milica Popović (2017) also took up this methodological challenge in her study of the last generation of Yugoslav Pioneers, whom she defined as people born in Yugoslavia between 1974 and 1982, analysing what she identified as two of their main political demands: the first against the erasure of their Yugoslav identity, and the other against neoliberal policies and for socio-economic equality (45). Finally, in her Mostar-based study, How Generations Remember, Monika Palmberger

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(2016) explored the ways in which members of three generations – the ‘First Yugoslavs’, the ‘last Yugoslavs’, and the ‘post-Yugoslavs’ – have positioned themselves differently in relation to the significant political, social, and economic changes Bosnia and Herzegovina has faced in recent years. Her concept of ‘generational positioning’ contributes to my exploration of the ways in which generations of memory activists in Serbia have approached and positioned themselves vis-à-vis the changes and legacies introduced into society by the wars of the 1990s. Like most authors who utilize this generational lens to advance their analysis (see also Assmann 2006; Kuljić 2008), I turned to the Mannheimian tradition in the sociology of knowledge, seeking a working definition of the term ‘generation’. According to Karl Mannheim, a generation exists if a number of birth cohorts share a historical experience that creates a community of perception. This redefines generations not as objective periods but as subjectively defined cohorts (Olick 2007, 25), acknowledging that generations are not a purely biological but an eminently social phenomenon. In other words, a common location in historical time and space creates a predisposition towards a certain characteristic mode of thought and experience, and a characteristic type of historically relevant action (Mannheim as quoted in Aguilar and Ramirez-Barat 2019, 223). Rather than seeking to analyse the boundaries of generations, I trace the continuation of and change in mnemonic actions, practices, and claims among generations of memory activists. In that sense, Jenny Wüstenberg’s work on memory activism in Germany (2017) has also contributed to my methodological framing and understandings, as she reviewed the post-war generational variations among actors in contentious politics of memory. Studies of the ‘generation after’, as in Marianne Hirsch’s seminal work on The Generation of Postmemory (2012), have informed our engagement with the concept of ‘postmemory’ as a structure of inter- and transgenerational return of traumatic knowledge and embodied experience. Thus, ‘postmemory’ enables us ‘to describe the relations that the “generation after” bears to the personal, collective, and cultural trauma of those who came before – to experiences they “remember” only by means of the stories, images, and behaviors among which they grew up’ (Hirsch 2012, 5). The ongoing effect in the present of events that happened in the past have been analysed in the literature as they emerge within categories of victims, perpetrators, or bystanders; though Hirsch’s concept of ‘postmemory’ mainly focuses on the experience and cultural production of second generations as the descendants of victims and is not generally used to characterize the divergent experiences and memories of descendants of perpetrators or bystanders, it does support

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an inquiry that leads us to grapple with questions of responsibility as a political category.5 In this book, I am interested in how these questions of responsibility – which have emerged in the empirical evidence – are viewed through the generational lens, as I frame and analyse the work of memory activists after conflict. The ongoing engagement of memory activists with alternative commemorations has forced them to face these questions of political responsibility, and they have done so in a number of ways, with their different claims in relation to responsibility and to the discomforting memories of the wars of the 1990s dictated by their generational belonging. What every generation of memory activists in Serbia has in common, though, is that they have chosen to put forward their memory work as anti-denial activism, and to do so through various methods and practices, all of which insist on engagement with unwanted memories. This kind of engagement with the wars of the 1990s requires networks of intergenerational cooperation, especially in street actions that take place in public spaces. Notably, the notion of ‘unwanted memories’ emerged from activists themselves. I, in turn, have woven the work of these activists together with unwanted memories, which serve as the connecting thread through the mnemonic actions and claims I put forward and explore in this book.

Outline of the book Grounding this study is the framework of memory activism, in one of its forms that most interests me – as a strand of peace activism and of civic activism against denial and silence. More specifically, the book traces the practices of memory activists as they disseminate alternative knowledge after conflict through alternative commemorations and alternative civic calendars, onsite and online, and shows how these activists claim agency rather than victimhood through acts of commemorative solidarity that frame their positions and rituals within existing memory politics and regimes of memory. The book’s empirical inquiry, seen through the generational lens of local memory activists, then traces the evolution of mnemonic positions, demands, slogans, and rituals as they have developed around alternative 5 Michael Rothberg (2019) went on to propose the theory of implication, which allows us to continue to engage with the question of historical responsibility as ‘one that describes the implication of people in events that are temporally and/or spatially distant and in which they have not played or do not play a direct role as perpetrators or victims’ (60).

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civic calendars. The appearance and significance of memory of activism is also explored, as it has emerged in recent years among the second generation of memory activists. Finally, while it is mostly the work of memory activists in Serbia that this study speaks to, this work is placed within the broader context of the post-Yugoslav space to argue that we should understand the region as a ‘region of memory activism’, in which memory activism and memory of activism are now evident in the work and claims of local actors engaged with the legacies of the wars of the 1990s. I show that this labour cannot be understood in a national context only, as it requires the multi-scalar analysis of memory creation, from the local and national to the regional and even global (De Cesari and Rigney 2014). Each chapter engages in a dialogue with existing literature in the fields of memory studies, peace and conflict studies, and Southeast European or Balkan studies. Much of the recent literature on legacies of the wars that followed Yugoslavia’s dissolution has relied heavily on transitional justice frameworks and Dealing with the Past discourses, but I turn here to memory studies, and more specifically to memory activism, to advance the discussion further and engage with analysis of the agency of actors and their civic actions from below. Additionally, I show how this turn to memory studies and to memory politics is in fact taking place among activists and local actors themselves, not only among scholars. Setting the stage for the presentation of the empirical evidence about memory activism in Serbia and in the wider post-Yugoslav region, Chapter 1 examines the fragmentation of memory through the notion of unwanted and silenced memories as manifested in the practices of memory activism and memory of activism. It first discusses how memories and experiences of the wars of the 1990s still shape memories of everyday life in Serbia at that time. Subsequently, the ongoing process of editing and shaping the new (post-Yugoslav) calendar of Serbia is analysed, especially its very limited acknowledgement of the wars of the 1990s. Placing the memories of these wars in the context of the current administration of memory allows for critical engagement with the counter-memories and alternative commemorations and calendars put forth by memory activists. The chapter also captures the politics of disappointment in Serbia in the aftermath of the overthrow of Slobodan Milošević, revealing the substance of the study of both hope and agency in memory activism as anti-denial activism and a strand of peace activism. In Chapter 2, I explore the mnemonic claims of actors whose actions extend from the anti-war groups already formed in Serbia in the early 1990s, by tracing the emergence of the first generation of memory activists after

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the violent break-up of Yugoslavia. I then analyse the initial appearance of alternative calendars and alternative commemorative rituals, which have become the contested territory of counter-memories. The chapter exposes the tension between state-sponsored and alternative commemorative events, such as in the street actions of the Women in Black. When the wars of the 1990s ended, and their anti-war actions turned towards memory activism, I argue that the ‘Not in my name’ slogan became the symbol of this first generation – not only of their stand against the memory politics of victimization, silence, denial, and glorification of war crimes, but also of their generational belonging. I show, too, how their alternative acts of commemoration have been shaped by claiming solidarity with and expressing empathy towards victims across the region. The non-static nature of memory activism is discussed in Chapter 3, where I analyse the work of the second generation of memory activists, as it developed after 2010, as well as that of the in-between generation. The chapter traces processes of continuity and change in memory activism in Serbia, as well as innovations in the mnemonic practices of activists in the context of existing commemorative rituals. This is most clearly seen through analysis of the annual Srebrenica commemorations in Belgrade. Beyond commemorations alone, examining the emergence of memory of activism I identify newer practices related to memory of the war in Kosovo and to the existence of mass graves in Serbia, specifically those on the outskirts of Belgrade (in Batajnica). The chapter then takes readers on a journey through CPI’s guided tours and various artistic productions related to memory of the 1990s in Serbia, including documentary and feature films such as the work of Ognjen Glavonić. Memory activism in the digital sphere began to take shape among the second generation of memory activists, and in Chapter 4, I propose the #hashtag #memoryactivism framework as an analytical approach to the study of digital memory activism and online commemorations. Using this framework, I examine the growing presence of these phenomena on social media in the context of the ‘connective turn’ in memory studies. The use of hashtags as a mnemonic practice is also analysed in this chapter. By studying a number of hashtags, each of which is treated as a case study related to unwanted memories of the wars of the 1990s in Serbia, I trace the ways in which memory activists utilize hashtags and online platforms to engage with (locally) forbidden ideas, with commemoration, and with disputed memories and terminologies. In the final chapter, Chapter 5, I position memory activism related to the 1990s regionally, claiming the post-Yugoslav space as a ‘region of memory activism’, which allows for an exploration of growing platforms of alternative

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counter-memories as civic engagement. The chapter analyses the perspectives and claims of the memory activists presented in previous chapters, vis-à-vis other forms of regional civic engagement occurring from below. When generated from below by local actors and grounded in a critical civic emancipatory peace, these actions advance our understanding of memory activism and transcend national borders.

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Gensburger, Sarah, and Sandrine Lefranc. 2020. Beyond Memory: Can We Really Learn from the Past? London: Palgrave Macmillan. Gillis, John R. 1994. ‘Memory and Identity: The History of a Relationship’. In Commemorations, edited by John R. Gillis. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Gutman, Yifat. 2017. ‘Looking Backward to the Future: Counter-Memory as Oppositional Knowledge Production in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict’. Current Sociology 65 (1): 54-72. Hirsch, Marianne. 2012. The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture after the Holocaust. New York: Columbia University Press. Irwin-Zarecka, Iwona. 1994. Frames of Remembrance: The Dynamics of Collective Memory. New Brunswick: Transaction. Jelin, Elizabeth. 2003. State Repression and the Labors of Memory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Kubik, Jan, and Michael Bernhard. 2014. ‘A Theory of the Politics of Memory’. In Twenty Years after Communism. The Politics of Memory and Commemoration, edited by Michael Bernhard and Jan Kubik, pp. 7-34. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kuljić, Todor. 2008. ‘Istorijske, političke i herojske generacije: Nacrt okvira i primena’. Filozofija i Društvo 1: 69-106. Kuljić, Todor. 2009. ‘Remembering Crimes: Proposal and Reactions’. In Between Authoritarianism and Democracy, Volume III: Serbia at the Political Crossroads, edited by Dragica Vujadinović and Vladimir Goati, pp. 197-212. Belgrade: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung and Center for Democratic Transition. Mac Ginty, Roger, and Oliver P. Richmond. 2013. ‘The Local Turn in Peace Building: A Critical Agenda for Peace’. Third World Quarterly 34 (5): 763-783. Mac Ginty, Roger, and Pamina Firchow. 2016. ‘Top-Down and Bottom-Up Narratives of Peace and Conflict’. Politics 36 (3): 308-323. McQuaid, Sara Dybris, and Sarah Gensburger. 2019. ‘Administrations of Memory: Transcending the Nation and Bringing back the State in Memory Studies’. International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 32 (2): 125-143. Nora, Pierre. 1989. ‘Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire’. Representations 26: 7-24. Olick, Jeffrey K. 2007. The Politics of Regret: On Historical Memory and Historical Responsibility. New York: Routledge. Paffenholz, Thania. 2015. ‘Unpacking the Local Turn in Peacebuilding: A Critical Assessment towards an Agenda for Future Research’. Third World Quarterly 36 (5): 857-874. Palmberger, Monika. 2016. How Generations Remember: Conflicting Histories and Shared Memories in Post-War Bosnia and Herzegovina. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Pisanty, Valentina. 2021. The Guardians of Memory and the Return of the Xenophobic Right. New York: Primo Levy Center. Popović, Milica. 2017. ‘Yugonostalgia: The Meta-National Narratives of the last Pioneers’. In Nostalgia on the Move, edited by Mirjana Slavković and Marija Đorgović, pp. 42-50. Belgrade: The Museum of Yugoslavia. Reading, Anna, and Tamar Katriel, eds. 2015. Cultural Memories of Non-Violent Struggles: Powerful Times. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Richmond, Oliver P. 2006. ‘The Problem of Peace: Understanding the “Liberal Peace”’. Conflict Security and Development 6 (3): 291-314. Richmond, Oliver P. 2013. ‘Failed Statebuilding versus Peace Formation’. Cooperation and Conflict 38 (3): 378-400. Rigney, Ann. 2018. ‘Remembering Hope: Transnational Activism beyond the Traumatic’. Memory Studies 11 (3): 368-380. Ros, Ana. 2012. The Post-Dictatorship Generation in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay: Collective Memory and Cultural Production. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Rosenfeld, Gavriel D. 2021. ‘The Rise of Illiberal Memory’. Memory Studies. DOI: 10.1177/1750698020988771. Rothberg, Michael. 2019. The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Perpetrators. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Schwartz, Barry. 2001. ‘Commemorative Objects’. In International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, edited by Paul Baltes and Neil Smelser, pp. 2267-2272. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Spasovska, Ljubica. 2017. The last Yugoslav generation: The rethinking of youth politics and cultures in late socialism. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Vinitzky-Seroussi, Vered. 2002. ‘Commemorating a Difficult Past: Yitzhak Rabin’s Memorials’. American Sociological Review 67 (1): 30-51. Vinitzky-Seroussi, Vered. 2009. Yitzhak Rabin’s Assassination and the Dilemmas of Commemoration. Albany: SUNY Press. Vermeersch, Peter. 2019. ‘Victimhood as Victory: The Role of Memory Politics in the Process of De-Europeanisation in East-Central Europe’. Global Discourse: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Current Affairs 9 (1): 111-130. Wüstenberg, Jenny. (2017). Civil Society and Memory in Postwar Germany. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zerubavel, Eviatar. 2003a. ‘Calendars and History: A Comparative Study of the Social Organization of National Memory’. In States of Memory: Continuities, Conflicts, and Transformations in National Retrospection, edited by Jeffrey Olick, pp. 315-337. Durham, NC: Duke University. Zerubavel, Eviatar. 2003b. Time Maps: Collective Memory and the Social Shape of the Past. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Zerubavel, Yael. 1995. Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

1

Unwanted Memories of (the Wars of) the 1990s Abstract This chapter begins by placing the discussion of memories of the wars of the 1990s in the broader context of experiences and memories of everyday life in Serbia at the time. These are largely unwanted memories that people would rather avoid, and yet often reference in passing, especially in the context of unexpected disruptions to their daily routine. The chapter analyses how these memoryscapes shape the actions and claims of memory activists as they critically engage with knowledge about that decade. It also traces the editing and shaping of the new (post-Yugoslav) calendar of Serbia and its very limited engagement with the wars of the 1990s. Keywords: unwanted memory, Serbia, wars of the 1990s, memory, calendars, commemorative solidarity

In Serbia, the decade of the 1990s is still referenced regularly in the 2020s. Though my main interest and focus here is on memories and memory politics related to the wars waged in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo following the break-up of Yugoslavia, they cannot be discussed in isolation from other memories that have emerged as legacies of that era. These include, but are not limited to, memories of a decade of the destruction of civility, of mass anti-regime demonstrations, of an absence of normalcy, and of ruptures in daily life. Indeed, in the early days of the outbreak and spread of COVID-19, during the lockdown period in the spring of 2020, I heard many people in Belgrade comment about how the experience brought up unpleasant memories of life under sanctions in the 1990s, when mobility was limited, leaving from or arriving in the country on an international flight was impossible, and life’s routines were severely interrupted. Often, people in Serbia view the 1990s as a point of reference for how bad things

Fridman, Orli, Memory Activism and Digital Practices after Conflict: Unwanted Memories. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463723466_ch01

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can be, a symbol of unpleasant times people would rather forget and of ‘really ugly memories’ (Obradović-Wochnik 2013, 61). Thus, this chapter begins by placing this discussion of memories of the wars of the 1990s in the broader context of experiences and memories of everyday life in Serbia at the time; those unwanted memories that people would rather avoid, and yet often reference anyway, almost in passing, especially in the context of unexpected disruptions to their daily routine. For memory activists, centred in this study, these memories and legacies of the 1990s inform their emphasis on critical engagement with knowledge about the decade, which shape their commemorative claims. Tracing these claims through the generational belonging of the activists featured in this book highlights the distance or proximity of different generations from the 1990s. I will show how the first generation of memory activists in Serbia laid the foundation for alternative commemorative events on an alternative civic calendar, and the second generation built on those mnemonic claims to also include their engagement with memory of activism. I then analyse the editing and shaping of the new (post-Yugoslav) calendar of Serbia and its very limited engagement with the wars of the 1990s. Placing the memories of these wars in the context of the current administration of memory in the country will allow, in the following chapters, for critical engagement with the counter-memories and alternative commemorations and calendars put forth by memory activists.

Referencing the 1990s In July 2020, during mass anti-regime demonstrations that erupted overnight, images of police brutality against protesters in the streets of Belgrade resonated with some people old enough to have experienced the 1990s as adults, evoking memories of life during the Milošević years and the state violence that met protesters under his regime. But for generations born during or after the 1990s, who joined mass anti-regime rallies in 2017 and 2020, the legacies of the 1990s are also relevant as a point of reference for their memory of anti-regime actions and memory of activism. As one student I spoke with in 2017 framed it: ‘Our parents’ generation had the 1991 demonstrations, the 1996-97 demonstrations; now it is our turn, our generation’s time to protest, our demonstrations’ (Fridman and Hercigonja 2017, 13). In her analysis of protests in Serbia in the 1990s, Marina Blagojević (2006) argued that the history of that decade of political life in the country can in fact be traced as a history of protests (147). According to her, demonstrators

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– who were in the process of learning to engage in civil resistance – had a feeling of déjà vu at the beginning of the 1996-97 student protest, which ‘seemed as if it were a continuation of the same protest rather than a different one’ (148); a feeling that still prevails over two decades later. It is common to hear the current state of affairs in Serbia compared to that of the 1990s, and sometimes even the claim that nothing has changed. This is inaccurate, of course, but what is interesting to my discussion here is the sense of great discomfort that engaging with memories of those years bring up. In general, these are considered unwanted memories even outside the legacies of violence from that era, or the wars, or war crimes. When the 2017 anti-regime protests were dubbed protests ‘against the abnormal’ (protiv nenormalnog),6 it seemed to be yet another reference to the 1990s, which not only lacked democracy but was marked by the widespread sense that normalcy had been lost altogether (Fridman and Hercigonja 2017). Memories of and references to the 1990s as abnormal years have been an important motif in recent anthropological research about Serbia (Greenberg 2011 and 2014; Johnson 2019) within literature on discourses of ‘the normal’ in the post-Yugoslav space (Jansen 2015) and other post-socialist societies (Fehérváry 2002; Galbraith 2003). In tracing such discourses, as well as agentive capacity and action in Serbia in the early 2000s, Jessica Greenberg (2011) documented the ways in which post-socialist citizens seek out and express a desire to be subject to disciplinary regimes of power; that is to say, states that work (90). Talk of normalcy, as she observed, typically begins with references to consumption or lifestyle but often shifts to the language of moral decay, corruption, and even pathology (94). In reference to the 1990s, this discourse of normalcy encompasses even seemingly trivial things, as reflected in a conversation I had with activists who were members of the anti-regime movement Otpor at the time:7 A normal country is a country from which you can fly; it is a country in which airports are not closed so that when you need to travel you must go to Budapest. A normal country is a country in which you can receive 6 Analysis of the 2017 anti-regime demonstrations, also dubbed by the demonstrators as ‘against dictatorship’ (protiv diktature) can be found in a number of articles in volume 59 issue 4 of Sociologija, the Journal for Sociology, Social Psychology and Social Anthropology, published by the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Belgrade (http://www.sociologija.org/books/ issues.php?lng=english). For example, see Petrović and Petrović 2017, and Birešev 2017. 7 Otpor, which means resistance in the local language, was a movement formed by students in the late 1990s in opposition to the regime. For an analysis of the movement, see Naumović 2006.

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mail, in which you are connected to the internet, all kinds of small things. (Fridman 2011)

Some of the questions raised by Greenberg (2011) soon after regime change in 2000 are arguably still relevant today, including: ‘How could one develop a moral compass for action in the face of prevalent organized crime, a severely underfunded state, corruption in the judiciary and other key state sectors, and the looming shadow of war and violence of the 1990s?’ (94). Similarly, in her study of the politics of ‘brain drain’ in Serbia and mobility narratives, Dana Johnson (2019) observed how material symbols of prosperity are granted secondary status to the immaterial. Young people, according to her, resonate with a normal life in an ordered moral state (659). Yet experiences from the 1990s in Serbia, as remembered and often referenced today by various generations, are tainted by a looming sense of the abnormal. This is especially true among those who came of age in Yugoslavia – who not only experienced the indignity of losing a ‘place in the world’ which characterized life in socialist Yugoslavia (Jansen as quoted in Greenberg 2011, 89), but also of losing their country and their sense of mobility, as they faced a decade of life under international sanctions in the years that followed.8 The 1990s are laden with memories of deprivation (Greenberg 2011, 94), gloominess, and lack of hope, of a chaos that upended the rhythms of everyday life (Gordy 1999), of high inflation, international isolation, mass emigration,9 a mass refugee crisis,10 and high levels of internal social tensions due to the economic crisis, poverty, and the politics of warmongering and ethno-nationalism. Still, Rory Archer (2018) has highlighted the need to pay closer attention to the diversity of life trajectories in Serbia during the 1990s before assuming 8 From the mid-1960s on, Yugoslav citizens could travel visa-free through most of the Western and Eastern blocs, including fellow non-aligned states. From 1992 to 2001, restrictive visa regimes and multilateral sanctions effectively brought this order of things to a halt (Johnson 2019, 3). Access to and the exercise of international mobility, it has been argued, can be a barometer for the ‘normalcy’ of national order (Dzenovska as quoted in Johnson 2019, 656). 9 Some estimates have as many as 500,000 young, educated citizens leaving Serbia (especially the capital Belgrade) in the 1990s. According to Marina Blagojević (2006), the regime was very tolerant and, in many ways, even supportive of this emigration, as it was a way of ‘“exporting” the critical mass of people who could produce social change, or at least provoke it’ (162). 10 As a neighbour to Bosnia and Herzegovina, which produced the largest number of refugees (1.2 million) and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) (1 million) in the Balkans, Serbia was the country most affected by this trend, receiving at the peak of the crisis over 620,000 refugees from Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as 230,000 IDPs from Kosovo (Džuverović and Vidojević 2018; Bobić 2009).

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that daily experiences for ordinary people were universally negative. His oral history of blue-collar narratives of the recent past in Belgrade illustrates the diverse ways in which socio-economic dislocation was experienced in Serbia in the 1980s and 1990s; and according to his study, some people viewed the breakdown of the system in the early 1990s as having opened space for entrepreneurial initiative – mostly in smuggling and other informal activities in the grey economy – which improved their standard of living (54). In the 2010s, some participants in his research argued that conditions were ‘better when it was worse’, referring to neoliberal reforms in Serbia. The generational lens is important here as well, and younger people who were engaged in anti-regime protests in their early adulthood express a complex mixture of memories and emotions about the 1990s. As a correspondent from the then Belgrade-based OBCT wrote on the tenth anniversary of 5 October: Paradoxically, the 1990s were the most beautiful and most difficult years of my life; particularly beautiful because I was part of the citizens’ uprising, because I met brave and smart people, and because I was a small part of a great chapter in the history of a different Serbia, a Serbia I still believe in. (Tadić 2010)

While continuing to associate the ousting of Milošević from off ice on 5 October 2000 with memories of the happiness and hope she and others felt that day, a decade later she felt that the question of whether it was ‘worth it’ still loomed, as the country was ‘not the Serbia they wished for’ (Tadić 2010). Indeed, even after the ousting of Milošević, which was supposed to mark a fresh start, the change people expected and the sense of normalcy they craved was slow to come. The perpetual lines of visa-seekers that formed outside Western and European embassies in Belgrade in the 2000s ‘became a symbol of Serbia’s incomplete break with the past and uncertain European future’ (Johnson 2019, 657). For almost another decade after 2000, during a period that deepened the sense of entrapment felt by citizens of Serbia, mobility remained limited, only finally changing with the reinstatement of visa-free travel to the European Union (EU) in 2009. This, according to Greenberg (2011), was supposed to put Serbia back ‘on the Road to Normal’. But even in the 2010s, any sense of normalcy that may have been achieved did not diminish the desire of many young people to leave the country permanently. For members of the generation that came of age in the 1990s and experienced those years as children, as Johnson observed, ‘aspirations for mobility are no longer primarily expressed as desires to escape entrapment,

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nor are they anchored to lived memories of Yugoslav mobility’ (2019, 658). It seems as though this wish to leave the country has remained a legacy of the 1990s, but less because of the memories of war, and more due to a search for normalcy in a functioning state.

The recent past is still present Despite the continued prevalence of the 1990s as a reference point for the abnormal and for anti-regime demonstrations, significantly fewer allusions are made by people in Serbia today to the wars of the 1990s, and especially to anti-war demonstrations. This distinction between anti-regime and anti-war protests, made early on, has become an important element in the engagement of the second generation of memory activists with memory of activism (see Chapters 3 and 4). In 1996 and 1997, demonstrations were strictly anti-regime in nature and protesters saw as their opponent ‘the Milošević regime, and not necessarily his nationalist policies, and certainly not his line in Kosovo’ (Jansen 2000, 396).11 The same could be argued about the demonstrations in 2000 that toppled Milošević from power. In that case, Otpor anti-regime activists harnessed their creativity and energy to mobilize high school and university students to activism; these groups had a strong motivation to remove Milošević because they, too, wanted to live in a normal country. The message from Otpor about what was considered normal, however, was not solely directed against the politics of wars, ethnic cleansing, or genocide. As one Otpor leader explained: We decided to fight against Milošević by persuading the public not that the Muslims are the poor victims of Serbian slaughtering, as you cannot do that. It was false advertising, and we did not believe in it. Our focus was not there. We deeply believed that the most patriotic thing in Serbia was to release the Serbian people from Milošević’s irresponsible and catastrophic tenure as the head of state. (Fridman 2011).

With the removal of Milošević from power,12 hopes for genuine change were indeed rather high. In interviews I conducted with anti-war 11 For more on the 1996-97 demonstrations, see Lazić 1999. 12 Milošević was extradited to The Hague on 28 June 2001, in a clandestine operation coordinated by Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić. Milošević, who was arrested not for war crimes but for corruption and abuse of power, was at first detained in a Belgrade prison for two days. According to Subotić

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activists in the early 2000s, many spoke of the f irst few months after 5 October, as well as the short-lived Đinđić government, as periods of real hope; especially as they saw ‘their’ people involved in the creation of a new government, becoming relevant and instrumental in influencing reforms. As Blagojević (2006) framed it at the time, from the point of view of civic action and activism, ‘the institutions, no matter how underdeveloped, burdened with problems, or slow to transform, have become “our” institutions’ (160). Hope for change was especially high among anti-war activists, who were advocating for a clear break from Serbia’s war politics and for official acknowledgment of Serbia’s political responsibility for war crimes and the pain inflicted on victims across the former Yugoslavia (Duhaček 2006 and 2010; Dimitrijević 2008 and 2011). But after a decade of anti-regime protests and anti-war actions, the change so many desired, and the sense of catharsis people sought following the wars, never seemed to come. 13 With the assassination of Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić in the heart of Belgrade on 12 March 2003, it was the politics of disappointment that prevailed.14 Afterwards, change seemed merely cosmetic, and 5 October became an annual occasion to share narratives of disenchantment. It was clear that the Serbian state’s ties to organized crime and to the violent legacies of the recent past had not in fact been broken (Greenberg 2014, 3-4). (2009), this arrest marked the first major crisis for the first government installed after 5 October, in a transitional Serbia. This led to a major political dispute between Đinđić and then President Vojislav Koštunica, yet the government chose not to use Milošević’s arrest as an opportunity to ignite public debate about the past, as the crimes for which he had been indicted by the ICTY were not openly discussed (Subotić 2009, 45-47). 13 A common saying, referencing the sense of disappointment many people felt, is that ‘October 6th never came’. This mostly refers to the fact that no lustration processes ever took place in state institutions. In his analysis, Gordy (2013) shows that, during the period of ‘cohabitation’ between Koštunica’s election in October 2000 and the formation of Đinđić’s government in January 2001, there was still continuity with the old regime (88). What’s more, the Democratic Party (Demokratska Stranka, or DS) led by Đinđić in the 1990s appropriated some of the war rhetoric of the ultra-right Serbian Radical Party (Srpska Radikalna Stranka, or SRS), such as in a highly publicized visit to Pale in 1994 to show support to Radovan Karadžić (Gordy 2013, 89). 14 Among other things, Đinđić’s cooperation with the Tribunal in The Hague was not popularly supported. In the months leading up to his assassination, he made it clear that former members of the Milošević regime – including state, paramilitary, and security figures – would no longer be tolerated, as cooperation with the Tribunal was key to Serbia’s successful integration into Europe. It is widely argued in Serbia that Đinđić’s assassination was a defensive move by those most at risk in such a crackdown. His assassin, Zvezdan Jovanović, clearly stated that his motive was to stop further extraditions to The Hague. I thank Katarina Subašic for bringing this to my attention.

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On the twentieth anniversary of 5 October, in 2020, Belgrade-based historian Dubravka Stojanović moderated an online roundtable discussion titled ‘Twenty years after Milošević: what has changed for Serbia?’ and opened with the following question: ‘Are we celebrating or are we commemorating October 5th?’ Discourses of the abnormal and of disappointment again dominated, and the conversation concluded with comments from one of the panellists, journalist and activist Aida Ćorović, who emphasized that, At the heart of our problems, and the legacies of the 1990s, is our values system [in Serbia] … which is still profoundly nationalistic … We never faced the 1990s, we never faced the war crimes, atrocities, and genocide that took place around us, and many people are simply lacking basic knowledge about what happened. (European Endowment for Democracy 2020)15

Ćorović was an anti-war activist during the 1990s, in Novi Pazar, and her comments articulate a sentiment held strongly by both younger and older memory activists, who insist on facing and breaking from these difficult pasts and violent legacies in their call for justice and search for reconciliation. Accordingly, there are numerous accounts of disappointment in processes of transitional justice, as Eric Gordy (2013) has demonstrated. These include ‘a long record of obstruction, relativization, and denial; retrenchment of forces complicit in the operation of a criminal regime; repeated instances of impunity’ (xi).16 Aptly, Jelena Subotić (2009) titled her analysis of the domestic misuse of transitional justice norms Hijacked Justice. Todor Kuljić has argued that tracing memories related to the legacies of the 1990s requires a community with a political ‘we’, but according to him, generational differences exemplify the magnitude of the challenges 15 The webinar was organized by the European Endowment for Democracy and is available online. The rather limited engagement with the twentieth anniversary of 5 October was most likely not only a function of the coronavirus crisis, but a gauge of memory politics in Serbia, and its relation to this particular past. See the edited volume by Orlović and Kovačević (2020) for a collection of essays from a conference that took place on 6 October 2020 at the University of Belgrade Faculty for Political Science (FPN) (though none of the texts in this edited volume analyse memory politics or mnemonic engagement with 5 October). 16 In the same breath, Gordy lists achievements – many of which are easy to forget, or maybe are less relevant to people’s everyday lives and more relevant to judiciaries and their legacies – such as: ‘the first trials of high military commanders and heads of state, the first region wide system of special prosecutors, the first exchanges of declarations and apologies, the first legal judgments on genocide and on sexual violence as a war crime’ (2013, xi).

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to producing change (2008, 79-80). As discussed in the Introduction, the methodological approach of this book also centres generational perspectives and lenses. The fact that the generation that came of age in the 1990s were deprived a glorious victory and new generational symbols (Kuljić 2008, 80) has much to do with the way events in the country have unfolded in the aftermath of 5 October 2000. As Aida Ćorović’s comments above make clear, 5 October did not materialize into significant change, in that it did not generate a sense of normalcy, nor did it offer a tangible break from the war politics of the 1990s. Given that so many issues linked to the internal political conflicts of that period were never transformed, as Kuljić has framed it, the country has lacked a sense of generational unity in relation to the memories of events in the 1990s (from the 1996-97 or 2000 demonstrations, to the assassination of Đinđić) and their legacies today (2008, 80). And when it comes to memories of the wars, there is not even minimal consensus regarding what exactly ‘has to be’ remembered (David as quoted in Gordy 2013, 109). Unity among members of the post-1990s generation has instead solidified mainly in their shared negative view of ‘the enemy’ (and shared understanding of who constitutes that enemy) and shared memories of the difficult years of the 1990s (Kuljić 2008, 85-89).17 Yet, as this study maintains, other mnemonic trajectories and practices are also available to members of that very same generation. And for many memory activists, as I will show, their earlier models of civic engagement and resistance to the wars, to the Milošević regime and its war politics, and to the denial of crimes that has continued well after October 2000, in fact mark a continuity with rather than a disconnect from difficult memories of the 1990s. Indeed, building on a decade of resistance and civic action – even if weak and extremely marginalized – younger activists unambiguously position their work as a continuation of the earlier actions of the generation who founded Serbia’s anti-war civil society, which became the foundation for memory activism and memory work after 2000. This has not only resulted in a mentorship role for this older generation (Kurze 2016, 460), but even more importantly, as seen in Rigney’s memory-activism nexus (2018), has entailed the articulation and continuation of their legacy of anti-war and anti-nationalism struggles as well as the mnemonic practice of commemorating war crimes victims, which emerged in the 1990s as a critique of, and an alternative to, state-sponsored memory politics.

17 See also Jansen 2003.

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Memory politics and public knowledge of the wars of the 1990s The administration of memory and memory regimes related to the 1990s in Serbia have developed over time, and in many ways are still in the process of being shaped – in other words, memory in the making. Discourses of silence and denial already prevalent in the 1990s were converted into policy, and were then reinforced in the 2000s under the rule of the Democratic Party (DS)18 and the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS).19 Eric Gordy (2013) contends that the spectrum of denial practices employed in Serbia can be analysed through a typology of engagement with the question of responsibility, and has offered a continuum that ranges from outright affirmation of denial in the straightforward form of the celebration of crimes, to engagement with questions of responsibility through contestation (89-123).20 While this study takes interest in the latter, and thus in the actions of those who choose to break the silence and confront official denial in Serbia, placing these actions in the broader context of state-sponsored memory politics deepens our understanding of how counter-memories emerge and function in the work of memory activists. After 2000, addressing the wars of the 1990s and their consequences was viewed by the new government as politically disadvantageous, as it would alienate large segments of society, especially supporters of the previous regime. A vast majority of the population was mourning the loss of conflicts they perceived as having been righteous, and governments in the 2000s sought ways to silence any public debate on the wars, rather than accepting responsibility (David 2015, 105-106). Silence accompanied by denial continued well into the 2010s, bolstered by the return of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) as a leading political actor, after fewer than eight years in the opposition,21 and even more by the consolidation of the Serbian Progressive

18 The Democratic Party (DS) was formed in 1990 and was led by Zoran Đinđić, who became the prime minister after 5 October 2000 and served in that role until his assassination on 12 March 2003. The party was then led by Boris Tadić, who was president of Serbia from 2004 until 2012. 19 The Democratic Party of Serbia (Demokratska stranka Srbije, or DSS) was formed in 1992 and was led by Vojislav Koštunica, who served as the last president of FR Yugoslavia from 2000 to 2003, and as prime minister of Serbia from 2004 to 2008. 20 In his continuum, Gordy shows a broad scope of engagement with denial, from that of actors who have deployed denial from early on, to newcomers just beginning to instrumentalize it. 21 The Socialist Party of Serbia (Socijalistička partija Srbije, or SPS) was formed in 1990 and was led by Slobodan Milošević until he was ousted from power. Since 2003, the party has been led by Ivica Dačić, who was prime minister of Serbia from 2012 to 2014.

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Party (SNS) in 2014.22 In Gordy’s typology, the return of the SPS to power marked a key juncture in the ideology of forgetting. The party achieved full rehabilitation by joining the governing coalition led by DS Prime Minister Mirko Cvetković in 2008, issuing a Declaration of Political Reconciliation.23 This, among other things in the years that followed, repositioned the SPS as a legitimate political actor. In practical terms, this has given those who are connected to the recent past and its unwanted memories licence to forget and move on, without looking back. In 2003, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) – established in 1992 on the territory of the rump Yugoslav state – was reconstituted as the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro. Just three years later, in 2006, following a May referendum in Montenegro and its declaration of independence, Serbia was left on its own. These intensified processes of change manifested in both the new constitution and the state calendar (Šarić 2012, 37-38).24 During this period, as I discuss below, new laws were passed regulating the state calendar and holidays. Then, in the 2010s, additional holidays were adopted and more memory laws were passed, such as the 2018 Law on War Memorials.25 This solidified and centralized state-sponsored commemorations, reinstating 22 The Serbian Progressive Party (Srpska napredna stranka, or SNS) was formed in 2008 by Aleksandar Vučić and Tomislav Nikolić upon their departure from the Serbian Radical Party (SRS). Nikolić served as president of Serbia from 2012 to 2017. Vučić served as prime minister from 2014 to 2017, when he became the President of Serbia. 23 See Gordy (2013, 93-95) for analysis of this document, which was signed by Boris Tadić and Ivica Dačić. Its full title is: ‘Declaration on Political Reconciliation and Joint Responsibility for Realizing the Vision of Serbia as a Democratic, Free, Comprehensive Economically and Culturally Developed and Socially Just Country’ (Deklaracija o političkom pomirenju i zajedničkoj odgovornosti za ostvarenje vizije Srbije kao demokratske, solobodne, celovite ekonomski i kulturno razvijene i socijalno pravedne zamlje). 24 The June 2006 constitution was adopted in haste after teams selected by President Tadić and Koštunica’s government presented their draft to the public. The Kosovo status talks necessitated its swift adoption in order to affirm Serbia’s desire to keep the province under its sovereignty (see Šarić 2012, 37-38). 25 See Zakon o ratnim memorijalima (2018), available in the local language. Though not fully implemented at the time of writing, the law stipulates, among other things, the possible removal of war memorials that contain content that ‘does not match historical or real facts’, or ‘that are dedicated to an event which is not in accordance with the heritage of Serbia’s liberation wars, symbolizing the loss of sovereignty, territorial integrity, the unity and the independence or the freedom of Serbia’ (Article 20). Critiques of the law among memory activists include the claim that Serbia has not taken part only in liberation wars. As activist and author Miloš Ćirić has argued, the law is a step back for the politics of reconciliation, as any memorial addressing the crimes committed by Serbia during the wars of the 1990s would be deemed unlawful (see ‘The Balkans is Covered with Milosevic Monuments Already’, Balkan Insight, 15 March 2018). For additional critique, see also Milosavljević 2019.

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and cementing rhetoric and discourses of victimization related to the wars of the 1990s. At the same time, state-sponsored memory politics insisted on and fortified a sense of pride in the nation’s military and heroic past, pre-dating socialist Yugoslavia. Yet anti-war and memory activists hardly consider Serbia’s participation in the wars of the 1990s to have been heroic; as discourses of a heroic past fail completely to address the complex layers of difficult memories of the 1990s discussed above. Such discourse clearly disregards issues related to internal political divisions – from those affecting everyday life in the 1990s and fuelling mass emigration; to the maltreatment of hundreds of thousands of refugees from Croatia, Bosnia Herzegovina, and Kosovo by the state and its institutions; to the assassination of Đinđić – and even the shared sense of abnormality that marked the decade. Above all, though, it is the wartime politics, the warmongering and ethno-nationalism, the questions of policy and responsibility, and the perpetration of war crimes not only in Serbia but in the region as a whole, which has not been addressed by the state. As Ana Vilenica (2019), an independent researcher and activist from Belgrade, framed it, in the decades since 2000, ‘a mythologized national past is being emphasized, by erecting monuments and establishing new non-critical institutions of culture’,26 while at the same time, ‘the history of the wars of the 1990s is being blurred’ through ‘amnesia and historical revisionism’.27 Through their insistence on engaging with and disseminating critical knowledge about these unwanted and unpleasant memories, memory activists work to connect and bring together all the legacies of the 1990s. But through the 2010s, and now in the 2020s, these activists have faced ever stronger, more established, and more institutionalized state-sponsored commemoration and discourse, in an otherwise fragmented society. To fully grasp the ways in which memory politics related to the 1990s in Serbia were shaped, this process must also be placed in a regional context. Three decades after the wars of the 1990s,28 new memory regimes are in 26 For example, the reconstruction of the Savski Trg as part of the Belgrade Waterfront Project and the erection of a giant Stefan Nemanja monument, which was built in 2020 and unveiled in January 2021. 27 Vilenica (2019), who wrote about the urbanization of the past and the wars of the 1990s, underscores that socialist history, too, has been ‘hidden and distorted’. She contends that amnesia and revisionism are used to distract from the truth of the future: unemployment, poverty, exploitation, debt, and homelessness. 28 Interestingly, in Serbia, as Dubravka Stojanović has highlighted, the wars of the 1990s remain unnamed, unlike in Croatia, for example, which has dubbed its war the Homeland War (domovinski rat), a term rarely contested (see Krokodil 2018).

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place in every post-Yugoslav successor state, and in each case, the ‘order of memories … has been successfully narrowed and … nationalized’ (Kuljić 2009). Indeed, memory abuses were common practice among politicians and intellectuals during the 1990s and have continued to flourish in subsequent decades. But memories of the wars of that decade are not the only ones subject to contestation in recent years. As Gordy (2013) has noted, the question of guilt and responsibility involves the development of persuasive historical accounts; and addressing the matter of when the past ‘begins’ is a sensitive one, especially since the instrumentalization of historical memory itself played an important role in the mobilization of nationalist sentiments and nationalist violence in the 1990s (3-4). Gordy points to four historical periods and events that are the focus of disputations: the resolution of guilt from World War II (1941-1945), grievances from the communist period (1945-1990), the determination of responsibility for the break-up of Yugoslavia (1980-1992), and finally, the crimes of the wars of succession (1991-present). While this book addresses the latter period, and more specif ically counter-memories in the form of non-state commemorations, changes in memory politics vis-à-vis the other three periods have also been quite visible in recent decades, and all are intertwined. World War II, the narrative of the People’s liberation, the anti-fascist struggle, and the victory of the Partisans – all part of the founding myths and the main source of legitimacy for post-World War II Yugoslavia – are among the issues being re-narrated, negated, and adjusted to fit new(er) narrative frameworks (Đureinović 2018). These processes of historical revisionism, which began in the 1980s and have continued long after the 1990s, are supported by the rehabilitation of past actors that has been enabled by new memory regimes and memory laws.29 Historian Dubravka Stojanović contends that, in Serbia, ‘“the battle for the truth about the Second World War” is being fought on the level of

29 Internal controversies and fragmentations were exemplif ied in the 2004 passage of the Veteran Law by the Serbian parliament, which equalized the rights of Chetnik and Partisan veterans. At the same time, as Milošević and Touquet (2018) show, the law allows one to trace the Europeanizing effects of EU memory frameworks produced by the European Parliament (EP) on memory politics in Serbia. They assert that European memory adjustments have in fact produced certain unintended consequences, arguing that the EU’s anti-totalitarian resolutions were instrumental in legitimizing the reinterpretation of the role of the Chetniks in World War II. See also the analysis by Đureinović of rehabilitation legislation, such as the 2006 and 2011 Rehabilitation Laws (2020a, 129-145). Memory activists who focus on this period, who are not covered in this study, have protested against this rehabilitation. For example, see the group Ne rehabilitaciji! (No Rehabilitation!). The Women in Black have also taken part in these actions and protests.

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most state institutions as well as in textbooks’ (2011, 247). According to her, these changes are overarching: A number of steps were taken which undoubtedly demonstrated to the public that the change [in narrative] was not just political, but, literally speaking, historical. The change of street names … and demolition of monuments to socialist heroes were important symbolic signs that the turnaround was profound and far-reaching. The next step related to changes of state holidays, and the ways in which past events were commemorated (Stojanović 2011, 249).

The socialist era has turned out to be the ideal victim of new interpretations of history in Serbia. The ousting of Milošević constituted a major turning point and was seen as an opportunity for a clean break from the memory of World War II and socialist Yugoslavia (Stojanović 2010, 17). In fact, aiming to put Serbia’s communist past behind them, the heterogeneous coalition that came to power in 2000 could agree on just two things: Milošević had to be removed, and their anti-communism had to be absolute. When the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) came to power in 2012, they swapped this anti-communism for nationalism and sought to nationalize World War II (Đureinović 2020a, 65-67). Similar efforts to create a clean break from any responsibility for the wars of 1990s are at the heart of my inquiry here. In post-socialist Yugoslavia, the formation and institutionalization of the memory politics of the violent wars of the 1990s was such that newly created state structures engaged in trivializing war crimes. These incomprehensible crimes were presented as a necessary defence and were relativized, slowly sending them into oblivion (Kuljić 2009). The Yugoslav master commemorative narrative was replaced in each of the successor states with a new master commemorative narrative aimed at strengthening national identities, and instead of the former Yugoslav calendar, the calendars of all the new states were successfully narrowed and nationalized. More than anything, this demonstrated the mnemonic editing in these processes of change, and as such, the erasure of critical perspectives about the existence of Yugoslavia, the reasons and ways it came to its end, and the excessive use of violence and perpetration of crimes during the wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo. This mnemonic editing has shaped and continues to shape the collective memories and narratives of the wars of the 1990s, hindering reconciliation. New generations in the region, born after the wars, thus have little access to critical knowledge about the 1990s, as they have been subject to national

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and nationalistic mnemonic socializations. In Serbia, this is manifested mostly in silence and in the denial of war crimes. And even though this younger generation can easily access information online, many young people have very little knowledge about, or interest in, the recent past. This has been confirmed by various research endeavours, such as a 2010 study entitled Novosti iz prošlosti (News from the past) by the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights, which showed that the set of attitudes and knowledge held by a majority of people in Serbia were ethnocentric and selective (Šuica et al. 2020, 128). The study featured a survey that included questions about events in the wars of the 1990s, mostly related to the conflicts in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina; just a third of respondents (32%) were aware of what occurred in Srebrenica, only 21% knew that the Yugoslav Army (JNA) had bombed Dubrovnik, and a mere 9% had knowledge of the Ovčara massacre (Dimitrijević 2010, 167). The survey results were analysed in a number of essays by leading historians from Serbia, among them Olga Manojlović Pintar (2010), who wrote about memories of war and restlessness and argued that war experiences are prominent in the personal history of almost every family. Yet, according to her, views and knowledge of the past are uniquely distorted when it comes to the wars of the 1990s. As Vladimir Petrović (2011) summed it up in his review of the Novosti iz prošlosti study, the results of this research revealed not only an ignorance and abuse of history, but also the deep confusion of citizens who seek meaning in the present but cannot assign it to their past. A lack of critical thinking and engagement, and a profound lack of interest, were also apparent in the results of the study (202). Young people in Serbia profess to have very little familiarity with or interest in politics at all, much less in memory politics related to the violent break-up of Yugoslavia (Tomanović and Stanojević 2015). In fact, a 2011 survey, Attitudes towards War Crimes Issues, ICTY and the National Judiciary, indicated that Serbian youth had an especially limited knowledge of the work and legacy of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Nearly one-fifth (19%) of respondents said they were not familiar at all with the Tribunal, and 41% said they knew of it only minimally (Attitudes 2011). When it comes to war crimes specifically, awareness among millennials seems to be especially limited.30 In their analysis of mnemonic 30 For example, according to the 2010 Belgrade Centre for Human Rights survey, among millennials, 53% did not know who bombed Dubrovnik, 63% did not know what happened in Ovčara, and 74% were ignorant about events in Sjeverin (as quoted in Ristić et al. 2017, 51). The same is true for the war in Kosovo; respondents did not know about the existence of mass graves in Batajnica and were unfamiliar with any other war crimes committed in Kosovo (see Ristić et al. 2017, 59).

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approaches to Serbia’s recent past among millennials (born between 1980 and 2000), Ristić et al. (2017) explored knowledge and perceptions of ICTY war crimes trials through focus groups (49). Their data shed light on the mnemonic dynamic prevalent in today’s Serbia, characterized by a lack of knowledge coupled with strong opinions (53). This dynamic was also evident in the 2011 Attitudes survey cited above. That survey elicited another very telling finding, related to perceptions of human rights discourses among millennials. Civil society groups with a human rights focus were largely viewed by young respondents as irrelevant organizations working towards ‘idealistic illusions with no impact in the real world’ (Attitudes 2011, 55), and only 22% considered it important to the future of the country to address the conflicts that took place in the former Yugoslavia.31 While some respondents did express that ‘[i]t is important, because only if we face the truth and accept our … responsibility can we expect a better future’ (Attitudes 2011, 67), this does not reflect the general trend among young people, nor widespread sentiment across the country or in the region. In my focus on generational shifts and the second generation of memory activists, I centre my discussion on younger activists who have challenged this trend by choosing to engage in memory activism related to the legacies and unwanted memories of the 1990s. As I will show in Chapters 3 and 4, these activists engage with these issues against a backdrop of ever stronger, more established, and more centralized state-sponsored commemoration and rhetoric about the past. Efforts by this second generation of activists to build on the legacy of alternative commemorations established by the first generation, and add their own twists, thus continue to confront these state-sponsored narratives – which enable and strengthen the lack of knowledge exposed in the findings of the surveys mentioned above. The mnemonic tendency in the region, as well as in Serbia, is that knowledge about victims is limited to an awareness of victims from one’s own ethnic group only, resulting in narrow ‘truths’ and the ethnicization of the victims.32 This strengthens narratives of victimization, and moreover enables a lack of empathy for any other victims and a lack of critical engagement with 31 In the very same survey conducted only two years earlier, in 2009, a slightly higher number of respondents (32%) answered in this way. This slippage indicates the growing challenges faced by memory activists over time, as interest in these issues declines. 32 In her analysis of media, ethnicity, and gender in the break-up of Yugoslavia, Dubravka Žarkov (2007) argues that the wars of the 1990s were in fact aimed at the production of ethnicity, and at making ethnicity the only mode of being in the new successor states (3).

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this past.33 At the same time, as I contend throughout this book, the work of memory activists resists this tendency and allows for engagement with civic memories (Rigney 2018), which emerge as counter-memories to those that only centre victimization, and enable the creation of networks of commemorative solidarity (Athanasiou 2017) and platforms for peace formation.

The 1990s in the state calendar and state-sponsored commemorations This ongoing social organization of memory and editing of the past are reflected in the new calendar of the Republic of Serbia. Post-Yugoslav, postMilošević Serbia has opted to place ideas, events, and symbols from the nineteenth century at the centre of its new identity, discourses, calendar, and values systems (Petrović 2013).34 For socialist Yugoslavia, it was World War II that marked the birth of the nation and the class identity that was intended to replace national identities (Bjelić as quoted in David 2012); but the collapse of the country has clearly marked the collapse of the Yugoslav master commemorative narrative, which was replaced in Serbia by a new master commemorative narrative and by nationalism, intended to strengthen Serbian national identity. The social construction of the new state calendar mirrors the country’s memory politics since 2000 and, as Gammelgaard and Šarić (2012) suggest, the process of calendric editing of Serbia’s national holidays is itself an indicator of social changes and transformations. In their study of shifts in the discursive construction of national holidays after communism, conducted in a number of West and South Slavic countries, they showed that significant social change is usually followed by changes in the entire inventory of national symbols, including national holidays (10). Tracing the introduction and reception of new holidays in a new state calendar can in fact reveal the extent to which these semiotic ruptures require time to be 33 As seen in the 2017 EUROCLIO study, Making Sense of the Past that Refuses to Pass (quoted in Šuica et al. 2020, 134), this has been particularly apparent in the work of postgraduate students of history, who are inclined towards nationalistic perceptions of the ICTY. For additional research on this topic, see also Jovanović and Marić 2020. 34 The mnemonic choice to return to a pre-communist and pre-World War II era, to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia or even before, has meant returning to a time when the Serbian nation was united. In this mnemonic framing, World War II and its civil war dimensions among Serbs ascribes guilt to the revolutionary Partisan struggle and the communist takeover of power (Đureinović 2020a, 70).

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accepted. Holidays can be introduced through new laws that administrate new memory policies, but the creation of commemorative rituals in which the public participates and identifies, and which are annualized, is never immediate. On the other hand, through the processes of mnemonic editing, dates that were once of great importance on the calendar are remarkably easy to forget (Manojlović Pintar 2010, 89). The creation of a new holiday marking Serbia’s statehood, Statehood Day (Dan državnosti), exemplifies this process. It was introduced in the 2001 Law on State and Other Holidays in the Republic of Serbia (Zakon o državnim i drugim praznicima u Republici Srbiji) to replace the former Yugoslav Republic Day, which was celebrated on 29 November until 2002 (Šarić 2012, 38). The new Statehood Day is marked on 15 February, when the traditional religious holiday Sretenje (Candlemas) is observed by the Serbian Orthodox Church, as it was on Candlemas in 1835 that the first Serbian constitution was ratified. Statehood Day also commemorates the First Serbian Uprising in 1804, which began on 14 February and set in motion Serbia’s eventual liberation from Ottoman rule.35 Since 2007, a year after Serbia became independent and adopted a new constitution, the Serbian Army has also celebrated 15 February as its day, Dan vojske (Army Day). The establishment of Statehood Day has been followed by the introduction of new commemorative practices to mark the holiday, and state and church officials now attend annual events in Orašac, in central Serbia. However, Statehood Day is not without controversy, generating critiques and contestations related to the historical events it commemorates and their importance in Serbian history, but also related to the overlap of a religious and national holiday (Šarić 2012), which represents the ultimate clericalization of Serbian society and identity (Milošević 2012). Indeed, identity creation associated with 15 February is threefold, ‘blending church, state and military symbols’ (Šarić 2012, 41). This mnemonic choice prioritizes and strengthens the national liberation model, which emphasizes the long struggle of the Serbian people for emancipation from foreign conquerors (Šarić 2012). But even more so, as Šarić has concluded, Statehood Day unifies distinct sets of values and two discursive models – the civic-democratic model and the national liberation model – into one meta-narrative. By doing so, the holiday has allowed the state administration of memory to claim and emphasize both models, celebrating Serbia as a country with a

35 Historian Radoš Ljušić is considered a key figure in the discursive creation of a new Serbian identity related to this holiday.

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tradition of liberation wars and a tradition of constitutional rights and rule of law (Šarić 2012, 54-55).36 A number of studies have engaged with the reception of Statehood Day, which is central to my interest in calendars and alternative calendars, put forward in this study. In her analysis of media discourses produced on the occasion of the holiday, Šarić (2012) found a high level of media engagement was focused on educating audiences about the history of the events to which the day has been tied by the state, highlighting their didactic function. She underscored the role of media in shaping collective memory related to these events, by blending past, present, and future (44-52). Still, according to Šarić, while media may have contributed to building patriotism and constructing national identity, it had not made Statehood Day widely popular by the time her research was concluded in 2010. This was also reflected in the results of a survey conducted by Senka Kovač (2007) of university students around the same time, between 2004 and 2007. Her research pointed to a sense of confusion among ordinary citizens as the state was shifting towards implementation of the new calendar and its commemorative rituals and celebrations.37 In fact, in the first decade after the holiday was introduced, many citizens were not even aware of it and had not been informed about its meaning or timing; I found that many people were still more familiar with the older calendar and the date marking the former Day of the Republic on 29 November. This was corroborated by the 2010 Novosti iz prošlosti study, in which only 56% of respondents identified 15 February as a state holiday (as quoted in Milošević 2012, 1004). In my observations, throughout the years of my research, it was not until the introduction of two non-working days (15 and 16 February) to mark the holiday that many people grew aware of it. Before then, they overlooked the holiday and went to work or about their day as they typically would. But in 2012, when a two-day holiday was introduced, it allowed for the beginning of a new engagement by citizens with this calendric occasion. From that 36 See Filip Ejdus’s discussion of Serbian political and strategic culture between the civicdemocratic and the national liberation models. According to him, the premise of the civicdemocratic model is that Europe and the West represent the cultural, political, and civilizational homeland of Serbia, and accordingly push Serbia towards internal social emancipation and international integration. Among several formative historical moments relevant to this model are the adoption of the liberal Candlemas Constitution in 1835, student protests in 1968, and the anti-Milošević demonstrations in the 1990s. On the other hand, the formative events of the national liberation model include the rise of the Serbian state in the fourteenth century, the first Serbian uprising in 1804, and the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913 (Ejdus as quoted in Šarić 2012, 41). 37 Šarić encountered this sense of confusion in her research as well (53). See also Kovač 2011.

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year on, as was announced in late 2011, Serbia would ‘celebrate more and longer’.38 Another new holiday was added to the state calendar in 2012, also as a non-working day: Armistice Day (Dan primirja u Prvom svetskom ratu), marking the ceasefire signed in France on 11 November 1918 between the Allies and Germany.39 And, to emphasize the still-ongoing nature of the process of reshaping the calendar, while this book was in preparation, yet another holiday was announced and introduced by the president of Serbia in late August 2020. Serbian Unity, Freedom and National Flag Day (Dan srpskog jedinstva, slobode i nacionalne zastave) was observed for the first time on 15 September 2020 (see Mlađenović 2020) – on the day in 1918 that Franco-Serbian forces claimed victory on the Salonica (Macedonian) Front, in World War I – and in the future, is set to be celebrated not only in Serbia but also in the Serb-dominated Bosnian entity, the Republika Srpska. 40 The new state calendar highlights what the state wants its citizens to remember, and to forget; it means that any memories of the Serbian state and its citizens inflicting pain or misery on others are discarded, while memories of the loss, injustice, and pain inflicted on ‘heroic’ Serbs of the past are retained (Subotić 2013, 271). Almost no events related to the wars of the 1990s or the break-up of Yugoslavia are marked on the official state calendar, and the most controversial wartime events – especially mass atrocities and war crimes – are buried under a heavy silence. As Subotić (2013) notes, official commemorative events have been used to entrench mutually incompatible versions of the past, contributing to the creation of uncontested public memories of these recent conflicts. Consequently, these narratives have been assimilated into public discourse, making them extremely difficult to challenge (268). Yet activists in Serbia have been contesting and challenging exactly these narratives, and did so even as the wars of the 1990s were being waged. As I detail in the following chapter, anti-war groups have been trying to break 38 This was declared in a 2011 amendment to the Law on State and Other Holidays in the Republic of Serbia (Zakon o državnim i drugim praznicima u Republici Srbiji). See Official Gazette of the Republic of Serbia, no. 92/2011, 7 December 2011. Beginning with that year, Easter was also observed over a longer period, as both Friday and Monday were added as non-working days. 39 This day is also a national holiday in the UK (on public debates and the commemoration of World War I in Britain, see Macleod and Inall 2020), France, and other Allied countries. In the United States, it is marked as Veterans Day. 40 The announcement of the new holiday also proclaimed the intention to build a new memorial complex in Kozarska Dubica, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in memory of those who died during World War II at the Jasenovac concentration camp (Stojanovic 2020). For a critique of Serbian Unity, Freedom and National Flag Day, see Milošević 2020. Among other things, he emphasizes the absence of any trace in the state calendar of the role of Serbia in the wars of the 1990s.

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this silence since their inception in the early part of that decade, as the wars began; by establishing alternative civic calendars commemorating war crimes and their victims, memory activists have similarly addressed this silence in their work, since the ousting of Milošević in October 2000. The challenge of engaging with alternative knowledge about the wars of the 1990s stems from what Ivana Spasić (2002) articulated in her analysis of the politics of everyday life in Serbia: ‘Serbian responsibility in initiating the wars in former Yugoslavia is only sporadically identified; war crimes are still too often something that “has to be proven” or “was done by all sides”’ (10-11). The events from the 1990s that are marked, remembered, and commemorated in Serbia are the NATO bombing of Serbia in 199941 and Operation Storm (Operacija Oluja) in 1995. The beginning of the NATO bombing campaign on 24 March has been commemorated annually since 2000, 42 and the end of Operation Storm on 5 August since 2010. The latter marks what the state frames as a continuation of injustice against Serbs through the expulsion of some 200,000 Serbs from Croatia. 43 It was around the mid-2010s that state-sponsored commemorations of both the NATO bombing and Operation Storm gained more publicity and became more central to the new calendar. The 1999 NATO bombing campaign was presented by NATO as a humanitarian intervention, and is commemorated in Kosovo as a liberation, but it was officially depicted by the then Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) as an aggression against a sovereign state and an act of barbarism (Bădescu 2019, 188). 44 The term ‘aggression’ is still very much in use today among political elites in Serbia when referring to the bombing, and as I have previously written, this choice reflects certain political positions towards the past, as well as the present. That is to say, some people refrain from using the term aggression at all, opting simply to refer to ‘the bombings’, (bombardovanje) or the ‘NATO bombing’, while others insist on using it (Fridman 2016). Commemorative rituals, practices, and discourses established over the 41 The beginning of the NATO bombing campaign that lasted for 78 days marks the singular episode of direct engagement with war in Serbia and in Serbian towns and cities in the 1990s. It followed the unsuccessful Rambouillet negotiations over Kosovo between NATO and the government of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) (Bădescu 2019, 187-188). 42 As if mirroring Serbia’s commemorative scene and memory politics, the last day of the bombings, 10 June, is commemorated annually in Kosovo. 43 The same day is marked as a victory holiday on Croatia’s post-Yugoslav calendar and has become a keystone in Croatia’s heroic narrative (Pavlaković 2019). 44 In 2000, the state-sponsored monument the ‘Eternal Flame’ (Večna Vatra) was unveiled, and was dedicated to NATO bombing victims. It was erected in New Belgrade’s Ušče Park of Friendship (park prijateljstva). For a detailed account of the monument, see Lavrence 2007.

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years in many ways echo Serbia’s politics of memory in the aftermath of 2000, as the memory of Serbian victimhood during the NATO bombing is put forth as the central motive of the wars of the 1990s (David 2012, 17). In the past two decades, the mnemonic trends that have been created, even when slightly changed from one year to another, have shaped the mnemonic socialization of current and future generations in Serbia, and thus their knowledge about this past. Tracing the evolution of the commemorations of the 1999 NATO bombing is illustrative of the ways in which memory politics in Serbia have developed. As Marija Mandić’s analysis of official commemorations discusses, the first anniversary of the bombing was observed when Milošević was still in power, and this continued in the years that followed, with memorial services dedicated to victims of the bombing held in Serbian Orthodox churches across the country (and outside its borders), and the central commemoration held in St. Mark’s Church in Belgrade. 45 Additional ceremonies have been held annually by institutions such as the Serbian Army and Serbian Police, and over the years, a number of monuments have been erected, dedicated to fallen soldiers and to civilians.46 The extent to which politicians have taken part in these commemorations has shifted over the years, gradually moving towards today’s full-scale state-sponsored commemorations following the consolidation of power by the SNS. During his short term as prime minister, Zoran Đinđić took a different approach than most Serbian politicians to commemoration of the NATO bombing, maintaining that the Milošević regime was largely to blame for it and insisting it should not be commemorated. Accordingly, he never made official statements at commemorative events, which served to marginalize these commemorations by relegating official duties to then President Vojislav Koštunica and to the Serbian Orthodox Church, consigning the day to near invisibility in the media (Mandić 2016, 467-468). Koštunica, who was president of the FRY from 2001 to 2004, and then prime minister from 2004 to 2008, took a pro-Western, anti-Milošević stance in 2000, holding Milošević and his party responsible for the bombing and calling on citizens not to commemorate the day; but by 2003, he had adopted a nationalist, 45 On the f irst anniversary of the bombing, Otpor activists marked the day by organizing protests across the country, under the slogan ‘resistance to aggression’. By doing so, they aimed to both condemn the NATO aggression and resist the aggression of Milošević and his ruling party (Mandić 2016, 470). 46 For an analysis of monuments in Belgrade related to the NATO bombing, see Bădescu 2019; Lavrence 2007. Additionally, see Staničić 2021 for an analysis of memorial architecture and the lack of clear mnemonic strategies vis-à-vis post-war renewal.

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extreme anti-NATO orientation (Mandić 2016, 468-469). The extradition of Milošević to The Hague had deepened political divisions between Koštunica and Đinđić, and in subsequent years during his time in office, Koštunica gave political statements that contributed to solidifying the central place of 24 March on the Serbian calendar. In the same period, as Mandić has shown, unsuccessful attempts were made by Democratic Party (DS) officials (including during the mandate of Boris Tadić) to establish an alternative narrative of the NATO bombing in which prime responsibility was laid at the feet of Milošević and his regime. Throughout these years, as politicians who were in power during the 1999 bombing campaign held commemorations at military sites and promoted the rhetoric of victimization, DS politicians chose commemorative sites that paid tribute to civilian casualties, stressing the loss of innocent victims (Mandić 2016). The return to power of the Socialist Party (SPS), followed by its participation in the SNS-led coalition after 2012 and the 2014 SNS consolidation of power, cemented the rhetoric of Serbian victimization, as well as an emphasis on unrepentant national pride. 47 Throughout those years, the numbers of victims of the bombing were manipulated to bolster this narrative. According to research conducted by the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) in Belgrade, 754 people were killed during the period of NATO bombing, 454 of whom were civilians; the rest were members of Serbian forces or the Kosovo Liberation Army (Humanitarian Law Center 2018). Yet official government estimations are considerably higher, citing at least 2,500 killed and some 12,500 injured (Nikolić 2015). The centralization and fortification of these mnemonic trends after 2012 were evident on the sixteenth anniversary of the bombing in 2015, at the state-sponsored commemoration held on Kneza Miloša street in front of the ruins of the former General Staff Headquarters (Generalštab). 48 The ceremony was attended by top Serbian state officials, as well as by the prime minister and president of the Bosnian entity, Republika Srpska, and was broadcast live on state television. The significance the event had gained on Serbia’s calendar was plain to see as then prime minister Vučić delivered a speech in which he claimed: ‘We are a small country, but strong and proud, inhabited by a people that is impossible to conquer. We … will fight for a 47 This understanding of the state framing of the bombing does not exclude discussions about the challenges the bombing has raised in collective memories in Serbia (see Fridman 2016) and the overt or suppressed trauma they have caused (see Rácz 2016; Mandić 2016). 48 On the significance of the Generalštab building, its history, and its current perception in Serbia, see Davenport 2015 and Ejdus 2017.

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normal and dignified life as all civilized nations in Europe have.’ But this normal life to which he referred excluded engagement with any unwanted memories pre-dating the bombing, or with any past wrongdoings or mistakes, instead emphasizing Serbian pride. In the speech, Vučić explicitly framed his memory politics in terms of what should be remembered and forgotten, saying, ‘this country can remember, and it can also win, just don’t ask us to forget’ (Spalović 2015). In the years since, these annual commemorations have grown, taking place at military and civic sites alike. Parallel to this, the rhetoric of national pride and victimization has been further consolidated by the importance, centrality, and visibility increasingly afforded to commemorations of Operation Storm. Official observations of that event have emerged more recently and, like NATO bombing commemorations, initially took place mostly in church ceremonies, such as the one held at St. Mark’s Church and attended by state officials. In his years in office, Koštunica attended annually, making official statements in which he characterized Operation Storm as the largest ethnic cleansing in Europe since World War II (Pavlaković 2007). The mnemonic issue often criticized by memory activists in response to these commemorations is that, over the years, despite the emphasis on honouring victims of the Operation, state institutions have denied them the right to the official status of civilian war victims, even though many are socially vulnerable to this day (Đureinović 2020b, 12). Vesna Pešić – a sociologist, politician, and one of the founders of the Centre for Anti-war Action (CAA) – wrote on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Operation Storm that additional discomfort with the mnemonic framing of this event extends from ‘attempts to hide the inhumane treatment the Serbs [who were] expelled from Croatia got from the Serbian authorities’ (2020). Indeed, in my conversations with anti-war activists, I have often heard reference to those August weeks in the summer of 1995 when the Women in Black worked to support thousands of people expelled from Croatia, even buying them basic food necessities. As one activist revealed: We went every day and stood at the border from morning until evening in the summer heat … and they kept coming. It was probably the most dramatic experience of my life seeing this, the columns of people … and we were the only ones, apart from some warm-hearted people from villages near the border who joined us. … None of the Serbian nationalists ever showed up there, they did not even consider it … but they always referred to us as the traitors. … We felt, if we are peace activists and believe in this, we should be there with these people. (Interview by author, July 2004)

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Since the 2012 revival of the SPS and the formation of the SNS-led coalition, official ceremonies on the anniversary of Operation Storm have also been led by the Ministry of Defence. In subsequent years, more centralized and more militarized commemorative practices have been established, with an emphasis on glorifying the Army and its role in the wars of the 1990s. 49 From 2015 on, Operation Storm has been commemorated as an official day of mourning under the slogan ‘the Storm was a Pogrom’; the 2016 state commemoration held in Busije, on the outskirts of Belgrade – led not only by Serbian government representatives, but by officials from the Republika Srpska and the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church – was broadcast live on television (Radio Slobodna Evropa 2016). On that occasion, the Serbian president acknowledged the victimhood of refugees from the Operation, apologized for those who turned a blind eye to crimes committed during the Operation, and promised that such a pogrom will never happen again, all the while dismissing any sense of national guilt, negating any national shame, and emphasizing only national pride (Radio Slobodna Evropa 2016). The state-sponsored rhetoric that developed in the mid-2010s has now become dominant, not only on days of official commemoration, but also throughout the year. For example, in a 2017 meeting in Niš, then Minister of Defence Aleksandar Vulin told a group of veterans that ‘[t]he time of shame is gone. It’s time for a quiet pride’ (Associated Press 2017). The late journalist Dejan Anastasijević, who was an important voice in Serbia’s alternative and critical media, replied by asking a question posed by many memory activists as well: ‘What does it say about Serbian society if being a convicted war criminal, or a suspected one, does not make you an outcast, but can actually help you launch a political career?’ (2017). As Anastasijević noted in 2017, and which is still true, ‘the narrative according to which Serbia did nothing wrong in the Yugoslav wars is now even more prevalent than it was 18 years ago, when the last conflict [over Kosovo] ended.’ This is at the core of state-sponsored commemorations in Serbia, framed by a narrative that portrays the country ‘as a victim of Western conspiracy, and war crimes attributed to Serbs as staged, or hugely overblown by Serbia’s enemies’ (Anastasijević 2017). In the first decade after the removal of Milošević, the failure to realize a new start generated a sense of disappointment in Serbia; yet in the decade that followed, the politics of the 1990s were simply consolidated and 49 The ministry has also engaged more broadly in revisionism, publishing memoirs written by convicted war criminals, in what historian Vladimir Petrović (2018) has referred to as ‘the ICTY library.’ See also Katarina Ristić’s analysis (2018) of ‘the emergence of ICTY celebrities.’

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perpetuated – with memory politics designed and led by those who held positions of power during the 1990s. While the politics of silence and denial have continued to flourish, new discourses of pride linked to Serbia’s recent past have now found their way to the forefront of Serbian memory politics and memory administration. Thus, as Dubravka Stojanović has argued, ‘the wars of the 1990s are not mentally over’ (Krokodil 2018); and as Anastasijević (2017) wrote, some have been left with the ‘eerie feeling that the Yugoslav wars are not really over – they’re just taking a break.’

Memory activism after conflict: remembering the wars of the 1990s in Serbia It is in this context that weak and marginal, yet active and sometimes vibrant, actors from civil society groups in Serbia have insisted on preserving references to the recent past and resisting political amnesia, documenting this past and commemorating it in street actions over the previous three decades. As this chapter has shown, unwanted memories of the 1990s in Serbia entail a variety of experiences and everyday realities, and therefore a range of memories that are reflected in a range of engagement with this past – from silencing and denial to memory actions and claims. The lack of widespread, accurate knowledge about this past has been the focus of numerous studies, both quantitative and qualitative, as discussed above. Accordingly, the production of and engagement with critical knowledge about the wars of the 1990s is at the heart of the work and actions of memory activists in Serbia. Hence, while the political motivations driving the initiatives of memory activists may differ,50 my approach here to memory activism as a strand of peace activism and of civic action from below (as discussed in the Introduction), is concerned with various levels of engagement with the memories and legacies of the wars of the 1990s. In the following chapters, this analysis allows me to trace the alternative production of knowledge 50 There are additional mnemonic issues, and other memory work at play, in Serbia today. As it relates to the 1990s, some actors in this memory work adhere more closely to state-sponsored memory politics, and as such, do not necessarily engage in the production of counter or alternative memory, which is the focus of this study. For example, see the work of the association of families of kidnapped and killed in Kosovo, Udruženja porodica kidnapovanih i ubijenih na Kosovu. Its work is most visible in signs that have hung permanently since 2015 in Belgrade’s city centre, first in front of the parliament building and now in front of the government building, rejecting Kosovo’s independence in the name of the memory of Kosovar Serbs killed or kidnapped in Kosovo in the 1990s.

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and its dissemination through alternative commemorations and alternative calendars, as well as the ways that memory work once manifest in street actions has recently been translated into digital mnemonic practices as well. Memory activism in Serbia, as discussed in the next chapter, has emerged as a continuation of the anti-war activism of the 1990s, which evolved in the course of post-2000 initiatives and street actions. In the following two decades since the fall of Milošević, groups like the Women in Black have established alternative commemorative practices that are regularly joined by other civil society actors and groups, including the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC), the Center for Cultural Decontamination (CZKD), the Helsinki Committee, and the Yugoslav Lawyers for Human Rights (YUCOM). Younger activists from the Youth Initiative for Human Rights (YIHR) and Centre for Public History (CPI), as well as others, have also participated in these events. Activists from these groups may engage in diverse forms of memory work, yet in spite of these variations, they constitute a community of memory, among many communities of memory in Serbia today.51 The breadth of this mnemonic labour, as analysed in this book, spans three decades of civic engagement, activism, and street actions. While anti-war activism dominated the first of these decades, the framework for activism clearly shifted in the two decades that followed, towards memory activism. After war and conflict, such an analysis of memory activism requires an assessment over time, allowing one to trace, engage with, and explore mnemonic actions and claims well beyond what Jenny Wüstenberg (2017) has referred to as ‘the activists of the first hour’ (32). In her comprehensive study of memory activism in the civil society of post-war Germany, which spans seven decades of memory work from below, she demonstrated the ways in which this work changed significantly over time. Through her analysis of four distinct periods of public memory, she traced relations between civil society activists and the state to the point at which the unwanted memory of Germany’s Nazi past had moved to the centre of the country’s political culture, so that civil society activists could no longer be ignored (32-75). In that context, this study of only two decades of memory activism in Serbia is still in its early phases, and more time is needed before we can answer the question of whether these mnemonic actors will continue to be ignored and dismissed as traitors, or whether their mnemonic demands 51 For an analysis and discussion of other communities of memory in Serbia, see for example Lea David’s work on Serbian War Veterans as a mnemonic group, which according to her, have been silenced and marginalized by the state and intentionally left out of the process of constructing collective memory of the wars of the 1990s (2015).

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will in fact have longer-term effects on the dominant narrative in a way that enables them to move from the margins to the centre – to where memory is administrated. It will also take more time to fully grasp whether the study of hope in memory activism, discussed in the Introduction, can offer an alternative to the politics of disappointment so overwhelmingly present in Serbia today. Written in the early 2020s, this book underscores the degree to which memory activists remain marginalized, and yet it argues that their creation and introduction of alternative rituals in the form of memory activism is significant, as is their legacy of work engaging with memory of activism. In what follows, the mnemonic actions and demands of memory activists from below will be traced through an analysis of rituals of annual alternative commemorations of crimes committed in the 1990s, which lie at the core of unwanted memories. An examination of the actions and claims of the f irst generation of activists (Wüstenberg’s ‘activists of the f irst hour’) will be followed by a discussion of the work of what I call the in-between generation, and of the second generation of activists, born during and after the 1990s.

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‘Not in My Name’ From Anti-War to Memory Activism: The First Generation Abstract This chapter analyses the first generation of memory activists in Serbia. It explores the mnemonic claims of these actors – whose memory activism extends from earlier anti-war activism in the 1990s – as well as the alternative calendars and alternative commemorative rituals they have established. These calendars and rituals are utilized as a framework for tracing the ways in which anti-war groups, particularly the Women in Black in Serbia, have maintained their presence in the streets after regime change on 5 October 2000. The chapter shows how they continue to represent a critical if marginal opposition in their society, largely through a programme of alternative commemorative actions, at the heart of which remains the annual July 10th commemoration of victims of the Srebrenica genocide. Keywords: generational lens, memory activism, anti-war, alternative calendars, alternative commemorative rituals

This chapter analyses the emergence of the first generation of memory activists in Serbia, in the aftermath of the violent break-up of Yugoslavia. It explores the mnemonic claims of these actors, whose activism extended from that of anti-war groups already formed in the early 1990s and focuses on the alternative calendars and alternative commemorative rituals they have established – which have become sites of the contested territory of counter-memories (Zerubavel 1995). I am particularly interested in this generation of activists as members of a community of memory, among various communities of memory in Serbia, where activists present countermemories of the wars of the 1990s and insist on engagement with these unwanted memories. As a community of memory, these activists have brought their feminist, anti-nationalist, and anti-war agenda into their memory activism, carrying their work in the 1990s into the 2000s.

Fridman, Orli, Memory Activism and Digital Practices after Conflict: Unwanted Memories. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463723466_ch02

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The alternative calendars and commemorative rituals created by these activists lay the path for this chapter, which traces the ways in which anti-war groups, and particularly the Women in Black in Serbia, maintained their presence in the streets after regime change on 5 October 2000. I show how they have continued to play the role of a critical, if marginal opposition in their society, doing so largely through street actions centred around alternative commemorative rituals. At the heart of these rituals, I argue, remains the annual 10 July commemoration of victims of the Srebrenica genocide. Formed in Belgrade in 1991, the Women in Black are a feminist, anti-war, and anti-militarist group spurred to action at the start of the war in Croatia. Inspired by the Israeli Women in Black, founded just a few years earlier to resist the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lives and territories, the Belgrade group initially employed a number of practices previously adopted by the Israeli group, including silent vigils and all-black dress in street actions. Using ‘Not in my name’ as one of the foremost slogans for their actions,52 the Belgrade Women in Black resisted the wars of the break-up of Yugoslavia even as they unfolded. Throughout the years of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, they held weekly silent vigils in Belgrade’s city centre; and leading up to the war in Kosovo, they continued their street actions and vigils, as dictated by the urgency of events. Following the wars, as the group’s anti-war actions turned towards memory activism, the ‘Not in my name’ slogan became a marker not only of their anti-war stance but of their generational belonging. They are the generation who came of age in Yugoslavia and experienced the 1990s as adults; the generation who articulated their mnemonic claims in the 2000s in the context of their own living memories. The group is still active today, engaging in street actions against political amnesia and against the politics of victimization, silence, denial, and the glorification of war crimes.

Memory activism as an extension of anti-war activism and the emergence of an alternative civic calendar In the wake of 5 October 2000, groups and activists who had already been documenting war crimes during the 1990s while protesting war and violence claimed a role in the political conflicts that developed over how to interpret 52 In addition to their anti-war messages and rhetoric, the Women in Black centred (and still do centre) the issues of workers’ rights and women’s rights, as well as solidarity and resistance to violence and war in other places worldwide. Some of their other slogans include ‘always disobedient’ and ‘my body, my autonomy’.

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both the dissolution of Yugoslavia and events that occurred in the wars that ensued. Along with the Women in Black, these included actors from the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC), the Helsinki Committee, the Yugoslav Lawyers for Human Rights (YUCOM), the Center for Cultural Decontamination (CZKD), the Documentation Centre for the Wars of 1991-1999,53 and DAH Theatre, among others. But it was the Women in Black who continued the work of street activism, which is still at their core, often bringing together activists from civil society who held similar claims, as well as other actors like independent journalists, authors, scholars, and artists. Various media platforms also played a part in critical engagement with the legacies of the 1990s, and online reports on street actions offered them some visibility. It is clear that since 2000, both the mnemonic contestations in Serbia and the country’s memory landscape have been shaped by a combination of influences from local and regional memory politics. The question of unwanted memories was just one among a number of social tensions and disputes in the early 2000s that are beyond the scope of this study, but which related to the country’s attempt at a democratic transition, resistance to the neoliberalism seen in mass privatization, contested views of future political power structures (i.e., the role of the Serbian Orthodox Church), the educational system and school curricula, legal rights for minorities, EU membership, and more. Here, my discussion is focused on the shape of counter-memories as manifested in alternative commemorations of unwanted memories from the wars of the 1990s, which I place in opposition to the state-sponsored events and commemorative narratives that have emerged since 2000 and which grew more popular, organized, visible, and centralized in the 2010s. The new state calendar has been shaped in a way that has only sharpened already existing divisions and fragmentations in Serbian society, pushing the alternative claims and calendars I discuss here to the margins. Nonetheless, these claims and demands from below have remained clear and uncompromising, just as these activists’ articulation of their position against the wars of the 1990s remained steady as those wars were being waged. Anti-war activism and peace initiatives in the 1990s in Yugoslavia, and in Serbia in particular, have been well researched, with the numerous initiatives led by Serbia’s anti-war civil society thoroughly documented (Ćurgus 2001; Torov 2000; Šušak 2000; Rosandić et al. 2005) and analysed 53 The documentation centre was led by translator and writer Drinka Gojković and left an important legacy in the form of five volumes of oral history, collected by the centre in conversations with ordinary people, titled People in War / Ljudi u ratu. See Lavrence 2013.

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(Dević 1997; Fridman 2011; Bilić 2012). The role of women and feminist activism in the emergence of civil society after the break-up of Yugoslavia, especially anti-war, anti-nationalist civil society, and in the context of citizenship claims, has also been explored and defined (Papić 2002; Athanasiou 2017; Zaharijević 2013; Cockburn 2007). On top of this, these activists themselves have published their own accounts over the years, capturing their experiences and reflecting on actions and claims that have risen from below (among others, see Tešanović 2000; Zajović 2005; Mladjenović 2001 and 2005).54 In doing so, they have generated a wealth of knowledge and materials; an archive that is crucial to the legacy of this first generation of activists, and which has started to appear in the memory of activism work evolving in Belgrade (see Chapter 3). The most important publication issued by the Women in Black, particularly as an archival record, was an annual anthology printed in both Serbian and English, Žene za mir / Women for Peace. These gathered the writings of activists from the mid-1990s through the 2000s and provided a platform for their own views of the group’s actions, demands, and analysis. Other publications by the Women in Black that have contributed significantly to archiving their work include the 2007 book, Ženska strana rata, which was published a year later in English as Women’s Side of War. This ‘anthology of women’s records about the wars waged on the soil of the former Yugoslavia in 1991-1999’ is described as ‘the product of a year-long exploration in cooperation with many women’s organizations, human rights organizations, organizations which deal with the past and reconciliation, and the individual women who bravely voiced their experiences, recorded their experiences and/or endorsed these experiences’ (Vušković and Trifunović 2008, 10). The DAH Theatre performance Prelazeći liniju/Crossing the Line was based on excerpts from the book;55 and the experience of bringing them to life 54 As one of the founders of Women in Black and a major force behind the work of the group since its inception, Staša Zajović has contributed particularly extensively to this body of knowledge on the actions of the group, as well as to the foundations of its political and ideological thinking. 55 See more about the performance on the DAH Theatre website, at: http://en.dahteatarcentar. com/performances/crossing-the-line/. The project and the performance were supported by the Rekonstrukcija Ženski fond (Reconstruction Women’s Fund, or RWF). In 2008, the RWF produced a video – Žene u aktivizmu / Women in Activism (available on YouTube at: https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=7tEeMD40b_s&t=7s) – featuring feminist activism and a variety of women’s groups active in Serbia at the time. Among them was the Center for Women’s Studies. As I have previously written, the Center was part of the network of women’s activism and research formed in Serbia and had already created alternative education programmes in the 1990s (Fridman, 2011), paving the road to activism as well as to research and further engagement with critical studies. Many younger activists have been exposed for the first time to critical theories on gender and

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compelled actresses to engage with memory in such a profound way that the playbill handed out to audiences included the reflections of these actresses on the process of transforming those excerpts into a play. For example, Sanja Krsmanović-Tasić shared her feeling that, by telling these women’s stories, she was able to give them a dignified place, and respect. I reveal them for others who have never heard of these women. I help the wars of the 1990s be seen from a peephole of intimate, sometimes harsh truths, and not through the screens of one-sided TVs, or through the mouths of covetous politicians.56

In the early 2000s, after a decade of political activism against ethnonationalism, militarism, war, and the regime of Slobodan Milošević,57 expectations among anti-war activists for a new start were met with a sense of great disappointment. They had hoped for a feeling of catharsis following the events of 5 October but learned sooner than later that this hope had been misplaced. Many activists recall the first months after the fall of Milošević, and the establishment of the Đinđić government – which they saw as ‘their government’ – as a period of optimism. One described her near-disbelief and excitement for a new era: ‘We were repeating it out loud… “Milošević is out,” and then the first free newspapers appeared… it was an incredible energy’ (interview by author, June 2004).58 This evoked a sense of achievement that lasted for some time, as activists could finally see ‘their’ people involved in the creation of a new government, instrumental in effecting reforms, and given more space to be publicly visible. As the former director of YUCOM, the late Biljana Kovačević-Vučo, shared with nationalism through the programme’s lectures and activities (see also Duhaček 2004). Beyond memory activism, these networks of women’s groups have consistently engaged with issues of violence against women, and the empowerment of Roma women. Demonstrations on 8 March, and the march in Belgrade, still bring many of these actors to the street. 56 From the Crossing the Line playbill, 2009. 57 See Chapter 1 for a discussion of the distinction between anti-war activism and anti-regime activism in relation to protests in the 1990s. 58 Memories of the day of 5 October itself reveal the complexity of its legacy. As one Women in Black activist explained: ‘October 5th, behind the scenes, was more violent than we feminists wanted it to be … many cars were burned and the TV building was burned. It was all planned … and the guys from Čačak came with guns … these were the same people who participated in the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo. … [T]hat was a problem and a dilemma for us: would this be over if there was no violence at all? We were not happy with it, but it was a moment in which we were all in the streets [together].’

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me then, activists were even invited as expert consultants to take part in official discussions and forums. While activists did have the feeling right after 5 October that they had more space to act and to be heard, many also felt they were exposed to more violence; not from the regime, as was the case in the 1990s, but from ordinary people and right-wing groups, which were gaining more power and visibility. At the time, one of the legacies of the 1990s was indeed the growth of ultra-right groups. As their membership increased, so did their visibility in the streets and their freedom to act. Vreme journalist and writer Teofil Pančić explained: In the 1990s, people like me could write in a few magazines, but we were not seen on TV screens. After the liberation (referring to 5 October 2000), we were everywhere … now, people recognize me and I meet some fascists in the street … and now they all have the freedom to attack us, to attack groups like the Women in Black, verbally and physically; and they do. (Interview by author, September 2004)

Despite the high expectations of activists, it quickly became clear that regime change alone would not topple the political and social structures, or legacies, of the previous decade (Subotić 2009, 38-82; Gordy 2013, 87-89). The rising violence they faced fed a stronger sense of disappointment among many, and even anger among some, which only deepened after the assassination of Zoran Đinđić in March 2003. But rather than marking the end for these anti-war activists, this marked the beginning of a new phase in their struggle (Fridman 2011). Memory and its contestations would become the driving force behind their political agenda and actions. This stood in contrast to the choice made by Serbian transitional elites to ignore the recent past (Subotić 2009, 69). In her analysis of ‘domestic demands from below’, Subotić argued that, by that stage, ‘the population simply did not care about atrocities committed against groups who lived in other countries [of the former Yugoslavia] and with whom they were unlikely to ever interact again’ (2009, 68).59 The narrative of victimization that has become hegemonic in Serbia left almost no discursive space for unwanted memories of the 1990s.60 Various demands from below, as put forward by 59 Subotić juxtaposes this to countries such as South Africa and Argentina, where truth, justice, and reconciliation were considered necessary to preserving national unity and building a future together within the same state (68). 60 On the emergence of this narrative, see Dragović-Soso 2002.

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memory activists, were struggles to enlarge this almost non-existent space through continuous engagement with the production and dissemination of alternative knowledge, and the creation of alternative commemorations. In this way, activists staked their claim in an otherwise shrinking mnemonic universe, to ensure that counter-memories will not be lost, even if they are marginalized. I analyse these demands from below as acts of silence breaking, and thus place them at the core of my inquiry. The essence of the anti-war activism of the Women in Black, and of their later counter-memory work, has been their ‘assumed unbelonging’ to a national identity of victimization, as Athanasiou (2017) argued in her analysis of the group’s political dissidence. This continued claim of unbelonging ‘as a political space for feminist critique of the politics of nationalism and its gendered underpinnings’ (Athanasiou 2017, 54) has marked them as perpetual internal enemies and traitors. Hence, activism as a way of unbecoming national subjects, as Athanasiou puts it (2017, 25), will be part of the legacy of this first generation of memory activists. This defiance of their assumed ethnic belonging, and its placement at the heart of their memory activism, in essence connects the Women in Black to activists from other parts of the former Yugoslavia, particularly in actions that claim the region as a region of memory (see Chapter 5). In the aftermath of 2000, as they shaped alternative calendars and alternative commemorations in Belgrade, and in other places where crimes had been committed ‘in the name of the nation’ (Athanasiou 2017, 61), they also ‘formulated their critique of the politics of “transition” … while struggling not to be absorbed by the depoliticised routine of post-conflict, post-Yugoslav NGO-isation’ (62). Claiming solidarity with and expressing empathy towards victims in the region has undoubtedly shaped the alternative commemorations of the Women in Black, as I discuss below; and as this study shows, this frame of action became crucial to the mnemonic actions of the generation that followed. The Women in Black also gave the politics of knowledge and responsibility a central position through their insistence on street actions as civic engagement. Indeed, during the wars, and immediately afterwards, many activists in this first generation wrestled at length with questions of guilt and responsibility. In their search for theoretical bases as they developed their thinking and action, some turned to the work of Hannah Arendt, who became supremely influential among these activists. In July 2002, the Belgrade Circle and the Center for Women’s Studies even organized an international conference, The Legacy of Hannah Arendt: Beyond Totalitarianism and Terror, to which Arendt made a virtual visit (see Duhaček and

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Savić 2002).61 The writings of Karl Jaspers also guided the thinking of the Women in Black. Various authors grappling with dilemmas of truth, responsibility, and reconciliation have similarly placed Arendt and Jaspers at the centre of their work (see Gojković 2000). In Serbia, the intellectual labour and academic publications of Daša Duhaček (2006 and 2010), director of the Center for Women’s Studies and a long-time university professor, in many ways nourished the engagement of this f irst generation of activists, as well as the in-between generation, with Arendt’s work specifically. My understanding of the inspiration activists in Belgrade have taken from Arendt relates to her own positioning – which Idith Zertal (2002) explains in her seminal work about Arendt – as a pariah, by choice.62 As Zertal (2002) wrote, Arendt saw the ‘essence of humanity’ as the freedom to choose not to collaborate, to refuse to obey, in both perpetrators and victims. She referred extensively to those who were able to exclude themselves from the masses and maintain their independent thinking; for Arendt, this was a moral and political act, above all (138-141). This perspective was not unfamiliar to the first generation of memory activists in Serbia, and in fact shaped their position within Serbian society vis-à-vis engagement with unwanted memories of the 1990s. In some activists, questions of guilt and responsibility fuelled a search for action. Lepa Mlađenović, an anti-war feminist in the first generation, noted that members of her circle considered how they could ‘transform feelings of guilt into language and action’ as early as 1992 (2005, 194). The choice to know, to think independently, and to engage critically with knowledge – through alternative calendars and commemorations, as well as through the act of acknowledgment in the form of commemorative solidarity – became the foundation and essence of memory activism in Serbia. As Mlađenović explained, knowledge and critical engagement with it, as a political stand, put feminist politics into action through an insistence on the need to ask, listen, hear, and search for information (2005, 194). From these early years of memory activism, DAH Theatre performers were often present at Women in Black street actions, leading street 61 In the early 2000s, I personally noted the presence of Arendt in a number of the NGO offices I visited regularly at the time, many of which hung the promotional poster for this conference, featuring her portrait. 62 In the controversy evoked by Eichmann in Jerusalem, Arendt was accused of lacking ‘love of Israel’ in criticism that came out of Jewish American circles. She replied that she practices a ‘love of the world’, arguing that the love of a motherland cannot exist without the option for opposition and criticism (Zertal 2002, 215-222). See also Zertal 2004.

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performances, as discussed below in the context of alternative commemoration of Srebrenica in Belgrade. Among them was Maja Mitić, who also connected her sense of guilt with her drive towards civic action. But eventually, she said: I reconciled with my country and its decisions, mistakes, and errors. It took me almost twenty years, half of my life! Now I can see the beauty again, and not feel guilty. I do not have to judge or condemn myself because of that. Anger and helplessness transformed into my own action and understanding.63

Facing feelings of guilt, and in some cases shame, yet channelling it into action, was a dominant theme in my conversations with anti-war activists as they transitioned into memory activism, during my early research phase. Those who expressed shame did so most often in relation to their first post-war visit to Sarajevo after the city emerged from almost four years of siege.64 In 2007, the Youth Initiative for Human Rights launched the Days of Sarajevo / Dani Sarajeva festival to harness those emotions and use them to restore ties between Belgrade and Sarajevo. The group was led at the time by activists from the in-between generation, and the event – scheduled in late May to mark and acknowledge when shelling of the city began – was aimed at generating discussion about the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the siege of Sarajevo specifically. The festival was held annually in Belgrade for eight years. In its last year, the Women in Black received an award of appreciation from the Days of Sarajevo organizers, who were explicit in acknowledging the generational legacy of the group, as well as the need to carry that legacy forward. They declared that ‘generations to come have an obligation to continue the noble and brave things that activists in the former Yugoslavia did in the most difficult times’.65 The announcement of the award was titled Žene u crnom u naše ime! Women in Black in our name! – rearticulating the Women in Black’s generational slogan, ‘Not in my name’. 63 From the Crossing the Line playbill, 2009. 64 During the war, the Center for Anti-war Action (CAA) helped organize a peace caravan to besieged Sarajevo; and in Belgrade, following the start of the siege of Sarajevo in April and later when shelling of the city began in late May 1992, some of the largest street actions took place, including a rock concert entitled ‘Don’t Count on Us’ and a march dubbed the ‘Black Ribbon March’. For additional discussion of these actions, see Fridman 2011. 65 ‘Žene u crnom u naše ime!’, press release, Dani Sarajeva, 15 May 2015, http://www.danisarajeva. com/2015/05/zene-u-crnom-u-nase-ime/.

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In the 2000s, the engagement of activists with events of and crimes committed during the wars of the 1990s came to evolve around an annual cycle, denoted by various dates and events that had already been established in the early part of the decade, marked on an alternative civic calendar of commemorative gatherings and remembrance. Members and supporters of the Women in Black still follow and interact with this calendar as they engage in civic street actions year after year. This alternative calendar is distributed by the Women in Black annually, printed in their Women’s Peace Agenda (Ženska mirovna agenda), in which they present the civic feminist agenda that informs their dates of protest, their rituals of alternative commemoration, and their mnemonic claims. Each year, the Women’s Peace Agenda features images and texts documenting and recalling past actions and slogans and highlighting street actions on international days marked on the alternative calendar, such as the annual march on 8 March for International Women’s Day, in solidarity with women’s labour rights; International Workers’ Day on 1 May; the International Day of Conscientious Objection on 15 May; and the International Day of the Disappeared on 30 August. As they relate to unwanted memories of the 1990s, these dates marked in the Women’s Peace Agenda affirm and extend the commemoration of those obliterated from public memory (Athanasiou 2017, 191). In the following analysis, I turn my focus to what I consider the central event on the alternative civic calendar of the Women in Black: the commemoration of Srebrenica and its recognition as a genocide, marked yearly in the heart of Belgrade, in Republic Square. This is by far the most controversial and significant day on the alternative calendar, 10 July, and is now in its third decade of observance. Below, I analyse this day and its contribution to the formation of alternative memory and alternative acts of commemorative solidarity, approaching these alternative commemorations and mnemonic claims from below, as activists insist on their political engagement with these unwanted memories. I further place these actions in the context of other engagement in Serbia with the contested memories of Srebrenica, over the years. As Gordy (2013) has argued, the crimes committed in Srebrenica are now seen as emblematic of the war, for better or for worse, and have ‘come to represent the key through which the wars of the 1990s are understood, particularly from outside’ (125). From the inside, for activists, Srebrenica has come to represent the ultimate denial and glorification of war crimes (Gordy 2013, 90-93). Yet, as the acts of memory activists discussed here show, it also came to represent the possibility of uncompromising acknowledgment and empathy through commemorative solidarity.

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Commemorating Srebrenica in Belgrade: 10 July on the alternative calendar Throughout the 1990s, the Women in Black stood in downtown Belgrade in silent weekly vigils opposing the wars, the killing of civilians, and the silencing of discussion about war crimes.66 In the aftermath of the wars, and regime change in 2000, the group continued to commemorate events such as 6 April (the beginning of the siege of Sarajevo in 1992), 18 November (the fall of Vukovar in 1991), or 27 February (the Štrpci massacre in 1993), as well as other dates related to events that took place in Kosovo. They also mark various international days on their alternative civic calendar, along with the early October formation of the group in Serbia in 1991, for which women gather from across the country, region, and world to honour their collaborative work. Remembering the wars of the 1990s and developing an alternative civic calendar has most clearly manifested in the Women in Black’s annual mnemonic ritual of Srebrenica commemoration on 10 July, held on the eve of the official ceremony and religious burial service that takes place in the Srebrenica-Potočari Memorial and Cemetery in Bosnia and Herzegovina.67 Importantly, the Woman in Black, and those who join them in Belgrade’s city centre, remember the events of July 1995 in Srebrenica as a genocide. The commemoration brings activists together with a circle of their supporters, many who appear year after year, suggesting that this day is now marked on their own (alternative) calendars. Since I began my research on anti-war activism in Serbia, joining this event for the first time in 2004, I myself have seen the group in attendance grow and change, from current and former activists to individuals who do not view themselves as activists at all, and ranging from those who were adults during the wars of the 1990s to those who were still children at the time. All of them gather on that day in Republic 66 During the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Women in Black held a weekly silent vigil in the city centre, every Wednesday. During the war in Kosovo, and especially in the midst of the 1999 NATO bombing, the political atmosphere in the country was such that regular weekly actions were not possible, as many activists were forced to leave the country or lay low due to direct threats against them. See Fridman 2011 and 2016. 67 For analysis of memorialization and commemorative events held at the Srebrenica-Potočari Memorial and Cemetery, see Nettelf ield and Wagner 2014. Examining commemoration as a form of intervention, they trace the ways in which local communities of survivors intervene in their societies and landscapes. In particular, they analyse the culmination of commemorative activities, as in the Peace March (Marš Mira) on the days prior to 11 July, and the ceremony that takes place at the Memorial on the day itself.

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Square, standing in silence for the hour-long vigil, to remember the victims of Srebrenica as victims of genocide. The commemoration of Srebrenica victims is marked on other calendars, too, beyond that of the Women in Black and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.68 In 2009, the European Parliament adopted a resolution calling for recognition of 11 July as a day ‘to commemorate appropriately the anniversary of the Srebrenica-Potočari act of genocide’ and urging ‘all the countries of the Western Balkans to do the same’. But this EU observance came more than a decade after the Women in Black had begun commemorating this date in 1996. Their mnemonic claims, inspired then and now by a fundamental opposition to war, have clearly evolved and been shaped as a local demand from below; and though their calendar and street actions have remained alternative and marginal in Serbia, this work has allowed them to assert their agency through a presence in Belgrade’s public spaces as well as in discursive spaces. In the decade that followed the 1995 crimes committed in Srebrenica, debates emerged over events there, and an array of positions and claims were put forth. These encompassed a broad range of engagement and a variety of acts and actors, including those who celebrated these crimes or questioned and downplayed the facts by claiming that nothing can be known with certainty (Gordy 2013, 110). Yet, in addition to efforts to deny mass crimes in Srebrenica, there were also actions in public spaces that challenged citizens in Serbia to engage, acknowledge, and recognize these crimes through commemorative acts.69 68 Bosnia and Herzegovina comprises two entities: the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where Bosniaks make up the majority; and the Republika Srpska, where Serbs are the majority. The issue of the Srebrenica genocide is a topic of contention in the country, and one that is frequently instrumentalized for the purpose of ethno-nationalist politics, preventing a unified stance on commemoration among the country’s top leadership. Thus, commemorative events appear on the civic calendar in the Federation but not in the Republika Srpska. 69 Beyond commemorations, other forms of critical engagement with the legacies of the 1990s, and particularly the wars of the 1990s, have entailed works of art and performance. For example, see Vladimir Perišić’s film Ordinary People (2009) or Saša Ilić’s 2019 novel Pas i kontrabas (Dog and Contrabass). In July 2019, on the twenty-fourth anniversary of the genocide, Zlatko Paković’s play about Srebrenica ‘When we the Killed rise up’ was subject to attacks (for more, see Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, ‘A Brutal Campaign Against the Play “Srebrenica. When We, the Killed, Rise Up”‘, press release, 6 October 2020, https://www.helsinki.org.rs/press_t73.html; and ‘Paković o pretnjama nakon predstave o Srebrenici: U Srbiji društvo ne postoji’, Radio Slobodna Evropa, 8 October 2020, https://www.slobodnaevropa.org/a/30882066.html). In the following chapters, I discuss some of the art produced by the younger generation of activists, as well as those who belong to the in-between generation.

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On the state level, however, regime change in 2000 did not result in the establishment of new official discourses, nor a ban on genocide denial. The politics and dynamics of official denial in Serbia of the Srebrenica genocide have been extensively researched and analysed. Scholars have explored questions of guilt and responsibility (Gordy 2013); cooperation (or lack thereof) with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) (Obradović-Wochnik 2009b); approaches of the state to transitional justice mechanisms (Subotić 2009); and public and private reactions to denial (Obradović-Wochnik 2009a). In all cases, these analyses point to the complexity of political divisions and fragmented memory in Serbia, and as this study shows, it is memory activists who continue to take the lead in combating genocide denial in the country. Although the dismissal and relativization of Srebrenica victims is still common, these activists have never stopped producing documentation and alternative knowledge, such as at the HLC, or engaging in street actions and commemorations, as led by the Women in Black. After more than two decades of 10 July commemorative events, there is now rich empirical evidence that allows us to trace their impact in Belgrade and analyse the rituals and actions these events have entailed. While outside attention has focused largely on annual events at the Srebrenica-Potočari Memorial, and elsewhere on the tenth (2005) or twentieth (2015) anniversaries, the Women in Black have viewed every year as a year to remember and commemorate these victims. Still, as activists in Belgrade have marked 10 July in their commemorative practices over time, small variations and changes have developed, especially since the twentieth anniversary of the genocide. As I will show in my analysis of the work of the second generation of activists, online and onsite (see chapters 3 and 4), that year marked a continuation of the legacy of the first generation but also a shift, generating additional and novel mnemonic engagements in the city. Mnemonic debates in Serbia were at their height prior to the tenth anniversary in 2005, and tensions were already high when the ‘liberation of Srebrenica’ was celebrated in the Belgrade Faculty of Law – which hosted a panel entitled ‘The Truth about Srebrenica’, featuring participants who claimed no crimes had taken place there and that ‘the victims were soldiers of the Muslim army sacrificed by Alija Izetbegović to provoke a foreign military intervention’.70 On 1 June 2005, in response to ongoing official denial, 70 Humanitarian Law Center (HLC), official statement, 25 May 2005. The panel was initially titled, ‘Tenth anniversary of the Liberation of Srebrenica’, referring to its ‘liberation’ from Bosnian Muslims, but was eventually renamed (Subotić 2009, 64).

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the HLC released a gruesome wartime video, received by the organization months earlier, which came to be known simply as the ‘Scorpions Video’. Used later as evidence by the prosecutor in the Milošević trial, and then in other ICTY proceedings, the video was taken by a member of the Scorpions paramilitary unit – by then under the auspices of the Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs – and showed the transport and execution of a group of six male prisoners in July 1995, concurrent with the Srebrenica killings (Gordy 2013, 124-125). After its release by the HLC, the video was broadcast on local and international media outlets, making bombshell news. The shocking video showed the men, some very young (later identified by relatives as sixteenyear-olds), being tortured, humiliated, verbally abused, made to dig their own graves, and then shot in the back while the Serbian assassins (with clearly marked Serbian paramilitary “Scorpions” insignia on their uniform) joked, yelled abuses at the victims, and worried that the camera recording the executions would run out of battery power. (Subotić 2009, 62)71

Many viewed this as a missed opportunity. Subotić has emphasized, for example, that even in the case of this ‘insurmountable evidence’, literally caught on a video, elite discourse and public attitudes regarding the crimes and events surrounding Srebrenica remained entirely unchanged (2009, 62). Indeed, Serbian political elites continued refusing to acknowledge the crimes or punish the perpetrators, downplaying the suffering at Srebrenica while elevating Serbian victimhood instead. The brutality of the video hardly generated any additional empathy, and within only weeks, the issue was no longer in the news or public debate (Subotić 2009, 62-66). However, that year was the tenth anniversary of the genocide, and it featured a number of new mnemonic actions. One, launched and led by members of the in-between generation of activists, was the YIHR billboard campaign, Serbia and Srebrenica 1995-2005, which plastered images taken by Bosnian photographer Tarik Samarah on billboards in 40 locations across Serbia. These billboards, in Belgrade, Novi Sad, Čačak, and Niš, shared the message ‘Know, See, Remember: Srebrenica 1995-2005’ (Srebrenica 1995-2005 da vidiš, da znaš, da pamtiš). A 2006 publication about the campaign described the poor reception of these billboards, which was telling: 71 The video also showed a Serbian Orthodox priest blessing paramilitary members before they departed to carry out the killing (Subotić 2009, 62).

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Only a few hours after the billboards had been put up … they were destroyed. Some had messages sprayed over them, a response that uncannily echoed the right-wing spirit alive in Serbia: ‘there will be a return,’ ‘death to Ustaša,’ ‘out of Serbia,’ ‘Ratko Mladić,’ ‘long live Mladić,’ ‘death to Jews,’ and the like. Some billboards were destroyed by black paint spilled over them, while some had been torn apart in front of indifferent passers-by. (Nosov 2006, 68)72

Andrej Nosov, one of the founders and then the director of YIHR, who was in his early twenties at the time, wrote that the group had invited women members of the Mothers of Srebrenica to join them that year in various Serbian towns, to speak to youth (2006).73 The intergenerational connection between younger activists from Serbia and the Mothers of Srebrenica – who are part of the first generation of activists in the region, the same generation as YIHR activists’ parents – seemed to strengthen the mnemonic claims and convictions of both the Mothers and the young activists. During a visit to Leskovac, in Southern Serbia, some thirty people gathered to listen, and though they didn’t even f ill the room, one of the Mothers, Sabra, exclaimed to Nosov: ‘Do you realize how big this is, what we are doing?’ Nosov later wrote, ‘It seems to me that today I really do understand how enormous it was that we found a common language with these women, Srebrenica victims. Future generations will be grateful to them for their willingness to take pains to come to Serbia and speak about what happened there … “Thank you” is simply not enough’ (2006, 64).74 Another event that took place that year, on 10 June, just over a week after the Scorpions Video became public, was the opening of the exhibition Srebrenica: Remembrance for the Future at the CZKD in Belgrade. It included a collection of essays, including a text titled, ‘On This and That Side of the 72 Then director of YIHR, Andrej Nosov, who led this campaign, is now the creative director of Heartefact, an innovative arts organization based in Belgrade that offers educational programming and produces exhibitions and plays across the region meant to foster critical engagement with social and political issues. Alongside Nosov, a number of other activists from his generation also play a role in Heartefact, which produced the Bogujevci // Visual History exhibit mentioned in Chapter 4. 73 The Mothers of Srebrenica gathers four associations of women survivors: the Mothers of Srebrenica, the Women of Srebrenica, the Association of Mothers of Srebrenica and Podrinja, and the Association of Mothers of Srebrenica and Žepa Enclaves. These women, mothers, sisters, and widows lost men in their families to the killing in 1995. 74 In the same account, Nosov also wrote of their next visit, to Novi Sad, where the Mothers of Srebrenica were met by a much more hostile audience.

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River Drina’, by former Belgrade mayor Bogdan Bogdanović (2005),75 who wrote: For the sake of difficult, though sacred truth, I would like to make a note of the fact that remembering this crime is the only apology. For at least some of us Serbs, it is not just a matter of historical shame, but also of the deep pain of a fratricidal sin. (119)

The next day, on 11 June 2005, the HLC, in cooperation with the ICTY outreach office, held a one-day conference at the Belgrade Sava Center, ‘Srebrenica – Beyond Reasonable Doubt’. A draft Declaration on Srebrenica was developed,76 and was put forth to the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia, marking the beginning of a process that resulted five years later in the Assembly’s adoption of The Resolution on Srebrenica, in 2010. Yet, as Dragović-Soso (2012) has argued, the passage of the Resolution was not the turning point some hoped; instead of denoting a shift in how Serbia confronted its past, it simply cemented the country’s deep ideological and political divisions. In the view of memory activists at the time, the Resolution was an important step forward, but in failing to recognize Srebrenica as a genocide, it left the issue to be endlessly contested and negated in the public sphere. Returning to Republic Square on 10 July 2005, the Women in Black and their supporters were attacked by an angry crowd that sprayed tear gas at them and shouted nationalist slogans – including Nož, Žica, Srebrenica (Knife, Wire, Srebrenica), which explicitly glorifies the Srebrenica genocide. These sorts of attacks were not new, as the Square had come to symbolize the deep divisions within Serbian society and had thus become a contested territory of interpretations of the past (Zerubavel 1995).77 It was this environment that prompted police to escort the Women in Black to and from the Square, beginning in 2006. In 2009, following the 2008 arrest of Radovan Karadžić, the Square was literally divided in two by police forces 75 Bogdanović, who resided at the time in Vienna, was the mayor of Belgrade from 1982 to 1986. He was an architect and university professor who designed the monument in Jasenovac as well as other anti-fascist monuments across the former Yugoslavia. He passed away in 2010. 76 The draft was signed by representatives of the Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights, the Center for Cultural Decontamination, Civic Initiatives, the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia, the Women in Black, Belgrade Circle, the Humanitarian Law Center, and the Youth Initiative for Human Rights in Serbia. 77 For a detailed description of the 2004 commemoration and attack against the Women in Black, see Fridman 2006.

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Figure 1 The divided Republic Square, 10 July 2009

Photographs by the author

(see Figure 1), who held the line between those attending the Women in Black’s vigil and far-right counter demonstrators, mostly from the groups Obraz and 1389.78 The posters held by these counter demonstrators featured portraits of Karadžič and Ratko Mladić, and the slogan ‘SrbIn’, which Gordy (2013) has explained as something of a promotional effort by the far right, combining the ethnic denominator (Srb) ‘with an international colloquial term for fashionable things (In)’. The articulation of messages and performances evolved over subsequent 10 July commemorations. Silent vigils initially featured banners that emphasized the memory of Srebrenica as a genocide, then they were emblazoned with single words like ‘responsibility’ and ‘solidarity’. Actions developed from holding white roses and candles, to a street action on the fifteenth anniversary of the genocide in 2010 known as ‘One Pair of Shoes, One Life’, in collaboration with DAH Theatre and Grupa Spomenik. For this action, the Women in Black invited citizens to donate a pair of shoes, with a message attached for a survivor from Srebrenica. Their vision was to one day see messages from the shoes engraved on a monument to the victims (Simić and Daly 2011, 485). This, and new actions in the following years, have continued to demonstrate the evolution of commemorative rituals and practices marking this date on the alternative civic calendar. On 10 July 2011, a large banner resembling the Srebrenica Genocide Monument, listing the names of victims, was unfurled by demonstrators in Republic Square – who read aloud the names of more than 600 victims who had been identified and were to be buried the next day in Potočari.79 The next year, on 10 July 2012, the same 78 Obraz and 1389 are both linked to the Serbian Orthodox Church (Gordy 2013, 208). 79 On DNA technology and the search for Srebrenica’s missing, see Wagner 2008.

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banner was again held by participants in the commemoration, as organizers played the pre-recorded testimonies of women from the Mothers of Srebrenica, who addressed the citizens of Belgrade as to why they should know about and remember Srebrenica. This was followed by a recorded reading of a declaration of the movement, restating their continued commitment to ‘never forget the genocide in Srebrenica’, which was a clear response to a statement made one month earlier by then newly elected president Tomislav Nikolić, who had openly denied the Srebrenica genocide (Radio Free Europe 2012).80 Remembering and commemorating Srebrenica as a genocide, in Belgrade and from the perspective of citizens in Serbia – rather than solely from the point of view of Bosniak victims81 – has created space for anti-nationalist, and later, even de-ethnicized, interpretations of this recent past. Such framing had already emerged in the early 1990s among anti-war activists, and now appears in the form of an alternative calendar. By allowing the memory of Srebrenica, as presented in Belgrade, to live as a catastrophe, a genocide, and a commemorative event that belongs not only in Potočari but on the alternative civic calendar in Serbia, too, participants are protesting not only denial of the recent past but also the current social malfunction that distinguishes memories and relativizes pain according to ethno-national belonging.82

Generational commemorative legacy Memory work and commemoration of the catastrophe not only from ‘their point of view’ seems to offer an opening for the ground to be laid for another 80 Similarly, six years later, prime minister Ana Brnabić acknowledged in a 2018 interview with DW that hideous crimes were committed in Srebrenica, calling them war crimes, but rejected the categorization of those crimes as genocide. See ‘Serbian PM Ana Brnabic: Srebrenica “a Terrible Crime,” Not a Genocide’, DW, 15 November 2018, https://www.dw.com/en/ serbian-pm-ana-brnabic-srebrenica-a-terrible-crime-not-genocide/a-46307925 81 I borrow here from Ariella Azoulay’s work on the way in which the memory of the Palestinian Nakba in the Zionist narrative has been narrowed to a ‘catastrophe from their point of view’ only. The civil perspective makes it possible to recognize the existence of another distinction with regard to the Nakba, not between Jews and Arabs, but between those who see the disaster that befell the Palestinians as a catastrophe, and those who see no catastrophe or, at best, see ‘catastrophe from their point of view’ (Azoulay 2009). 82 See Azoulay 2009 (18-22) for a discussion on the civil malfunction that occurs ‘when the difference in the ways various groups are being governed become a structural feature of the regime’. I think of memories, narratives, and calendars as also being governed in this way.

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discussion – moving from talk of responsibility and guilt as political categories, in the decade that followed the wars of the 1990s, to a commemorative platform where civic identities and civic engagement are at the fore. As I will show in the next chapter, actions taken by the second generation of memory activists in Serbia, including in new forms of memory of activism, reflect this legacy. The fact that 10 July commemorations, the main event on the alternative civic calendar in Belgrade, have recurred annually, allowed me to analyse the motivations of participants who return to Republic Square year after year to take part in the commemorative event and street actions. In time, I came to ask: What was it that brought these people back, over and over again? How did they view their own participation, and the alternative calendars they follow? When I posed these questions, the most common response was, ‘I simply feel I have to be here’, though some people answered more explicitly, saying, ‘I have a political responsibility to be here on the square, every year’. And while some framed the commemorations in the context of social pressures – characterizing their reoccurrence as a test, when the resistance to unwanted memories is so great – others emphasized the extent to which the event is a platform for the strongest, clearest, most unremitting anti-war voices that exist in Serbian society today. In that sense, by showing up on the Square in solidarity with a politicized position against denial and nationalism, these demonstrators send a clear political message. Becoming political about unwanted memories has grown out of necessity, and out of a sense of obligation. Reminding passers-by about what happened in Srebrenica in 1995 has become a political platform for the imagining of a different form of citizenship, if only for one hour every year on Republic Square; a vision that brings together feminist ideologies with anti-militarism and anti-nationalism, and bridges the generations, from those who were already adults during the 1990s to those who were still children or were not even born. When I spoke with women in the founding generation of the Women in Black early in my research, they were clear that their generation had a responsibility to be present in the Square, even if other generations did not (yet) feel the same obligation. One woman told me: I have to stand for Srebrenica, this is part of my life now, this is my commitment, and not only for us here, but for the women there … But for my daughter and her friends it is different, they wouldn’t go there [to Potočari], they wouldn’t stand here [on Republic Square] … they don’t feel they did anything wrong, and they are not willing to take on any

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collective guilt. … Some of them don’t want to have anything to do with it. (Cited in Fridman 2006)

I explore these generational differences and shifts throughout this book, which first emerged in my analysis of anti-war activism (Fridman 2011), and I then observed in memory activism in the early 2000s. Though Srebrenica commemorations continue to be attended mostly by the first generation of activists in Serbia, there are always younger people there as well, some annually. One young woman, who was in her twenties when she first attended the commemorative event in 2011, told me that even though her mother, a former member of the Women in Black, came to the Square every year, she had never considered attending. It was only as she grew into adulthood that she was able to appreciate the civic, political, and personal significance of the event: Standing in the square for the first time, I felt a sense of relief, like I was removing the burden of denial … I realized that I was not only representing my mother there, but that I was actually standing as a responsible citizen of Serbia … acknowledging what happened [in Srebrenica]. (Interview by author, September 2011)

In fact, the emergence of an alternative civic calendar in Serbia, and the establishment of 10 July as its foremost commemorative event, can be understood as a space created by the Women in Black in which citizens can engage with civic memories as they emerge. One participant in the commemorations explained: The Women in Black are creating and making room for those memories, and with our bodies, standing there, we bring this memory to life … By standing there for one hour we have the strength to symbolically send a message, and that is why it is so important for me to be there. (Interview by author, 30 July 2012)

In doing so in the heart of Belgrade, and by remembering the wars of the 1990s and especially the catastrophe in Srebrenica, an alternative is proposed, or is at least conceivable, to the narrative of denial that has become hegemonic in the decades since the wars. These acts of remembrance, as they appear on the alternative civic calendar put forward by the Women in Black, extend to 11 July, when activists leave Belgrade early in the morning, travel to Potočari, and

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take part in the annual commemoration there. On the road to Eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina, especially as one crosses the Drina River, it is hard not to be struck by the beauty of the natural surroundings. Jasmina Tešanović (2005), a writer and member of the group, reflected on one such journey: ‘I wonder why nature becomes so beautiful wherever war crimes are committed?’ said my friend. She was right; I never pay attention to nature unless I am obliged to, but the Srebrenica valley demands attention: The intense green colors, the soothing sounds of the wind and birds, the blazing sun which heats without hurting, the shapes of clouds, the neat borderlines of the place of the crime. (36)

When they arrive in Potočari, the Women in Black don’t simply blend into the crowd, with its tens of thousands of people. They are greeted by members of the Mothers of Srebrenica, and they stand with their banners, identifying themselves as anti-war activists from Belgrade. In the following chapter, I will discuss the generational difference in engagement with 11 July and the mnemonic actions taken on that day by younger activists, who choose to remain in Belgrade. *** After a verdict was issued in the trial of Ratko Mladić in 2017, Prime Minister of Serbia Ana Brnabić called on the public to ‘leave the past behind and look forward to the future’ (Radio Slobodna Evropa 2017). Her statement seemed to refer to the unwanted past that memory activists refuse to leave behind, as they insist on remembering and reminding as a political platform. And even if it was left behind, this past is still present in so many ways; in the streets of Belgrade, in its graffiti, its souvenir shops, and in the enduring legacies of the 1990s that shape society today.83 As this chapter has shown, in the aftermath of regime change in 2000, the emergence of memory activism from anti-war activism established an alternative framework for commemorative solidarity. An alternative civic calendar established by the first generation of activists in Serbia created space for mnemonic rituals from below that engage with unwanted memories of the 1990s. And this became the ground 83 For example, see the street action of the organization Ne Davimo Beograd (Do Not Let Belgrade Drown), aimed at cleaning public spaces in Belgrade from graffiti featuring symbols of hate (such as swastikas) or the glorification of war criminals.

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for engagement and actions by the second generation of memory activists, discussed in the coming chapters. These actions were inspired by and still take place in cooperation with actors from the first generation, whose legacy is also crucial to the ‘region of memory activism’ examined in more detail in Chapter 5. There, I also explore the Women’s Court that was established by the Women in Black, and after long preparations, finally met in Sarajevo in 2015.

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Duhaček, Daša. 2010. Breme Našeg Doba: Odgovornost I rasuđivanje u delu Hane Arent. Belgrade: Circulus. Duhaček, Daša, and Obrad Savić, eds. 2002. Captives of Evil: Legacy of Hannah Arendt. Belgrade: Belgrade Circle. DW. 2018. ‘Serbian PM Ana Brnabic: Srebrenica “a Terrible Crime,” Not a Genocide’, 15 November. https://www.dw.com/en/serbian-pm-ana-brnabic-srebrenica-aterrible-crime-not-genocide/a-46307925 (accessed 30 August 2021). European Parliament. 2009. Resolution of 15 January 2009 on Srebrenica. Fridman, Orli. 2006. ‘Alternative Voices in Public Urban Space: Serbia’s Women in Black’. Ethnologia Balkanica 10: 291-303. Fridman, Orli. 2011. ‘It Was Like Fighting a War with Our Own People: Anti-War Activism in Serbia during the 1990s’. Nationalities Papers 39 (4): 507-522. Fridman, Orli. 2016. ‘Memories of the 1999 NATO Bombing in Belgrade, Serbia’. Südosteuropa 64 (4): 438-459. Fridman, Orli. 2020. ‘Peace Formation from Below: The “mirëdita, dobar dan!” Festival as an Alternative to Everyday Nationalism’. Nations and Nationalism 26 (4): 447-460. Gojković, Drinka. 2000. ‘What Do We Do Now?’ In Truths, Responsibilities, Reconciliations: The Example of Serbia, edited by Dejan Ilić and Veran Matić, pp. 1-12. Belgrade: Samizdat Free B92. Gordy, Eric. 2013. Guilt, Responsibility, and Denial: The Past at Stake in Post-Milošević Serbia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Lavrence, Christine. 2013. ‘Review: People in War: Oral Histories of the Yugoslav Wars’. The Oral History Review 40 (1): 178-185. Mladjenović, Lepa. 2001. ‘Caring at the Same Time: On Feminist Politics during the NATO Bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Ethnic Cleansing of Albanians in Kosovo, 1999’. In The Aftermath: Women in Post-Conflict Transformation, edited by Sheila Meintjes, Anu Pillay, and Meredeth Turshen, pp. 172-188. London and New York: Zed Books. Mlađenović, Lepa. 2005. ‘The Politics of Knowledge of Difference’. In Gender Nation Identity, edited by Dana Johnson, pp. 193-198. Belgrade: Women in Black. Nettelf ield Lara J., and Sarah E. Wagner. 2014. Srebrenica in the Aftermath of Genocide. New York: Cambridge University Press. Nosov, Andrej, ed. 2006. Serbia and Srebrenica 1995-2005. Belgrade: Youth Initiative for Human Rights. Obradović-Wochnik, Jelena. 2009a. ‘Knowledge, Acknowledgement and Denial in Serbia’s Responses to the Srebrenica Massacre’. Journal of Contemporary European Studies 17 (1): 61-74. Obradović-Wochnik, Jelena. 2009b. ‘Strategies of Denial: Resistance to ICTY Cooperation in Serbia’. In War crimes, Conditionality and EU Integration in the

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Western Balkans, edited by Judy Batt and Jelena Obradović-Wochnik, pp. 29-47. Chaillot Paper, No. 116. Paris: European Union Institute for Security Studies. Papić, Žarana. 2002. ‘Europe after 1989: Ethnic Wars, the Fascistization of Civil Society and Body Politics in Serbia’. In Thinking Differently: A Reader in European Women’s Studies, edited by Gabrielle Griffin and Rosi Braidotti, pp. 127-144. London and New York: Zed Books. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. 2012. ‘Serbian President Nikolic Again Denies Srebrenica Was Genocide’, 8 June. https://www.rferl.org/a/serbian-president-nikolicagain-deniews-srebrenica-genocide/24608470.html (accessed 30 August 2021). Radio Slobodna Evropa. 2017. ‘Brnabić: Ostaviti prošlost iza nas posle presude Mladiću’, 22 November. https://www.slobodnaevropa.org/a/28869924.html (accessed 30 August 2021). Rosandić, Ružica, Nataša Milenković, and Mirjana Kovačević. 2005. Peace by Piece: Peacebuilding Experience from the Local NGOs Perspective (the Region of Former Yugoslavia). Belgrade: The Center for Anti-War Action, 2005. Simić, Olivera, and Kathleen Daly. 2011. ‘“One Pair of Shoes, One Life”: Steps Towards Accountability for Genocide in Srebrenica’. International Journal of Transitional Justice 5 (3): 477-491. Subotić, Jelena. 2009. Hijacked Justice: Dealing with the Past in the Balkans. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press. Šušak, Bojana. 2000. ‘An Alterntaive to War’. In The Road to War in Serbia: Trauma and Catharsis, edited by Nebojša Popov, pp. 479-508. Budapest: Central European University Press. Tešanović, Jasmina. 2000. The Diary of a Political Idiot: Normal Life in Belgrade. San Francisco: Midnight Editions. Tešanović, Jasmina. 2005. ‘The Square and the Victims’. In Women for Peace, edited by Staša Zajović, pp. 34-36. Belgrade: Women in Black. Torov, Ivan. 2000. ‘The Resistance in Serbia’. In Burn This House: The Making and Unmaking of Yugoslavia, edited by Jasmina Udovički and James Ridgeway, pp. 247-266. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2000. Vušković, Lina, and Zorica Trifunović, eds. 2008. Women’s Side of War. Belgrade: Women in Black. Wagner, Sarah E. 2008. To Know Where He Lies: DNA Technology and the Search for Srebrenica’s Missing. Berkeley: University of California Press. Zaharijević, Adriana. 2013. ‘Being an Activist: Feminist Citizenship through Transformations of Yugoslav and Post-Yugoslav Citizenship Regimes’. CITSEE Working Paper Series 2013/28. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh School of Law. Zajović, Staša. 2005. ‘Women in Black: War, Feminism and Antimilitarism’. In Women for Peace, edited by Staša Zajović, pp. 13-21. Belgrade: Women in Black.

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3

‘Too Young to Remember, Determined Never to Forget’ The Second Generation

Abstract This chapter discusses the work of younger memory activists in Belgrade, which I refer to as the second generation, and the ways this generation articulates their mnemonic claims and practices concerning Serbia’s recent difficult past. It also examines processes of continuity and change in memory activism in Serbia, from variations on the way activists express their mnemonic claims, to innovations in mnemonic practices unveiled alongside the continuation of already established commemorative rituals. Memory activism addressing the war in Kosovo is also explored in this chapter, as well as additional memory work related to the mass graves in Batajnica. The chapter ends by capturing acts of resistance to the glorification of war crimes and war criminals, and memory activism as protest. Keywords: second generation, memory activism, mnemonic practices, war crimes, protest, unwanted memory

It was August 2016 when a number of high-profile politicians in Serbia announced their intention to erect a monument in memory of Slobodan Milošević, the former head of state who died in his prison cell in 2006, in the midst of his trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).84 Their announcement came as claims circulated in Serbia regarding the ICTY verdict convicting former Bosnian Serb political 84 Milošević was charged by the ICTY, on the basis of both individual and command criminal responsibility, with genocide, crimes against humanity, violations of the laws or customs of war, and grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Conventions. These crimes were allegedly committed in Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Croatia during the wars in the former Yugoslavia. Milošević died on 11 March 2006, before the end of his trial.

Fridman, Orli, Memory Activism and Digital Practices after Conflict: Unwanted Memories. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463723466_ch03

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leader Radovan Karadžić, which some interpreted as having acquitted Milošević of guilt for genocide and crimes against humanity in Bosnia and Herzegovina.85 A statement from an official in Milošević’s former party, the Serbian Socialist Party (SPS), read: ‘We all knew that Milošević was not guilty. He should get a street [named after him] and a monument in Belgrade’ (Dragojlo 2016). Another high-ranking politician remarked that, ‘when such a tribunal recognizes that Milošević did not participate in an organised criminal enterprise, it is clear that Serbia was right’ (Dragojlo 2016). This rehabilitation of Milošević was followed by reactions in Serbian media and on social media, with some hailing the idea of a monument and others strongly critical of it. Among the harshest criticisms was the suggestion that sitting politicians were attempting to whitewash their own biographies (as they themselves had been active in the Serbian political arena in the 1990s and were in Milošević’s party or government) and even seeking to erect a monument to themselves (Štetin Lakić 2016; Rašuo 2016). Social media users in opposition to the monument turned to satire, using the Twitter hashtag #SpomenikSlobi (Monument to Sloba86) to condemn the idea, and arguing that numerous monuments across the former Yugoslavia already testify to the destruction sown by Milošević’s years in power (Chadwick 2016; Nikolic 2016b). Activists from the Belgrade branch of the Youth Initiative for Human Rights (YIHR) were the loudest voices opposing the monument, stating categorically that, ‘we, the representatives of the lost generation, born during the nineties – the worst decade of the modern Serbian history, promise that a monument to Slobodan Milošević will not survive a single day in our city’, and noting that its destruction would not be ‘vandalism but defence of the democratic and European Serbia’ (2016b). These youth activists claimed ownership of the discursive space, asserting that they spoke in the name of all young people whose lives were wasted and ruined during the 1990s due to the politics of Milošević, as well as in the name of all victims of the wars of the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia. They also tied their opposition to a sense of responsibility for the next generation, born after 2000 (Youth Initiative for Human Rights 2016b). 85 The contention that Milošević was exonerated by the UN court became a hot topic in Serbia after publication of an article by British journalist Neil Clark on Russia’s RT website, which quoted a previous article by Andy Wilcoxson on the pro-Milošević website Slobodan-Milosevic.org. Clark accused the world media of ignoring the news that ‘one of the most demonized figures of the modern era’ had been found to be innocent (Dragojlo 2016). 86 Sloba, the common local nickname for the first name Slobodan, is still applied to Slobodan Milošević (and many Slobodans).

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This episode was illustrative of ongoing dynamics in Serbia, related to its recent past and especially to the fragmentation of memory regarding unwanted memories of the wars of the 1990s and their legacies. Moreover, it was shaped by the emergence of new, well-articulated mnemonic claims on behalf of the generation born during or soon after the wars (in the 1990s or 2000s). This chapter discusses the work of this younger generation of memory activists in Belgrade, which I refer to as the second generation, and traces the ways this generation articulates their mnemonic claims and practices concerning Serbia’s recent difficult past. It also examines processes of continuity and change in memory activism in Serbia – from variations on the slogan ‘Not in my name’, used by the Women in Black, as discussed in the previous chapter; to the stance of YIHR activists that they are ‘Too young to remember, determined never to forget’ (Premladi da se sećamo, odlučni da nikada ne zaboravimo); to innovations in mnemonic practices unveiled alongside the continuation of already established commemorative rituals. Memory activism specifically related to the war in Kosovo will also be discussed in this chapter, as well as additional memory work, related to mass graves in Batajnica. This moves us beyond commemorative events only, for example to the guided tours offered by the Belgrade-based Centre for Public History (CPI). In addition, artistic engagement through the production of documentary and feature films in the work of Ognjen Glavonić is analysed. In highlighting the CPI and Glavonić, I bring the focus to what I call the in-between generation, born in the 1980s. I show how members of this generation, who experienced the wars as children or young adults, later took an active role in memory activism and in engaging with the memory landscape of their society. The chapter ends by capturing acts of resistance to the glorification of war crimes and war criminals, and memory activism as protest. Opposing the normalization of war criminals in public life has increasingly become part of the work of the second generation of memory activists, inspiring new and different approaches to memory activism.

A new generation, a new slogan In 2003, the Youth Initiative for Human Rights in Serbia (YIHR) was established in Belgrade.87 Its founders were in their early twenties (born in the 87 Since its foundation, YIHR has become a regional NGO with a presence in Serbia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Croatia. I will discuss the regional aspect of memory activism and the post-Yugoslav space as a region of memory activism in Chapter 5.

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1980s) and belong to the in-between generation that grew up in the 1990s.88 In the decade that followed, however, YIHR leadership moved into the hands of the younger generation, born in the 1990s, analysed here as the second generation of memory activists in Serbia. The focus of YIHR activism is on issues of human rights and transitional justice, with numerous programmes and activities aimed towards young people. My analysis is of the elements of their work I consider memory activism, entailing actions that directly confront legacies of the unwanted memories of the wars of the 1990s and Serbia’s role in these wars. For a number of YIHR activists born in the 1990s, the war in Kosovo was a major draw to joining the group and engaging in activism. These activists are too young to remember the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but may have memories of the war in Kosovo and are even more likely to recall the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999. Some view their first ever visit to Kosovo, after the 2008 declaration of independence, as a life-changing experience. One activist I spoke with, who described seeing Kosovo through completely new eyes after visiting, was motivated to join YIHR by the group’s ‘I am the heart of Serbia’ (Ja sam srce Srbije) campaign – which was an explicit response to the nationalistic slogan that ‘Kosovo is the heart of Serbia’ (Kosovo je srce Srbije). Travelling to Kosovo, and especially to the capital, Pristina,89 had exposed this young activist, as well as others, to a perspective that was simply unavailable in Serbia in everyday media representations of Kosovo.90 Just nine years old during the war in Kosovo, they explained: I returned from that visit saying to myself, ‘they obviously lied to us … everyone did … media, politicians, my parents, my neighbours, my society – everyone lied about Kosovo. What else did they lie to us about?’ It was obvious that we were manipulated by everyone … and this was really important for me as I realized I needed to access all of these topics [related 88 Notably, the Remarker online platform has devoted a series of ten video episodes to the ‘children of the 1990s’, meant to ‘map the political behaviour of those who grew up in postrevolutionary Serbia, with the desire to identify their political needs, and move young people to think and engage’. Among the questions posed by the series is, ‘What are their [children of the 1990s] attitudes towards the country’s recent past and how do they perceive it today?’ For more, see https://remarker.media/tag/deca-90ih/. 89 Here, and throughout, I use the common English spelling of Pristina. However, all towns in Kosovo are named locally in both Albanian and Serbian. The Albanian spelling is Prishtinë, and the Serbian spelling is Priština. 90 For more on the YIHR Kosovo-Serbia exchange programme, see Fridman 2013.

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to the wars of the 1990s] and make an effort to learn more (interview by author, August 2016).

This kind of engagement sits at the heart of this inquiry and at the centre of this book. It is the work and the mnemonic practices of memory activists with alternative knowledge of silenced and unwanted pasts, as they disseminate alternative and counter-memories of the 1990s. In fact, in my conversations with YIHR activists for this study, a number of them referred to themselves as ‘the keepers of the fire’, emphasizing their commitment to continuing and promoting the legacy of the first generation of memory activists in Serbia. This second generation refuses to be silent about violent events that occurred in the 1990s and told me they ‘will not let it go’. Some even spoke of their movement as an obstacle standing in the way of revisionist history and the denial of wartime crimes in Serbia; but unlike the first generation, these younger activists do not feel any personal accountability for what happened in the 1990s. One activist born in 1992 framed it this way: ‘I cannot be responsible for what happened in Srebrenica when I was three years old, or in Suva Reka (in Kosovo) when I was seven years old. On the other hand, I could be held responsible if I do not speak about it now’ (interview by author, August 2016). In that spirit, the actions of this second generation of memory activists oppose narratives of denial while constantly calling on the Serbian state and its institutions to reopen questions from the past, countering legacies of impunity and the ongoing silencing of history from the 1990s. Indicative of this generational shift is a new slogan unveiled by YIHR activists in 2015 – ‘Too young to remember, determined never to forget’ – as they prepared for a street action in Tuzla, in neighbouring Bosnia and Herzegovina. Activists had collected over 500 handwritten messages and signatures from citizens in four Serbian cities (Belgrade, Novi Sad, Novi Pazar, and Niš) on the eve of the twentieth anniversary of the May 1995 Tuzla massacre, in which 71 victims lost their lives, to present later to the mayor of Tuzla and the families of victims (Nikolic 2015b).91 Upon arriving in Tuzla the following day, they stood in silence, holding a banner marked with their new slogan. Still, while the slogan may have been new, 91 In 2019, during Book Fair week in Belgrade, the Serbian Defence Ministry hosted a promotional event featuring a new book written by Ilija Branković, a former general in the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA). Titled Tuzla Gate: A Stage-Managed Tragedy, the book claims to prove that Bosnian Serb forces were not responsible for the Tuzla massacre, contradicting facts established by the Bosnian state court (Stojanovic 2019). Both YIHR and the HLC issued a public condemnation of this state-sponsored event.

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the practice of engaging in a silent vigil on a busy street was not, having long been a tactic of the Women in Black and other memory activists from the first generation. Commemoration of the Tuzla massacre on 25 May is only one date among many commemorated annually by YIHR. But the incident strikes a chord with young activists, one of whom noted that, in Tuzla, ‘many of the victims were very young … the average age of the victims was 24, just like I am now’ (interview by author, August 2016). While many of these activists made the point to me that they themselves were children when this crime (and others) took place, and thus bear no responsibility for its perpetration, they argue that it is their responsibility to remember. This is reflected in the dates on their alternative calendar, referred to internally as the TJ (transitional justice) calendar (see Appendix 1), or the ‘bloody calendar’ (krvavi kalendar). It lists the dates of alternative commemorative events established by the Women in Black and attended by citizens and activists annually for years, as well as others added by memory activists from the second generation. In what follows, I focus my analysis on two events marked on the ‘bloody calendar’ of memory activists in Belgrade that exemplify the alternative commemorative events attended by these activists: the 10 and 11 July commemoration of the Srebrenica genocide; and the 26 March commemoration of the Suva Reka massacre in Kosovo, and of victims in Batjanica. In the commemoration of Srebrenica, we can trace generational shifts in nuanced mnemonic claims and evolving commemorative practices, while the evolution of the Suva Reka commemoration shows the ways in which these practices and the actors behind them, with their various generational belongings, have come together as one.

Continuity and change in the commemoration of Srebrenica in Belgrade More than any other event, the annual commemoration of Srebrenica victims in Belgrade represents the continuity of memory activism in Serbia, but it also represents innovation and change. The 10 July commemoration initiated by the Women in Black, which has now taken place for more than two decades in Republic Square, is by far the most visible and significant event on the alternative civic calendar. As I detailed in Chapter 2, this commemoration in Belgrade occurs on the eve of the commemorative event and burial ceremony held annually at the official site of memory in Potočari, near the town of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina. The event in

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Republic Square brings together current and former activists, young and old, and citizens of Belgrade, for a one-hour silent vigil in which victims from Srebrenica are remembered as victims of genocide – a crime that is officially unrecognized by the state of Serbia. In 2015, for the twentieth anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide, a new commemorative event was led by the second generation of memory activists in Serbia, from YIHR, among others. In an action dubbed #sedamhiljada (#seventhousand), they aimed to mobilize 7,000 people outside the National Assembly in Belgrade to symbolically represent the approximate number of victims killed in Srebrenica in July 1995. But far-right organizations Dveri and Zavetnici, as well as members of the nationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRS), announced that they would hold simultaneous counter-protests. As a result, all public gatherings were banned in Belgrade on 11 July 2015, with the government citing security risks and the need to ‘guarantee peace and security in the whole of Serbia’ (Dragojlo 2015). Despite the ban, about 200 activists showed up that night in response to calls on social media to gather for an improvised memorial ceremony. In front of the National Assembly, they placed numbers on the ground (prepared for the #sedamhiljada action) to signify people identified as victims of the mass killing in Srebrenica, and lit candles (Ristic 2015a). I discuss the #sedamhiljada action in Chapter 4, where I explore digital practices and online commemorations through the #hashtag #memoractivism framework. The following year (2016), two alternative commemorative events to remember victims in Srebrenica took place in Belgrade – on 10 July, in Republic Square, led as always by the Women in Black; and on 11 July, in front of the National Assembly, led by the YIHR. The commemorative practices of these two days illuminate both the interconnectivity of the generations of memory activists and their practices, as well as innovations and adaptations in those practices. On Republic Square, that year marked the twentieth such 10 July event, as the mnemonic tradition emerged in 1996 (see Chapter 2). The Women in Black and activists from the DAH Theatre carried large red letters (made of paper) forming the word Srebrenica, followed by the number 8372, indicating the number of victims as established by the ICTY (see Figure 2, left). This number, like the genocide itself, remains subject to dismissal and denial in Serbia. In a large circle, people who gathered that day also held banners flown in previous years, such as one reading, ‘So we shall not forget the genocide in Srebrenica’ (Da ne zaboravimo genocid u Srebrenici). The next day, on 11 July, this banner was again on display when about 100 people came out in front of the National Assembly building. They used the red numbers from the previous day’s event as well, but also introduced new

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Figure 2 The Women in Black-led commemoration on Republic Square on 10 July (left); the commemoration in front of the National Assembly on 11 July (right)

Photographs by the author

banners and slogans, capturing the sentiments of the second generation of memory activists, including: ‘Too young to remember, determined never to forget’ and ‘Numbers are important if people are important’. Some activists stood in silence, as in the 10 July commemorative ritual, while others placed numbers on the ground (repeating the action improvised in 2015) and lit candles, at times speaking quietly, so that, unlike the event in Republic Square, it was not completely silent. Younger activists in Serbia clearly see their work as a continuation of the memory activism of the founders of the country’s anti-war civil society. When I interviewed Anita Mitić in 2016, then the YIHR director, she readily acknowledged the legacy of the first generation of anti-war and memory activists that came before her: We are living the legacy of what they (anti-war activists) did during the 1990s … the Women in Black, Nataša Kandić,92 Sonja Biserko,93 Borka Pavićević.94 … Now we also need to leave our own legacy for the next generation, who just like us, will not start [their work] from scratch … What we do is a continuation of their work, with the different generational twist that we give it … and yet we are still fighting the same fight. (Interview by author, August 2016) 92 Founder of the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC). 93 Founder of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia. 94 Late founder and director of the Center for Cultural Decontamination (CZKD) in Belgrade.

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Activists in the second generation especially emphasize their appreciation for years of street actions by the Women in Black, standing for and defending the cause, and say they have learned a lot from them. I will return to this when I discuss the form of memory of activism that has recently become more apparent in the work of YIHR and CPI. Still, while these younger activists recognize the similarities of their fights, they also highlight the need to convey their message in a different way, in order to attract more people from a different generation. To that end, there are some important if nuanced differences between the Women in Black and YIHR. For example, the Women in Black is an explicitly feminist organization, and YIHR does not present itself as such. In the same vein, the Women in Black def ine the group’s ideological and socio-economic stance in their founding as an anti-war, anti-militarist, and anti-nationalist organization, which is not necessarily the case with YIHR, at least not as an organization. Hence, the main thread connecting the groups and facilitating continuity is their rejection of nationalism, and their f ight against mnemonic processes of denial and silencing related to memory politics of the wars of the 1990s. When it comes to memory of the Srebrenica genocide, this younger generation of activists particularly underscores what is important to them in the nuances of their commemorative practices. For example, they insist on sending a direct message to politicians as they continue the fight against genocide denial in Serbia; thus, changing the location of their action – from Republic Square to the National Assembly – was intentional. As one activist explained: It is important for us to do the action with the numbers (of victims) in front of the National Assembly building, as it is the highest representative body … We need support and we call on MPs to join us in our call for a resolution on Srebrenica … this is crucial especially now when we have a majority of right-wing political parties in the parliament. (Interview by author, August 2016)

In my research, I observed that most of the people attending the 11 July event at the National Assembly were younger activists from Belgrade, along with their extended circles of supporters. Some people even brought their children, who engaged in lighting candles, something I have never seen at the 10 July commemoration in Republic Square. At the National Assembly, the atmosphere was impacted significantly by the direct participation of people attending, by their lighting of candles and placing of numbers on the

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ground to represent victims. People talked quietly to each other, engaged in an action with a clear beginning and end. This second generation of activists insists on the importance of an event taking place in Belgrade on 11 July, when the Women in Black travel to the commemoration in Potočari. A YIHR member told me that, ‘we no longer travel to Potočari because … we realized at some point that it was much more important we do this here’ (interview by author, August 2016). In 2004, when I initially joined the Women in Black on their journey to Potočari (Fridman 2006), YIHR had just been formed as an NGO and its activists travelled with us to the commemoration in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as they did in the years that followed. Even then, I noticed generational differences between these groups. In Potočari, the Women in Black made themselves visible at the entrance of the memorial site, standing with signs declaring their anti-war stance and their identity as activists from Belgrade, while the younger activists blended into the crowd during the burial and memorial ceremony. This second (and in-between) generation is well aware of the stigma applied to the Women in Black – who have been called traitors to Serbia since their establishment in the 1990s – and wish in some cases to highlight generational differences. They also believe that as members of a younger generation, they may be able to challenge this stigma. Unlike the Women in Black, these younger activists do not adhere to an all-black dress code in their street actions and are constantly seeking to produce a new and different energy and way of interacting with people their own age. Importantly, they also engage differently with the legacies and memories of the war in Kosovo, as I discuss below.

The burden of a silenced past: remembering the Suva Reka massacre and mass graves in Batajnica In recent years, as younger memory activists in Belgrade have established new commemorative practices, these have especially related to commemoration of victims of the Kosovo war. In general, engagement with crimes committed in Kosovo by Serbian forces in 1998 and 1999 is still considered taboo in Serbia, making them very difficult to discuss openly in public. The alternative mnemonic practices I have observed and discuss here, concerning memory of the war in Kosovo, are therefore only in their early stages, and continue to evolve and change. The official and state-sponsored commemorative narrative in Serbia has placed memory of the 1999 NATO bombing at its core, framing Serbians as

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victims throughout the wars of the 1990s (see Chapter 1); and the war in Kosovo as well as any crimes committed there are officially remembered solely in the context of Serb losses. The issues of Kosovar Albanian victims, and responsibility for the war, are met mostly with silence. And those attempting to break this silence are portrayed as traitors. This narrative is supported broadly by the messaging directed at Serbians about Kosovar Albanians, most of which is extremely negative. In fact, the knowledge of everyday Serbians about the 1990s is pervaded by stereotypes that all Albanians were criminals or terrorists (Fridman 2020), and moreover that Serbs were the sole victims of the war in Kosovo (see Erjavec and Volčič 2007; Bieber 2011). In 2003, Stef Jansen introduced ‘the notion of “Serbian Knowledge” as an analytical shortcut’ to denote ‘a national form of knowledge’ that ‘contains a reservoir of “truths” presumed to be accessible to all “good and real” Serbs’ (215). While Jansen focused his ethnographic analysis on how ‘Serbian Knowledge’ makes an object of ‘Muslim hatred’, this framework can be extended to other forms of shared knowledge, such as to Serb-Albanian relations. By examining memory activism within the context of Serb-Albanian relations – vis-à-vis the war in Kosovo, Kosovar Albanian civilian victims, and the ways the conflict became frozen after 1999 – we can clearly see the role of memory activism as a branch of peace activism, and in the case of the frozen Kosovo-Serbia conflict, its capacity to create platforms for peace formation from below (Richmond 2013). It was March 2010 when the first street actions took place in Belgrade to commemorate the victims of the Suva Reka massacre, committed in late March and early April 1999.95 The victims had been killed near their homes in Kosovo and later buried in mass graves, discovered in 2001 in the Belgrade suburb of Batajnica, on police training grounds.96 In 2010, YIHR activists gathered in the city centre’s main pedestrian zone, on Knez Mihailova street, with the aim of informing fellow citizens of the crimes committed in Kosovo in 1999 and the mass graves uncovered on the outskirts of Belgrade. Their message was that ‘on the way to the EU, we have to face the crimes committed in Kosovo and punish those responsible for the existence of a mass grave in a suburb of the Serbian capital’ (YIHR internal document, see Appendix 2). 95 For more information about the military-police operation in Suva Reka and the discovery of the mass grave at Batajnica, see the HLC’s Dossier: Operation Reka (2015). 96 For more on this and other mass graves in Serbia where victims from Kosovo were buried, see Stjepanović 2017.

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Radio Free Europe, one of the only media outlets to report on the commemoration that day, published a statement from one of the activists: We wish to send a message to the government that it must react to all the crimes committed in Kosovo. It must process them for the sake of truth, justice, and all the victims. It is very important that we inform the citizens [about these issues] … [and] for people to understand what happened in Kosovo in their name, that the victims lying in Batajnica were killed in the name of Serbia. (Glavonjić 2010)

Following the action in central Belgrade, the activists drove to the city’s outer edges, to the road that leads to the Batajnica mass graves. There, accompanied by police protection, they placed signs featuring the dates of other mass crimes committed in 1999 in Kosovo. Six years later, on a sunny Saturday, 26 March 2016, YIHR activists gathered at Republic Square for a 30-minute silent vigil in memory of civilian victims of the Suva Reka massacre. Their street action that day continued this familiar mnemonic practice of the silent vigil, but also introduced new direct action. Similar to the Women in Black, these second-generation memory activists held a banner during the vigil with their slogan, ‘Too young to remember, determined never to forget’ (see Figure 3); but what followed was different and innovative, as some 30 activists marched all the way to Batajnica (approximately 20 km). While they walked, they shared flyers with passers-by titled Suva Reka 17 godina posle (Suva Reka 17 years after), which offered a brief description of the events that took place in the town on 26 March 1999, including the fact that 46 of the 48 victims killed that day were members of the Berisha family.97 On the way to Batajnica, the activists also left flyers on the windshields of parked cars, hoping people would read them later; knowing that most people in Serbia have still never heard of the 1999 Suva Reka massacre, nor the mass graves unearthed in Batajnica in 2001. Sharing this information and raising awareness of these crimes is considered by some to be a subversive act of silence breaking, and by others to be an act of betrayal. But giving citizens the opportunity to engage with such a narrative and such a commemoration, completely outside the channels of the official state commemorative narrative, is at the heart of what constitutes memory activism in Serbia. 97 For more about the Suva Reka massacre, see the ICTY Judgment Summary for Milutinović, et al., from 2009. The witness statement of Shyhrete Berisha, who survived the massacre of her family, is available (as a PDF) here: https://www.icty.org/x/file/Voice%20of%20Victims%20 Support%20Docs/Milosevic-Shyhrete%20Berisha-Statement.pdf.

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Figure 3 The Suva Reka commemoration on 26 March 2016

Photograph by the author

In this 2016 action, younger activists used knowledge available to them from research conducted by the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) and the ICTY as they developed new practices by which to engage with the city, its spaces, its silences, and its citizens. In my observation of the action at Republic Square that day, and of the beginning of the march, I noted that some members of the first generation of (memory) activists attended the silent vigil to show their support and solidarity but opted not to march to Batajnica, stating that ‘now it was their thing to do’, referring to the second generation of activists. A number of motivations drove these younger activists towards this new form of action, including a shared sense that they had been witnessing the revision of history in Serbia right before their own eyes. Shocked by the way the state had welcomed a convicted war criminal to Belgrade as a hero only a few months earlier,98 they felt an urgency to respond through street action, with one activist explaining that ‘people in Serbia know about the crimes in Vukovar, Sarajevo, Srebrenica … but no one knows about the crimes 98 This refers to Former Yugoslav Army official Vladimir Lazarević, who was released early after serving part of his sentence for war crimes in Kosovo. He was flown home by two senior Serbian ministers and treated as a hero (see Ristic 2015b).

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committed in Kosovo … We need to talk about this, because the younger generation will remember nothing else but what we tell them’ (interview by author, August 2016). In that sense, these younger activists share the same concern as the first generation of memory activists regarding what memories will be shaped into collective memories, available to coming generations, to those born well after the wars of the 1990s. Suva Reka victims were commemorated again in a street action in Belgrade on 26 March 2019. That year was the twentieth anniversary of the massacre, but also of the NATO bombing of Serbia (then rump Yugoslavia) – which has been commemorated by state-sponsored events that have become more visible and more public since 2015, as discussed in Chapter 1.99 In 2019, a large military parade was held in the city of Niš on 24 March, for instance, commemorating the start of the bombing (see Radio Slobodna Evropa 2019; Rudic 2019a). Just two days later, a street action in Belgrade brought all generations of memory activists together with the objective of breaking the silence about Suva Reka and Batajnica. The action was dubbed ‘Batajnica 744 Buried Truth’ (Batajnica 744 Zakopana istina), and like the 2016 action it began with a silent vigil, this time in front of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences (SANU).100 The activists stood behind a banner bearing the names of civilian victims in Suva Reka whose remains were recovered from mass graves in Batajnica. Dirt was placed around the banner to symbolize the mass grave itself. Following the silent vigil, the activists marched towards the National Assembly building, where they stood again in silence, holding the same banner (see Figure 4). Staša Zajović, one of the founders of the Women in Black, referred to the action that day as an ‘appeal to the citizens of Serbia to stop the silence about these crimes, to inspire compassion, empathy and solidarity’ (Rudic 2019b). 99 The sixteenth anniversary of the bombing, commemorated in March 2015, was marked by a new state-sponsored ceremony held on Kneza Miloša Street in Belgrade, at the intersection with Nemanjina street, in front of the ruins of the former Generalštab building. The ceremony was attended by top Serbian state officials, including the prime minister, and was broadcast live on state TV (see Nikolic 2015a). Counter to my own expectation, this ceremony in this location did not repeat itself in the years that followed as a new state-sponsored commemoration. Instead, commemorations take place annually in various forms and locations. For example, in 2016, the state organized commemorative events in several places, including Varavin (attended by Prime Minister Vučić) and Belgrade (in front of the Dragiša Mišović hospital, attended by President Nikolić). For more, see Nikolic 2016a. 100 The significance of holding the vigil in front of SANU, as one activist explained to me, was to emphasize and remember the role and responsibility of the institution and some of its members in inciting all the wars of the break-up of Yugoslavia, not only the war in Kosovo (interview by author, February 2020).

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Figure 4 The street action on 26 March 2019 in Belgrade

Photograph courtesy of YIHR

Public or private expressions of empathy or compassion towards victims and their families are rare in analyses of post-war relations between Serbs and Albanians from Serbia and Kosovo. Open acts of acknowledgment of the crimes committed in war, and of its victims (especially from another ethnic group), are almost unheard of in state-sponsored commemorations across the entire post-Yugoslav space. Nationalism has only strengthened and deepened in the aftermath of the wars, resulting in the further ethnicization of identities and a greater lack of empathy and humanity towards the innocent ‘other’. The act of commemorating Kosovar Albanian victims in alternative events in Belgrade and calling them by their first and last names as a way of reclaiming their identities, as marginal as it may be, offers a platform for empathy, commemorative solidarity, and remembrance as a foundation for peace formation. Athena Athanasiou observes that these street actions allow activists to create networks of commemorative solidarity and camaraderie with the ‘other’ community, or the ‘others’ in a fractured community, who have been officially re-cast as ‘enemies’ (2017, 1). These alternative commemorative events introduce another core notion of memory activism discussed in Chapter 1 – knowledge-based efforts for consciousness-raising (Gutman 2017). The dissemination of alternative knowledge in Serbia occurs in an environment where the public is still far from acknowledging that a war in Kosovo occurred at all. As

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one activist noted, ‘the fact that we inflicted severe injuries on Kosovo Albanians and their entire society is completely silenced’ (interview by author, February 2020). According to her, marching with the names of Kosovar Albanian victims gave those victims a way to claim a presence in the streets of Belgrade, despite an otherwise complete silence regarding their existence and deaths. Another activist who participated in the 2019 action later shared with me that this complete silence had pervaded the action itself: One impression has remained in my mind from that day, and it’s the silence surrounding our action, the silence among us (when we marched), the silence of the policemen who surrounded us, the silence of the public (the passers-by observing us), of state officials (when we stood in front of the entrance of the National Assembly building), and in general, of that past. (Interview by author, March 2020)

When mass graves were discovered in Batajnica, on the outskirts of Belgrade, many activists felt as if the war in Kosovo came into much closer contact with their own lives. Hence, they felt compelled to commemorate civilian victims identified after exhumation in Batajnica, even with so many other mass crimes committed during the war in Kosovo. One activist born in 1989 described his part in planning the 2019 event as a belated reaction to the shock he experienced when he learned as a young adult about the existence of mass graves in a typically suburban area of the city where he lives. A similar sentiment was shared by another activist, who explained that actions were focused on the victims identified in graves in Batajnica precisely because the site is part of their city: It’s part of our urban city space, urban culture; it’s part of us. It’s also part of our security, because it’s where Serbian police do their training … so we wanted to focus on that, because even though it is a part of us, and so close to us, it’s invisible. And it is invisible not because it’s far away, but because Albanians were in those mass graves, and we do not care about them … they are not important to us. (Interview by author, February 2020)

Unlike other alternative commemorations in Belgrade, established as annual rituals on a certain date on the city’s alternative civic calendar – such as the Srebrenica genocide (10 and 11 July) or the beginning of the siege of Sarajevo (6 April) – actions related to memory of the war in Kosovo have been different from the start, and remain so. Memory activism concerning the

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Kosovo war does not necessarily feature fixed dates for the commemoration of victims of various massacres, for instance, and commemorative rituals are not yet established. This reflects the challenge of assigning a specific date when commemorating victims such as those identified in the Batajnica mass grave, who were not all killed in Suva Reka or on the same day. It is not accidental, though, that the date chosen for the commemoration of Suva Reka victims, others identified in Batajnica, and Kosovo war victims generally, on 26 March, is so near the date of state-sponsored commemorations of Serbian victims of the NATO bombing campaign, on 24 March. With this timing, the aim of activists was to commemorate all the victims of the war in Kosovo, essentially all at once, and not only those killed in the NATO bombing. One organizer of the 2019 commemorative event characterized the Suva Reka massacre as ‘only one example out of many other even harsher cases’, referring to crimes committed in Kosovo, particularly in March and April 1999 (interview by author, March 2020). Yet, comparatively speaking, while the commemoration of victims of the Srebrenica genocide has become established not just in Belgrade and the region but as part of transnational networks of commemoration marked on international calendars, the commemoration of the Kosovo war and its victims has gone largely unnoticed and remains marginal. Notably, even very liberal civil society groups in Serbia can find it challenging to engage in Kosovo-related activism. One barrier is Albanian language and culture, unlike in the commemoration of victims of the wars in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. In my conversations with activists on this topic, they often referenced colonial/post-colonial structures in Serb-Albanian relations and the racism they see embedded in those relations. This obviously pre-dates the conflicts of the 1990s and is an extension of the dynamics that existed during socialist Yugoslavia, reaching beyond just Serbs and Albanians.

Beyond annual commemorations: remembering Batajnica through alternative education and art So far, I have discussed commemorative actions in the context of street activism; but other forms of memory activism that engage with the production and dissemination of alternative knowledge are also finding their place in Belgrade. On a beautiful Saturday in early April 2019, I experienced one of these other forms of activism when I joined a guided tour to mass graves in Batajnica, organized by the Center for Public History (CPI) and

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led that day by Mirko Medenica.101 CPI places critical engagement with the past at the core of its activities, and aims to ‘promote the application of history for the benefit of society, in order to develop critical thinking about historical processes and build a culture of peace’. To that end, they utilize ‘an interdisciplinary approach and public history methodology, in order to bring the marginalised, insufficiently researched and obscured historical events of importance for today’s society closer to the public’.102 In practical terms, this means combatting historical revisionism, and the rehabilitation of war criminals and fascist collaborators, through research and education, as well as nurturing a culture of remembrance through commemorative practices and the marking of killing sites. While much of the work of CPI is focused on engagement with critical knowledge pertaining to World War II-era events and crimes, the Centre also engages in memory activism related to the history of the break-up of Yugoslavia and killing sites in the 1990s and is involved in memory of activism related to the wartime anti-war movement in Belgrade and in Serbia. CPI meets its mission by carrying out historical research, organizing public guided tours and study visits to historic sites, participating in public debates, and delivering seminars and workshops for teaching staff, students, activists, and the general public. Some members of the CPI team, now well into their thirties, are historians themselves; others were activists with or leaders in YIHR or other civil society organizations (while in their twenties), and thus have previous experience engaging in memory activism and in the commemorative street actions discussed above. In fact, in the time I spent learning about the actions and work of YIHR, I spoke at length with YHIR activists who are now part of CPI, some of whom planned and led those actions. They belong to the second generation, born at the end of or after Yugoslavia, while other CPI activists fall more squarely into the in-between generation, and as such bring a wealth of knowledge and experience from having worked more directly in peace activism. The public tour I joined in 2019 was offered a number of times that year and was titled ‘Crimes against Albanian civilians in Kosovo and mass graves in Batajnica’ (Zločini nad albanskim civilima na Kosovu i masovne grobnice u Batajnici).103 Our group that day, approximately fifteen people, gathered at 101 See the CPI website’s public tours pages for more on this tour, and others: https://www.cpi. rs/en/istorijske_ture/5. 102 See the CPI Mission, at: https://www.cpi.rs/en/o_nama/. 103 CPI records and documents many activities and makes them available to the public. One of the public tours led to Batajnica in 2019 is available on their YouTube channel, for example. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhnfKJd5iFA&t=45s&fbclid=IwAR3EEAeLnPHJrKkjDfK

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noon at a meeting point on Belgrade’s Zeleni Venac street, to take a bus to Batajnica. I noticed that most people in the group were familiar with each other; it included individuals from activist circles in town as well as teachers who cooperate with CPI to integrate the Centre’s educational activities into their classrooms. As is true in many actions of memory activism discussed in this book, the challenge lies in reaching more and new people and extending these circles of participation. We rode a public bus for less than an hour, to its last stop. Then, after a relatively short walk on a quiet side road leading to the police base, we reached our destination on its outer boundary, where a sign (in Serbian and English) indicated that the public could not pass beyond that point. In a shaded area, in this sleepy suburb of Belgrade, the tour thus began. Given that we could not access the site itself, we relied on our imaginations as Medenica, the tour leader, offered context for the decade of the 1990s and specifically the war in Kosovo, focusing on civilian victims in general, and those identified in the mass graves in Batajnica in particular.104 He began: ‘In 2019, twenty years after these crimes were committed … the past defines our present, and remains real and relevant … especially when it comes to the topic of Kosovo, which is so present in Serbia.’ And he went on, adding: ‘we chose to use public transportation to show you the proximity of this place to the city of which we are all residents.’ Images of the Batajnica mass graves can be viewed in the 2016 documentary film Dubina dva (Depth Two), for which the filmmakers were allowed a one-time entry to the site.105 Indeed, the discovery of mass graves in Serbia has been represented in a number of films; here, I discuss Dubina dva as well as the 2018 feature film Teret (The Load), both directed and written by Ognjen Glavonić. Glavonić, born in 1985 in Pančevo, belongs to the in-between generation, who experienced the wars of the 1990s as children and young adults, and attach some memories to this period. Dubina dva was produced in cooperation with the HLC as part of The XW6-x25p4dEe3PUhfj8cYHQz0aiKjQwFipUv1-n8. These and other CPI activities are announced on their Facebook page, including the 6 April 2019 event I attended. See https://www.facebook. com/events/258464398395072/. 104 Medenica relied on two main sources: transcripts from the ICTY and local war crimes trials, and the report of a working group in the Ministry of Interior, formed in 2001 after regime change in Serbia. At that time, according to him, there was the will to discuss these matters, even if only for a short period. This information is available to the public via online platforms. He also discussed the various numbers of victims cited and the fact that a lack of officially stated losses opens room for manipulation. 105 In 2015, BIRN also produced a documentary film on the topic, titled The Unidentified. It can be accessed on Vimeo at: https://vimeo.com/178172497.

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Batajnica Memorial Initiative, a project led by Sandra Orlović, then the organization’s executive director. When it was launched in 2013, the project aimed very high, hoping to establish a memorial site to victims identified in the Batajnica mass graves. I will discuss the Initiative more below; but first, the films. According to Orlović, Dubina dva was intended to confront not only silence about Batajnica and its absence from public memory, but also ‘the common tendency to easily forget our past, in general’ (conversation with the author, July 2015). Following its premiere at the Berlinale in February 2016, the film was first shown in Serbia later that year in the Beldocs International Film Festival in Belgrade. Afterwards, Glavonić and Orlović toured the country (and the region) showing the film and aiming to spark discussions and exchanges with the public.106 Their generational belonging was relevant in this context. Orlović, who was born in 1980, maintains that her generation is unable to ‘initiate or lead any discussions about the war’, having ‘received so many different interpretations about [it], not only in Kosovo but also in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia’. In our conversation, she emphasized the ‘need to use all our capacities to prepare the next generation to face this past’ (July 2015). In a 2018 interview, Glavonić also highlighted the question of generational belonging: ‘As I was working on Dubina dva, I came to realize that it is about my generation, and about what one generation has left to [the next one]’ (Radio Slobodna Evropa). In his feature film, Teret, Glavonić went even further in exploring the complex relations between the memories and legacies of the past as they relate to the generation that built Yugoslavia after World War II, the one that destroyed it in the wars of the 1990s, and his own generation. He explained, ‘I realized I needed a third generation … as I was asking what the generation that destroyed the country, and destroyed its values, inherited from their fathers and left to their children’ (Radio Slobodna Evropa 2018). Teret examines what Glavonić conceptualizes as the burden of silence. The title itself can be translated as ‘burden’ in English, but also as ‘load’, and The Load is the official English title of the film. This translation reflects the plot literally, as the main protagonist drives a truck from Kosovo to 106 See one of these showings at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-EdTtpTngw. From February to June 2016, more than 700 citizens of Serbia and Kosovo participated – in Kragujevac, Čačak, Subotica, Pančevo, Belgrade, Novi Pazar, and Niš, as well as in Pristina. Following each film showing, the organizers held a discussion with the audience that included the filmmakers, victims and their families, activists, students, journalists, artists, and more.

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Belgrade, with a load unknown to him, at least at the beginning of the film. Glavonić put it this way: The story is about a man who discovers the truth about what he is driving in his truck, and through that he discovers the truth about his job, and through that he discovers the truth about his country, about the system that gave him that job, and I want the audience to embark on that journey with him. The dramaturgy of the film is such that the audience, at the beginning, knows as much as he does, and is an accomplice.107

According to him, that load is the burden of silence, ‘from silence at the level of the family, to that of the entire society … a fear of telling the truth, of living in reality’.108 It is under this burden of silence that mass graves were unveiled in Serbia, and soon vanished into oblivion in the knowledge of the general public and in discourse about the 1990s and unwanted memories of the war in Kosovo. Street actions, public tours, and art are all ways that activists are attempting to push the discussion into new spaces and insisting on continued engagement with this silenced and unwanted past. The silencing of wartime crimes from public memory is practically assured when they are erased from the public sphere, and no landmarks have been placed in Batajnica to mark the location where hundreds of Kosovo Albanian victims were buried. Glavonić, who was given one day to film there while making Dubina dva, noted that ‘the absence of [those] monuments tells us something about the society we live in … with these films, I wanted to construct a monument, as I am well aware it will never be done’.109

The Batajnica Memorial Initiative Memory activists refer to data and evidence about events in Kosovo, and the number of civilian victims, as facts – available due to years of research conducted mostly by the ICTY and the HLC and resulting in the Kosovo Memory Book.110 But in general public discourse, these facts are still subject 107 From a 24 November 2018 interview on PRVA television in Serbia. Once available on YouTube, it appears the interview can no longer be accessed online. 108 Ibid. 109 Ibid. 110 Published by the HLC, the Kosovo Memory Book (2011) is available in print and online. The HLC describes it as a monument on which they have ‘inscribed the names of all those, who during the war, lost their lives or disappeared by force’ (5). See also Visoka 2016.

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to ignorance, manipulation, negation, or silencing. And as the years go by, the gap between narratives about the Kosovo war are growing wider. Given this absence of any monuments or public discourse in Serbia about war crimes in Kosovo, Orlović and the HLC developed the Batajnica Memorial Initiative to create small pockets of memory ‘honouring victims identified in the mass graves’ (conversation with the author, July 2015). While the HLC was focused mostly on legal work in the aftermath of the war, from representing victims in war crimes trials and reparations cases to conducting in-depth research, memory activism was also embedded in their projects and actions. After seven years of work towards publication of the Kosovo Memory Book, Orlović felt the HLC must engage not only with the documentation but also the commemoration of Kosovar Albanian victims killed in Kosovo and buried outside Belgrade. As she explained to me: I was fascinated with the fact that something so big and so important happened in the vicinity of our everyday lives. Batajnica is the second largest mass grave from the wars of the 1990s.111 It is next to a capital, which is also peculiar, and it’s in the middle of a state institution. And there were so many kids … and nothing happened [in regard to its memory]. From any angle you look at it, it is fascinating in a sad and horrible way. I wanted to do something about it. To make a documentary where the stories of these people could be told, and do oral history interviews with the families of the victims … I knew many of these people would be old and would have their own stories of searching for the truth … we often forget about this aspect of what families [of missing people] go through.112 (Interview by author, April 2020)

More than anything else, Orlović expressed the need to share with the public the knowledge that emerged from work on the Kosovo Memory Book, to expose the stories of victims and their families, and for a younger generation in Kosovo ‘to see that something else can come out of Serbia, too’ (interview by author, April 2020). The initial vision for the Batajnica Memorial Initiative thus involved a number of phases: the production of Dubina dva, an online platform featuring oral histories and personal stories, 111 Crni Vrh in Bosnia and Herzegovina is the largest. 112 HLC associate Milica Kostić explains that ‘in cases of missing persons, it is a specific crime that leaves serious consequences for the families of the missing, who are no longer even interested in criminal justice, as it is only important for them to find their missing family member’ (see Peščanik 2017).

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the collection of signatures from citizens in support of the erection of a monument in Batajnica, and finally, the organization of discussions and exchanges between youth from Serbia and Kosovo related to themes of remembering the past. The film, as detailed above, was completed in 2016; and in 2017, the HLC launched a campaign calling for the establishment of a memorial site ‘at the place where hundreds of bodies of innocent men, women and children were thrown into mass graves’ to ‘serve as a standing memorial to the victims and a contribution to the remembrance and spreading of the truth about the crimes, which should never recur’.113 The campaign, which invited the public to sign an online petition through which the HLC disseminated knowledge and information about the mass graves, coincided with the publication of Dossier: The Cover-Up of Evidence of Crimes during the War in Kosovo: The Concealment of Bodies Operation (Stjepanović 2017).114 For a variety of internal organizational reasons, the project did not reach its final stage. However, the website still exists as an online platform for education and commemoration. Initially meant only to be a repository and public face for the Initiative, the website now hosts the oral histories of some of the families whose loved ones were found in Batajnica, serving as a virtual memorial. ‘The Batajnica Memorial Initiative presents to the public facts and documents about the events related to the mass graves in Batajnica’, the website reads, adding that ‘all of us have an obligation to prevent these facts from being forgotten again and concealed from the younger generations’. At the time of our interview in 2020, Orlović had left the HLC, opting to expand her legal work outside of the Balkans. Reflecting back on the Initiative, she noted how her own generational belonging had influenced her work: I would place myself in both generations [of activists], especially when it comes to the Kosovo war. I remember the war. I participated in demonstrations when the NATO bombing started, with my fellow high school students, shouting ‘smrt Šiptarima’ (death to Albanians) … I took part in all of this … and pretty soon after, I shifted away from such nationalistic views. I therefore think I belong to both generations. I consider myself a 113 See the Batajnica Memorial Initiative website, at: https://www.batajnicamemorialinitiative. org/en/inicijativa. 114 For more, see Svetlana Lukić’s interview with the HLC’s Milica Kostić and Nemanja Stjepanović (Peščanik 2017).

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participant in these events, a supporter. I was an actor [in the demonstrations] … Later on, I tried to do something about all that. (Interview by author, April 2020)

Memory walks: marking and visiting sites of suppressed memory The public tour to Batajnica discussed above can be placed within a wider array of actions in a programme developed by CPI on the theme of suppressed memory (potisnuta sećanja). I first came across this intriguing theme in a call for participation circulated by CPI in spring 2019, featuring an email with the subject line, ‘Program of guided tours to places of “Suppressed memories”’ (Program javnih vođenja ‘Potisnuta sećanja’) – which invited university students in the social sciences to apply to take part in a ‘public class’ on cultures of memory related to the NATO bombing. CPI utilizes a ‘public history’ and ‘outdoor classroom’ methodology that asks participants to ‘bear witness to [events in the 1990s] as places of remembrance’.115 The brochure attached to the email (see Appendix 3) included an image of the Zašto? (Why?) monument in Tašmajdan Park, in the centre of Belgrade, which marks one of the most controversial incidents and suppressed memories of the late 1990s: the NATO bombing of the Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) building on 23 April 1999. The memorial plaque, behind which the RTS building is visible, some damage from the bombing left unrepaired, poses the question ‘Why?’ above the names of victims killed that night. For the families of these victims, the monument represents an open wound, and also an indictment of the state, which ordered their loved ones to stay in the building even when authorities had knowledge it was about to be bombed (see Bădescu 2016; Staničić 2021). The Zašto? monument is featured in CPI tours, among other Belgrade sites associated with the NATO bombings, as a way of bringing ‘to the public attention the historical facts and marginalised historical events which are crucial in understanding the social processes of today’. On their website, they explicitly argue that ‘the public in Serbia is exposed to the dominant narrative, which, in order to preserve policies based on nationalism, racism and militarisation, does not speak of responsibility, reconciliation and respect for the victims as key mechanisms in building a culture of peace in our societies’. Their interaction with ‘public history’ and use of ‘outdoor classrooms’ allows them to engage critically with history, initiate 115 For more on the CPI’s Suppressed Memories project, see https://www.cpi.rs/en/projekat/6/.

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public dialogue about the wars of the 1990s, and ‘reflect on the meanings of remembering and forgetting’.116 This ‘outdoor classrooms’ approach was apparently launched when a study seminar organized by the Memory Lab gathered in Serbia in October 2016,117 as shared by both Jasmina Lazović and Tamara Šmidling in an online forum celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Memory Lab in September 2020, where they presented their work at CPI with memories of the 1990s. The main focus of Lazović and Šmidling has been on suppressed and unwanted memories, and as I discussed earlier, I borrow these terms from their own reflections on years of activism, as a framework for my analysis of memory activism in Serbia in the 2020s. Another similar CPI project (2019-2020), titled ‘Voice for the Future, Not Echoes from the Past – Mapping the Memory Sites in Cities in Serbia’, concentrated on sites in smaller towns in Serbia. Through cooperation with these communities, and local insights and knowledge, a search was undertaken for unmarked places of memory related to the wars of the 1990s.118 The aim of CPI in this project was also to map monuments across Serbia, including those dedicated to non-Serbs, such as some in Sandžak. The 2018 Law on Monuments, discussed in Chapter 1, requires more knowledge and data than is currently available, and the organization views actions engaging with critical knowledge as key to developing a more strategic approach, well aware that there is currently no political framework in Serbia to support this work. As Šmidling put it during the Memory Lab forum: people from the left call us bone collectors, liberals who are digging graves … while our opponents from the right do not want to deal with these issues. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, it is much harder to negate that something did happen, and that certain sites exist. It is much easier here [in Serbia] and we need to find a different approach.119 116 Ibid. 117 The Memory Lab brings together educators, activists, scholars, and other professionals engaged with memory work, and provides a platform for exchange, cooperation, and critical understanding of history and remembrance in the Western Balkans and Western Europe. For more on the 2016 Memory Lab study visit to Serbia, see http://memorylab-europe.eu/workshop/ serbia-2016. 118 Šmidling described this work outside of Belgrade, for example in the city of Pančevo, which was home to important anti-war activism in the 1990s. There, researchers found various material evidence of this legacy, including badges, stickers, and flyers. 119 For more on the Memory Lab’s tenth anniversary forum, ‘“Don’t Know Much about History…”: The Challenges We Are Facing When Dealing with the Past in South Eastern and Western/Central Europe’, see http://memorylab-europe.eu/files/2020-09/10-years-memorylab-2020-program.pdf.

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It is in the development and implementation of their guided tours through unwanted memories of the 1990s in Serbia that the memory of activism becomes more visible in the work of CPI. The rich themes of their public tours range from the ‘anti-fascist struggle in Belgrade’, to the World War II-era Sajmište concentration camp, to the mass graves at Batajnica. There is also a tour ‘dedicated to the history of war resistance in Belgrade during the 1990s’ that especially focuses on the role of women’s anti-war resistance and feminist activism. In this tour, they share the legacy of women’s anti-war activism, making it approachable and accessible to younger generations. To do this, they ask participants to view their own city with new eyes, to see its hidden and silenced past of resistance, to acknowledge its civic actors, its civic history, and this legacy. This history is also unmarked, absent from monuments or street names. But these tours, as well as alternative calendars and alternative commemorations, create a space where counter-memories can be unveiled, absorbed, and grappled with. *** In my many conversations with activists from the first and second generation, the importance and nuanced positioning and contribution of the in-between generation was crystallized for me. These activists, who were born in the 1980s and experienced the wars of the 1990s as children or young adults (in the case of Kosovo), have confronted the burden of silence in their own way, as in the memory work of the CPI. To close the chapter, though, I return to the actions of YIHR memory activists in confronting another burden, through their engagement against the glorification of war crimes, using memory activism as protest.

Memory activism as protest: opposing the public glorification of war crimes Throughout my research, I observed various forms of memory activism that went beyond the commemoration of war crimes and their victims, including interventions by the second generation of memory activists in a number of public events in 2016 and 2017, where returned ICTY convicts were given a public stage. In these actions, YIHR activists demonstrated new and different tactics from those used by the first generation, and ones I hadn’t seen before. Their determination to interfere with ICTY convicts arose from a sense of obligation to protest the glorification of war crimes.

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These young activists could identify when they had begun to notice former generals and state officials returning to Serbia after ICTY convictions and receiving state-sponsored ceremonies to welcome them home.120 As Anita Mitić, the YIHR director at the time, explained: ‘We were literally witnessing the revision of history in front of our own eyes as war criminals were being welcomed back home as heroes … we felt we needed to send a message against it’ (interview by author, August 2016). In such an atmosphere, activists opted for more confrontational tactics when these released convicts began appearing in public to add their voices to election campaigns, promote personal memoirs,121 or openly deny or negate the crimes for which they were convicted. The first event young activists chose to obstruct took place at the Belgrade Youth Center (Dom Omladine) in April 2016, where a roundtable was scheduled to promote a book by former Bosnian Serb politician Momčilo Krajišnik, who was indicted and convicted by the ICTY for the persecution, deportation, and forced transfer of Bosniak and Croat civilians from ten Bosnian municipalities.122 Krajišnik was released in September 2013, having served two-thirds of a twenty-year sentence. That April day in Belgrade, a number of activists entered the public event, and as soon as Krajišnik was given the stage to speak, they started blowing whistles to prevent him from talking. Outside the building, another group of activists stood with banners reading ‘Dom zločinaca Beograda’ (Home of the Criminals of Belgrade), to protest that the event was being held in a location designated as a public space for youth. This was also the title of a press release issued by YIHR following the event (2016a), which declared that ‘Dom Omladine must not be a “Home of the criminals of Belgrade!” Not today, or any other day. This is why we will always react to oppose the rehabilitation of war criminals’. Later, in their newsletter, the group further clarified their argument and message: We consider the interrupting of the lecture and promotion of the book written by Momčilo Krajišnik, a convicted war criminal, and the protest 120 Activists I spoke with referred to the return of former Yugoslav Army off icial Vladimir Lazarević in December 2015 and of former deputy Prime Minister of Yugoslavia Nikola Šainović in September 2015 (see Ristic, 2015b). 121 Historian Vladimir Petrović (2018) analysed the literary output of people indicted or sentenced for war crimes in the ICTY and found over 100 books – autobiographies, studies, collection of documents, and even novels and poetry – had been generated by no fewer than 22 detainees in the ICTY since 1993. 122 For more, see ICTY documentation of the Krajišnik case (IT-00-39), at: https://www.icty. org/en/case/krajisnik.

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against the glorification of crimes our civic duty and the defense of the symbol which the Youth Center represents. Since its founding this institution has been the place of critical discussion and thought for the youth, and not a place of denial … and promotion of criminals. (YIHR 2016c, 38)

These kinds of actions were never planned far in advance and were ad hoc responses to what activists saw as concerning developments in Belgrade and across the country. What motivated them to be present at the Dom Omladine event was largely that it had been organized by a political party represented in the government, and not just by a civil society group. They felt it important to protest the fact that such an event was hosted in a public institution, and one they felt should represent the critical engagement and education of young people. Another event that activists attempted to obstruct took place in Beška, a small town in Vojvodina, where a January 2017 public debate organized by the local branch of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) featured Veselin Šljivančanin. A former officer in the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA), Šljivančanin was sentenced to ten years in prison for his role in the 1991 Ovčara farm massacre on the outskirts of Vukovar, during the war in Croatia. He was released early by the ICTY in July 2011. At an event held by the SNS in Vršac earlier that month, Šljivančanin told the audience that his prison sentence was the fault of authorities who came to power in Serbia after Milošević was ousted in 2000 (Zivanovic 2017a). In Beška, activists entered the lecture hall and blended into the audience, blowing their whistles as soon as Šljivančanin was set to begin his speech. Meanwhile, two activists stood in front of the speakers seated on stage and raised a banner that declared: Ratni zločinci da zaćute da bi se progovorilo o žrtvama! (War criminals should be silent so that victims can be spoken of!). The activists were attacked and beaten, and their banner was quickly destroyed.123 Activists in both Belgrade and Beška did not stop the events they protested, which continued as planned after their violent removal. Still, the event in Beška did mark an escalation in the struggle of this second generation of memory activists. It received broad public exposure and became a topic of debate in the media and on social networks. This was likely related to 123 For a description of the event from the point of view of YIHR activists, see the organization’s press release from 18 January 2017, ‘YIHR activists beaten up at the event of the Serbian Progressive Party’. Available at: http://www.yihr.rs/en/yihr-activists-beaten-up-at-the-event-of-the-serbianprogressive-party/.

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an official statement released by the SNS, asserting that ‘a group of fascist hooligans brutally disturbed the participants of the event … who were peacefully and respectfully trying to listen to the speaker (Šljivančanin)’ (N1 2017). In the days that followed, YIHR activists were labelled ‘foreign mercenaries’ and the group’s director, Anita Mitić, was accused in a local tabloid of receiving more than a million euros to ‘make chaos in Serbia’ (Zivanovic 2017b). In a statement regarding these accusations, Mitić underscored the generational belonging of activists in the group as a motivation behind their actions: Almost all of us are children of the nineties who watched their parents being beaten during the protests or mobilized to [the] army. Violence is the surrounding we grew up in, yet hoping and believing that things will change and that our parents weren’t beaten for no reason. However, two days ago, we were the ones that got beaten. (Youth Initiative for Human Rights 2017)

This perspective, as discussed in Chapter 1, reflects the legacies of the 1990s available to this generation, either as living memories of their childhood or as the prevalent memories of those years that shape social and political resignation or participation in Serbia today. The 1990s are indeed still very present, in life and in activism, especially in memory activism, as this chapter has shown. The return and glorif ication of convicted war criminals has fuelled ongoing innovations in the practices of memory activism among these younger activists, such as in their online engagement with the topic of war crimes and war criminals through use of the hashtag #NisuNašiHeroji (#NotOurHeroes). I analyse this hashtag in the next chapter as a generational mnemonic claim that echoes not only in Serbia but throughout the region, positioning the post-Yugoslav region as a region of memory. Still, YIHR activists continued to engage with the domestic question of convicted war criminals re-entering public life in Serbia, publishing a report prior to the June 2020 elections titled, War Criminals in the 2020 Election Campaign.124 Even as I write this chapter, the organization’s newsletter cautions that 124 Available as a PDF at: https://w w w.yihr.rs/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Warcriminals-elections-2020.pdf?utm_source=Pojedina%C4%8Dni+kontakti+%28ENG%2 9&utm_campaign=978967e0df-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_06_19_08_51_COPY_04&utm_ medium=email&utm_term=0_1b9b2cd1be-978967e0df-185083157.

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these burdens from the past threaten peace in the present: ‘We have been warning and reporting about the participation of war criminals in public life, first of all because we believe this is an insult to victims, but also a threat to peace in the region’ (Youth Initiative for Human Rights 2020). As I argue in the next chapter, their work now entails memory activism in the digital sphere, as well as greater engagement with memory of activism related to the civic legacies of anti-war activism inherited by this second generation of memory activists. These legacies shape their activism, and feature in it.

Bibliography In citations and references, authors’ names are spelled as they appear in the original publication. Athanasiou, Athena. 2017. Agonistic Mourning: Political Dissidence and the Women in Black. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Bădescu, Gruia. 2016. ‘“Achieved without Ambiguity?” Memorializing Victimhood in Belgrade after the 1999 NATO Bombing’. Südosteuropa 64 (4): 500-519. Batajnica Memorial Initiative. n.d. ‘Initiative’. https://www.batajnicamemorialinitiative.org/en/inicijativa (accessed 30 August 2021). Bieber, Florian. 2011. ‘Nationalist Mobilization and Stories of Serb Suffering: The Kosovo Myth from 600th Anniversary to the Present’. Rethinking History 6 (1): 95-110. Centre for Public History. n.d. https://www.cpi.rs/en/ (accessed 30 August 2021). Chadwick, Vince. 2016. ‘Twitter Mocks Proposed Monument to Slobodan Milošević’. Politico, 17 August. https://www.politico.eu/article/twitter-mocks-proposedmonument-to-slobodan-milosevic-sebia-belgrade/ (accessed 30 August 2021). Dragojlo, Sasa. 2015. ‘Belgrade Bans Rallies on Srebrenica Anniversary’. Balkan Insight, 10 July. http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/serbian-police-bannedall-saturday-rallies (accessed 30 August 2021). Dragojlo, Sasa. 2016. ‘Milošević’s Old Allies Celebrate His “Innocence”’. Balkan Insight, 16 August. https://balkaninsight.com/2016/08/16/milosevic-s-old-alliescelebrate-his-innocence-08-16-2016/ (accessed 30 August 2021). Erjavec, Karmen, and Zala Volčič. 2007. ‘The Kosovo Battle: Media’s Recontextualization of the Serbian Nationalistic Discourses’. The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 12 (3): 67-86. Fridman, Orli. 2006. ‘Alternative Voices in Public Urban Space: Serbia’s Women in Black’. Ethnologia Balkanica 10: 291-303.

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Fridman, Orli. 2013. ‘Structured Encounters in post-Conflict/Post-Yugoslav Days: Visiting Belgrade and Prishtina’. In Transitional Justice and Civil Society in the Balkans, edited by Olivera Simić and Zala Volčič, pp. 143-162. New York: Springer. Fridman, Orli. 2020. ‘Peace Formation from Below: ‘The “mirëdita, dobar dan!” Festival as an Alternative to Everyday Nationalism’. Nations and Nationalism 26 (4): 447-460. Glavonjić, Zoran. 2010. ‘Mladi traže procesuiranje zločina protiv Albanaca na Kosovu’. Radio Slobodna Evropa, 25 March. https://www.slobodnaevropa.org/a/ srbija_zlocini_batajnica_inicijativa_mladih_za_ljudska_prava/1993692.html (accessed 30 August 2021). Gutman, Yifat. 2017. Memory Activism: Reimagining the Past for the Future in IsraelPalestine. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. Humanitarian Law Center. 2011. The Kosovo Memory Book, 1998. Belgrade. Humanitarian Law Center. 2015. Dossier: Operation Reka. Belgrade. Jansen, Stef. 2003. ‘“Why Do They Hate Us?”: Everyday Serbian Nationalist Knowledge of Muslim Hatred’. Journal of Mediterranean Studies 13 (2): 215-237. N1. 2017. ‘SNS: Grupa huligana prekinula tribinu u Beški’, 17 January. https://rs.n1info. com/vesti/a221952-sns-grupa-huligana-prekinula-tribinu-u-beski/ (accessed 30 August 2021). Nikolic, Ivana. 2015a. ‘Serbia Mourns NATO Bombing Victims’. Balkan Insight, 25 March. https://balkaninsight.com/2015/03/25/serbia-won-t-forget-natovictims/ (accessed 30 August 2021). Nikolic, Ivana. 2015b. ‘Tuzla Massacre Commemorated on Streets of Serbia’. Balkan Insight, 25 May. http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/serbia-honours-tuzlamassacre-victims-1 (accessed 30 August 2021). Nikolic, Ivana. 2016a. ‘Serbia Remembers NATO Bombing Casualties’. Balkan Insight, 24 March. https://balkaninsight.com/2016/03/24/serbia-remembersnato-bombing-victims-03-24-2016/ (accessed 30 August 2021). Nikolic, Ivana. 2016b. ‘Twitter Activists Mock Milošević Monument Proposal’. Balkan Insight, 16 August. http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/twitter-activistsmock-plan-to-erect-monument-to-milosevic-08-16-2016 (accessed 30 August 2021). Peščanik. 2017. ‘Toponimi državnog zločina’, 8 February. https://pescanik.net/ toponimi-drzavnog-zlocina-2/ (accessed 30 August 2021). Petrović, Vladimir. 2018. ‘The ICTY Library: War Criminals as Authors, Their Works as Sources’. International Criminal Justice Review 28 (4): 333-348. Radio Slobodna Evropa. 2018. ‘Intervju nedelje: Ognjen Glavonić’, 22 December. https://www.slobodnaevropa.org/a/29671020.html (accessed 30 August 2021). Radio Slobodna Evropa. 2019. ‘U Nišu obeleženo 20 godina od početka bombardovanja’, 24 March. https://www.slobodnaevropa.org/a/29839440.html (accessed 30 August 2021).

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Rašuo, Ognjen. 2016. ‘Zašto Milošević ne zaslužuje spomenik u Srbiji’. Vice, 18 August. http://www.vice.com/rs/read/o-milosevicu-spomenicima-presudama-i-neljudima (accessed 30 August 2021). Richmond, Oliver P. 2013. ‘Failed Statebuilding versus Peace Formation’. Cooperation and Conflict 38 (3): 378-400. Ristic, Marija. 2015a. ‘Candle-Lit Srebrenica Memorial Held in Belgrade’. Balkan Insight, 11 July. http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/belgrade-lightscandels-for-srebrenica-victims (accessed 30 August 2021). Ristic, Marija. 2015b. ‘Serbia Welcomes Freed Yugoslav Army War Criminal’. Balkan Insight, 3 December. http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/yugoslav-armywar-criminal-arrives-to-serbia-12-03-2015 (accessed 30 August 2021). Rudic, Filip. 2019a. ‘Serbia Marks NATO Bombing Anniversary as Nationalist Protest’. Balkan Insight, 25 March. https://balkaninsight.com/2019/03/25/serbia-marksnato-bombing-anniversary-as-nationalists-protest/ (accessed 30 August 2021). Rudic, Filip. 2019b. ‘Serbian Activists Commemorate Kosovo Albanian War Victims’. Balkan Insight, 26 March. https://balkaninsight.com/2019/03/26/ serbian-activists-commemorate-kosovo-albanian-war-victims/ (accessed 30 August 2021). Staničić, Aleksandar. 2021. ‘Media Propaganda vs Public Dialogue: The Spatial Memorialization of Conflict in Belgrade after the 1999 NATO Bombing’. The Journal of Architecture 26 (3): 371-393. Stjepanović, Nemanja. 2017. Dossier: The Cover-Up of Evidence of Crimes during the War in Kosovo: The Concealment of Bodies Operation. Belgrade: Humanitarian Law Center. Stojanovic, Milica. 2019. ‘Serbian Ministry Promotes Book Denying Bosnian War Crime’. Balkan Insight, 6 November. https://balkaninsight.com/2019/11/06/ serbian-ministry-promotes-book-denying-bosnian-war-crime/ (accessed 30 August 2021). Štetin Lakić, Jovana. 2016. ‘Dačić i Mrkonjić za spomenik Miloševiću’. N1, 15 August. https://rs.n1info.com/vesti/a185306-dacic-i-mrkonjic-za-spomenik-milosevicu/ (accessed 30 August 2021). Visoka, Gezim. 2016. ‘Arrested Truth: Transitional Justice and the Politics of Remembrance in Kosovo’. Journal of Human Rights Practice 8 (1): 62-80. Youth Initiative for Human Rights. 2016a. ‘Dom zločinaca Beograda’. Press release, 15 April. https://www.yihr.rs/bhs/dom-zlocinaca-beograda/ (accessed 30 August 2021). Youth Initiative for Human Rights. 2016b. ‘Response to President Nikolic: Defence of Democratic and European Serbia, Not Vandalism’. Press release, 25 August. https://www.yihr.rs/en/response-to-president-nikolic-defence-of-democraticand-european-serbia-not-vandalism/ (accessed 30 August 2021).

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4

Hashtag Memory Activism Digital Memory Practices and Online Commemorations Abstract This chapter examines the growing prevalence of digital memory activism and online commemorations. It introduces the #hashtag #memoryactivism framework as an analytical approach to studying the commemoration of contested pasts on social media, utilizing hashtags as a mnemonic practice. By studying hashtags used by memory activists in Serbia, each related to unwanted memories of the wars of the 1990s, the chapter traces activists’ use of online platforms to engage with forbidden ideas or disputed memories and terminologies. The ways in which the hashtag is being thoughtfully appropriated by activists as part of their memory work in various campaigns is discussed, as is hashtag memory activism as a more nuanced form of both hashtag activism and of memory activism. Keywords: #hashtag #memoryactivism, online commemorations, digital memory activism, digital mnemonic practice

This chapter examines the growing prevalence of digital memory activism and online commemorations on social media, emblematic of what Hoskins calls the ‘connective turn – the sudden abundance, pervasiveness, and immediacy of digital media’ (2018a, 1). I propose the #hashtag #memoryactivism framework as an analytical approach to studying digital memory activism and online commemorations, and define hashtag memory activism as the online commemoration of contested pasts on social media utilizing hashtags as a mnemonic practice. Thus, hashtag memory activism is a mnemonic tactic that enables and even strengthens the creation of alternative platforms for remembrance, through the sharing and disseminating of alternative knowledge about a contested past in the midst of or after conflict. I examine the ways memory activists use existing online platforms, particularly social media applications such as Twitter (as well as Facebook and YouTube), to

Fridman, Orli, Memory Activism and Digital Practices after Conflict: Unwanted Memories. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463723466_ch04

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innovate and complement their existing ongoing mnemonic practices. Indeed, hashtag memory activism, as well as online commemorations, are never isolated online actions but appear in connection to local memory politics unfolding onsite, demonstrating the inseparability of digital communications from the practices and processes of remembering (Merrill et al. 2020). The use of hashtags as a mnemonic practice, and one that has become most common among the younger (second) generation of memory activists, is my focus here. I take a special interest in these practices in societies emerging from periods of war and violence, especially where spaces of official denial and silencing of the past prevail, and I therefore discuss the ways memory activists deploy hashtags not only to mobilize people to join them in street actions but, to an even greater extent, as a platform to share and spread alternative knowledge (counter-memories) about difficult and unwanted histories. In such cases, social media allows for such knowledge sharing outside of state channels and beyond its hegemonic mnemonic framing of memories of the past. Hashtag memory activism has become prevalent in recent years as memory activists feature hashtags in their campaigns. This facilitates interplay among the local, regional, and transnational dynamics of remembrance, and between online and onsite commemorations (Fridman and Ristić 2020), making social media platforms yet another space where alternative counter-memory is disseminated. Social media may also serve as a liminal space where the distinction between online and offline sometimes blurs, where mnemonic actions, demands, or pleas are promoted. By studying a number of hashtags used by memory activists in Serbia, taking each as a case study related to unwanted memories of the wars of the 1990s, I trace the use of hashtags and online platforms by these activists, to engage with (locally) forbidden ideas or commemorations and with disputed memories and terminologies. I show how the hashtag is being thoughtfully appropriated by activists as part of their memory work in various campaigns and discuss hashtag memory activism as a more nuanced form of both hashtag activism and of memory activism.

#Hashtag #memoryactivism In offering a framework for the study of online memory activism and online commemorations, I approach the analysis of the hashtag as not only a symbol but also as a mnemonic practice. As an analytical framework, #hashtag #memoryactivism underlines the ways in which memory activists utilize

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hashtags to engage with banned commemoration and outlawed ideas, with contested events and terminologies, with silenced and unwanted memories, and with concealed pasts. Exploring hashtag memory activism thus contributes to the understanding and even the organization of the range and taxonomies of mnemonic practices adopted by memory activists in these times of hyperconnectivity (Hoskins 2018a). The #hashtag #memoryactivism framework considers the genealogies and use of hashtags in the context of memory politics and mnemonic actions from below, during and after conflict. The hash symbol (#) is a way of ‘tagging’ a conversation within a social media platform. As Bonilla and Ross put it, a hashtag ‘serves as an indexing system’ in both a real and semiotic sense (2015, 5). Hashtags make it possible to quickly retrieve current news on real-time events, functioning as a sort of filter. They also enable users to ‘indicate a meaning’, or ‘locate texts within a specific conversation’ (Bonilla and Rosa 2015, 5). Hoskins notes, too, that in new media ecologies, hashtags are inherently archival (2018b, 86). As archives are liberated from institutional memory keepers and their archival spaces, ‘the new modus operandi of everyday communication – the link, like, message, tweet, email, text – are archived into a chain of media-memory’ (Hoskins 2018b, 86). By creating these chains, as I show in the discussion below, memory activists use new media platforms, and the hashtag, to expand and enrich their actions, though never as a substitute for onsite actions. In this way, the hashtag has become part of their struggles with unwanted pasts and their engagement with sharing, disseminating, and preserving alternative knowledge. Through this lens, the internet is viewed as a cultural space in which meaningful human interactions occur (Markham 2018, 657) and where frameworks are constructed for digitally mediated connective action (Bennett and Segerberg 2012) and mediated mobilization (Lievrouw 2011). In a digital ecology of participatory media, the key to understanding emerging online mnemonic practices is participation itself. And by approaching the hashtag as a field site, as a recent analysis of digital protests and digital activism proposes (Bonilla and Rosa 2015), online social platforms emerge as important sites of activism – akin to a digital ‘street’. Undeniably, hashtag activism has become a key category of analysis, with some of the most prominent examples appearing in campaigns against racial and gender injustice, including #Ferguson, #BlackLivesMatter, and #MeToo. Hashtag activism allows us to frame and index discursive protests on social media by using a hashtagged word, phrase, or sentence (Yang 2016). As opposed to the routine use of hashtags, their use in activism has a recognizable narrative form, with a beginning, a crisis/conflict, and an end (Clark as cited

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in Yang 2016, 14). In many instances of hashtag activism, hashtags appear as complete sentences rather than single words, and express objections, refusals, or imperatives to take immediate action.125 As Yang highlights, these hashtags also tend to challenge narratives in mainstream media (2016, 15). Turning to hashtag activism as an innovative online practice in memory activism, and as a mnemonic tactic, I trace the appearance of hashtag memory activism and its prominence in online commemorations and online commemorative practices by examining cases in which hashtags are among the mnemonic practices used by memory activists. In this age of online connectivity, social media platforms thus become another site of memory contestation and the dissemination of alternative knowledge about the past. My analysis of the hashtags deployed by memory activists regards these activists as digital media users, who are characterized by their ability to produce content, communicate back (Merrin 2014), and join in the process of shaping and engaging with memories and images of the past by tweeting, retweeting, sharing, and commenting (Watson and Chen 2016). Through social network analysis, I explore how social media platforms have become increasingly important to memory activists as sites of engagement with their audiences, as a means of promoting campaigns (which are frequently known by a hashtag that frames and names a debate about the past), and as a mnemonic practice used in local, regional, and even transnational battles of memory. Recognizing the limitations of the internet, however, it is important to place hashtag memory activism in a broader context. Hashtags can fall out of fashion or may be relevant only in a given moment. Still, they can also bring the unspoken to the surface, voicing what has been repressed, silenced, and denied in mnemonic struggles. In what follows, I explore some of the hashtags used by memory activists in Serbia, related to memories of the break-up of Yugoslavia and the wars of the 1990s. This analysis also sheds light on the ways that this work of memory activists from Serbia and other former Yugoslav states forms a region of memory.

#Sedamhiljada: from a hashtag to a banned commemoration The hashtag #sedamhiljada (#seventhousand) was first used by Dušan Mašić, a Belgrade-born media professional and former B92 journalist, three months 125 For example, #BlackLivesMatter, #JeNeSuisPasCharlie, #MuslimsAreNotTerrorirsts (see Yang 2016, 14), or the hashtag that emerged in 2020 during mass protests following the killing of George Floyd, #ICantBreathe.

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Figure 5 Tweets by Dušan Mašić on 17 April 2015 (left), and on 18 April 2015 (right) with the hashtag #sedamhiljada

ahead of the twentieth anniversary of Srebrenica in 2015. On Twitter, Mašić posed the question: ‘Could we gather 7000 people and lie down in front of the Serbian parliament in July on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Srebrenica?’ (17 April 2015), alongside an image of an action that had taken place in Zagreb the previous day, in memory of 147 students killed in a terror attack at Garissa University in Eastern Kenya (see Figure 5).126 Mašić followed up the next day, asking, ‘Will 7000 of us lay down in front of the Assembly …? Sign up for #sedamhiljada’. Responding to Mašić, other Twitter users began tweeting the hashtag #sedamhiljada and engaging with his open invitation to register for the event. Over the following days and weeks, people used the hashtag as they registered for the action, or retweeted information about and media coverage of Mašić’s appeal. For Mašić himself, the hashtag and call to action were inspired by his desire to offer a different view of Serbia. As he put it at the time, ‘we can send the world two images: those of us who are lying down, or those in Belgrade selling t-shirts with the image of Karadžić and Mladić’

126 The attack in Kenya took place on 2 April 2015, generating the hashtag #147notjustanumber in response (see Kozlowska 2015). The student action in Zagreb took place on 16 April 2015, the day before Mašić’s tweet.

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(Živić 2015). A number of years later, when I interviewed Mašić, he discussed the #sedamhiljada hashtag with me in more detail, explaining that he had ‘wanted to show that we, as a society, can remember these war crimes … that we can accept and live with that, and empathize with people from Bosnia who suffered due to whoever did this in our name’ (interview by author, April 2019).127 Many activists in Serbia came to know about events that took place in Srebrenica in July 1995, and especially details such as the numbers and identities of victims, relatively late in life, as they had been subject to the prevailing narratives of denial regarding memory of the wars of the 1990s. For some, taking part in the #sedamhiljada campaign was an important opportunity to engage with alternative knowledge and data otherwise buried in silence and denial. Acknowledging and expressing empathy for the victims by using the hashtag on social media, as well as attending the associated event, offered an alternative platform for remembrance and for critical engagement with this memory. Mašić had promoted the campaign online hoping it would bring the issue of the Srebrenica genocide closer to the mainstream in Serbia, where he described it as ‘so far behind closed doors or [discussed] among NGOs only’ (interview by author, April 2019). He saw social media as the means rather than the end, which was an onsite gathering in front of the National Assembly in Belgrade’s city centre. The concept for the street action was to gather 7,000 people to represent the approximate number of victims of the Srebrenica genocide who had been forensically identified through DNA by that time,128 to commemorate their lives two decades after the massacre. Following Mašić’s initial call on Twitter, activists from the Youth Initiative for Human Rights (YIHR) in Belgrade offered to coordinate the event he proposed; but in response, far-right organizations including Dveri and Zavetnici, as well as members of the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRS), announced plans to hold a counter-gathering. Consequently, the government banned all public gatherings in Belgrade on the twentieth anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide (11 July 2015), citing security risks and the need to ‘guarantee peace and security’ (Dragojlo 2015). Four years later, during our interview, Mašić reflected back, noting that he had been ‘very naive to think [the action] was possible, or that Serbia was ready 127 Mašić passed away suddenly in January 2022, aged 58, shortly before this book went to press. 128 At that time, in April  2015, 6,241 identif ied v ictims had been buried at the Potočari Memorial site near Srebrenica (see https://balkaninsight.com/2015/04/03/ more-than-sixty-srebrenica-victims-identified/)

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for something like that’. He added that, ‘living in my digital bubble, I did not realize how diff icult this would be, and how unprepared we were … Any process of reconciliation seems farther away from us now; from post-conflict, we have become a pre-conflict society again’ (interview by author, April 2019). In 2015, despite the ban on public gatherings, about 200 activists showed up in response to calls on social media to mobilize for an improvised commemorative event.129 They lit candles and placed numbers on the ground representing the named victims killed in July 1995 (Ristic 2015). A stencil graffiti that appeared after that night’s ad hoc commemoration is still visible on some buildings in the city centre at the time of this writing. It reads ‘11.07.1995 #sedamhiljada’ inside a circle of red hands (see Figure 6) and resembles the logo designed for the event by well-known artist and graphic designer Mirko Ilić. That day, Mašić had urged his followers to use the logo as their profile picture ‘because of the victims of Srebrenica’ (see Figure 7). According to some of the YIHR activists involved in the #sedamhiljada action, the red hands of the logo symbolized blood, reflecting the message of these activists that ‘numbers are important if people are important’ (interview by author, September 2016). While it is notable that graff iti inspired by this action remains on buildings in downtown Belgrade, more importantly, younger memory activists in the city have since repeated this same commemorative event annually, in memory of the victims of Srebrenica. In doing so, they have established a new commemorative ritual. As discussed in the previous chapters, this 11 July commemoration demonstrates the continuation of actions of the first generation of memory activists in Serbia, the Women in Black, who established 10 July as the date of their annual alternative commemorative event for victims of Srebrenica, marked on their alternative calendar and in street action. This generational shift in Serbia and new mnemonic claims by activists, as manifested in this case of hashtag memory activism followed by onsite commemoration, has evolved and crystallized over time, as I discuss below. 129 As consequence, Anita Mitić, YIHR director at the time, was charged in early 2016 with a misdemeanour. The Interior Ministry alleged that she broke the law by organizing a public gathering without previously alerting the authorities (see Nikolic 2016). During her February 2016 appearance in court, she received considerable support from activists from all generations, who stood outside in solidarity with her, holding banners with the hashtag #NijeOnaNegoJa (#ItWasn’tHerItWasMe). These activists then posted images on social media of themselves holding those banners, with the same hashtag (see Avramovic 2016).

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Figure 6 Graffiti that appeared in Belgrade after the #sedamhiljada commemorative event was banned

Photograph by the author

Figure 7 The logo designed by Mirko Ilić for the #sedamhiljada campaign

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#NisuNašiHeroji: generational mnemonic claims and the postYugoslav space as a region of memory After almost 25 years of judicial work and activities, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) held its closing ceremony on 21 December 2017. Its multifaceted mandate, now well studied and documented, has unquestionably left behind a significant judicial and forensic legacy. Yet one less expected and less researched legacy of the institution has been the return of ICTY convicts who have completed their sentences (or were granted early release) to former Yugoslav states, where many continue to be received as heroes. In fact, in the introduction to their co-edited 2018 editorial for a special issue of International Criminal Justice Review titled ‘ICTY Celebrities: War Criminals Coming Home’, Hola and Simić assert that ‘some but certainly not all ICTY defendants were not considered criminals, outcasts, or deviants but were received and transformed into celebrities back home after their trials’ (287). Referring to this phenomenon as yet another legacy of the ICTY, they highlight how some who were tried in The Hague were ‘welcomed by cheering crowds in their respective communities’ when they returned to the region (Hola and Simić 2018, 287). In Serbia, as well as in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo, prominent convicts, tried in both the ICTY and local courts, have even reclaimed a role in public life. It was this fact that motivated the younger generation of memory activists in Serbia to begin engaging with returning convicts, attempting to obstruct their public appearances and protesting their rehabilitation and normalization (see Chapter 3). In a range of actions, these activists – members of YIHR – began using the hashtag #NisuNašiHeroji (#NotOurHeroes) to accompany social media posts and onsite memory activism. The hashtag itself denoted the generational belonging of the activists who deployed it, through their choice of the word Naši (Our). As a regional NGO that was first formed in Belgrade in 2004 and now has branches in Pristina (Kosovo), Zagreb (Croatia), Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina), and Podgorica (Montenegro), this generational claim forms a region of memory in the successor states of the former Yugoslavia related to contested and difficult memories of the wars of the 1990s. For this second generation of memory activists, these memories have been inherited, which is why they argue that they are ‘Too young to remember, determined never to forget’. And it is in that spirit that they insist ICTY convicts are not, and cannot be, the heroes of their generation. On 10 December 2017, International Human Rights Day, as the ICTY was preparing to close its doors following a verdict in the trial of Ratko Mladić,

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a YIHR post on Twitter showed a composite of five pictures of their activists standing in well-known locations in the capitals of five post-Yugoslav states, holding banners with the hashtag #NisuNašiHeroji (or, in Kosovo, the equivalent in Albanian). The post read: ‘In 2018, the Initiative will continue to fight for a society in which the perpetrators of war crimes are not role models, and denial is not considered an act of ultimate patriotism. On this Human Rights Day, we once again say from the entire region, [war] criminals are #NotOurHeroes’ (see Figure 8). In conversations I had with students from across the region about the use of hashtags, and #NisuNašiHeroji in particular, one student from Mostar (in Bosnia and Herzegovina) who was born in 1998, after the war there, said it resonated with her immediately as it was clear to her that ‘not our heroes’ was a response to a phrase she had often encountered: ‘a hero, not a war criminal’ (heroj a ne zločinac) (interview by author, June 2020). Growing up in Mostar during the years in which Ante Gotovina was tried at the ICTY (and appealed his conviction), she had seen this phrase in endless examples of graffiti across the city meant to show support to Gotovina and others accused and even convicted of war crimes.130 Even though she did not see herself as politically active, she found the hashtag and the way YIHR activists engaged with it a powerful act of recognizing crimes committed by one’s own group. According to the #hashtag #memoryactivism framework I have proposed here, the use of the #NisuNašiHeroji hashtag reflects a number of processes at play among young activists. For one, they are using new practices in online memory activism, taking advantage of current media ecologies and the rise of hashtag activism. This is a sign of their generational innovation, changes in their mnemonic positions and claims, and their development of new mnemonic praxis. While the first generation of memory activists in Serbia, especially the Women in Black, hold silent vigils commemorating victims of war crimes committed in the 1990s and assert their mnemonic claim, ‘Not in my name’ (see Chapter 2); this second generation of activists has used hashtag memory activism to make their generational claims more visible and public, and to position their struggle as not only national but regional. They do so by repeating the same message and hashtag, in online and onsite actions, throughout the region. 130 Gotovina fought in the war in Croatia and was indicted by the ICTY in 2001 for war crimes, mostly related to Operation Storm in 1995. After years in hiding, he was captured and stood trial in 2005. In November 2012, his conviction was overturned following appeal and he was released. See the ICTY case information sheet for the “Operation Storm” case, No. IT-06-90, at: https://www.icty.org/x/cases/gotovina/cis/en/cis_gotovina_al_en.pdf.

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Figure 8 Twitter post by YIHR Serbia, 10 December 2017

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These actions vary and tend to include different balances of online and onsite activism, but no matter their form, the hashtag is always used. This was true in Zagreb when activists protested the unveiling of a monument to late former Croatian president Franjo Tudjman on the nineteenth anniversary of his death, on 10 December 2018, holding a sign featuring the #NisuNašiHeroji hashtag (Vladisavljevic 2018). In this case, activists from the Zagreb YIHR branch were joined by a number of other groups from Croatian civil society. Similarly, after a convicted war criminal was appointed to a top-level position in Kosovo, YIHR activists in Pristina and Belgrade released a call to government officials to refrain from allowing convicted war criminals to hold public positions in Kosovo and Serbia, titled ‘War Criminals Have No Place in Government!’ (2019).131 ‘Persons who committed war crimes should stay away from state institutions’, it read, characterizing the appointment as a sign of the government’s ‘lack of seriousness and lack of … commitment to justice, reconciliation and peace’ (Youth Initiative for Human Rights 2019). I will revisit the role of memory activists in the formation of a region of memory activism in Chapter 5. Inspired by the mnemonic claim of the #NisuNašiHeroji hashtag, actions such the regional examples highlighted above – which disseminate otherwise silenced knowledge about the wars of the 1990s – have brought forth new discussions among young activists as they seek to broaden their circles and engage more people born after 2000. In this process, new questions are raised, especially as this generation searches for their own heroes. In one of my conversations with YIHR activist Marko Milosaljević, who was born in 1991 in the central Serbian town of Čačak and now resides in Belgrade, I asked, ‘Who are your heroes?’ and he replied, with no hesitation: ‘Bekim Fehmiu or Danilo Kiš … and also the generation of intellectuals and activists from Serbia who stood up openly, during the 1990s, against the break-up of Yugoslavia and against the wars, as nationalism was rising throughout the region’ (interview by author, June 2019). Bekim Fehmiu, a Yugoslav actor who retired in the late 1980s to protest the anti‐Albanian actions of state authorities, is commemorated annually in the Mirëdita dobar dan! festival in Belgrade, co-organized since 2014 by activists from 131 Sylejman Selimi, who served over five years of a seven-year sentence for crimes committed in Kosovo in 1998 and 1999, was appointed as an advisor to the Prime Minister of Kosovo, Ramush Haradinaj. In their condemnation of the appointment, YIHR activists indirectly referenced #NisuNašiHeroji, noting that political leaders had ‘described [Selimi] as a hero’ and reiterating that ‘young people from Kosovo and Serbia will always be against glorification of war criminals in both states’ (2019).

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Pristina and Belgrade as a platform for peace formation (Fridman 2020).132 Milosaljević also referred to Yugoslav writer Danilo Kiš, who explored themes of totalitarianism, nationalism, and belonging. But, in times of uncertainty, he explained, his generation of activists looks especially to well-known figures in the first generation of activists in Serbia, such as the founder of the Women in Black, Staša Zajović, or the founder of the Center for Cultural Decontamination (CZKD), Borka Pavićević (who passed away in 2019). And though it is less well known among younger activists, Milosaljević said he also takes inspiration from the Belgrade Circle – an NGO established in the early 1990s by intellectuals who were united in their opposition to the wars. When they need positive images of activism and its potentialities, it is clear that younger activists often find it in the generation of activists before them, who openly fought against the wars of the 1990s as they were unfolding. In 2018, YIHR engaged directly with the question of who should and should not be seen as a wartime hero when it urged the city of Belgrade to commemorate the legacy of former Yugoslav Army General Vladimir (Vlado) Trifunović. General Trifunović commanded a unit in the town of Varaždin in Croatia when the war broke out there in 1991, and disobeyed orders from Belgrade to fight Croatian forces, instead negotiating safe passage for his troops. He was convicted of treason by the Serbian government in 1995, and though he served only one year of a seven-year sentence, the verdict against him was not overturned until 2010 (Milekic 2017). In anti-war circles, Trifunović is hailed as a hero for having saved lives, and has become a symbol of the senselessness of the 1990s.133 In their call for the construction of a monument in his honour, YIHR activists, most of whom were born well after Trifunović’s fateful choice in 1991, framed their mnemonic demand in generational terms, explicitly citing their aim to ‘help younger generations remember those who saved lives and were the embodiment of honesty and human dignity at the worst of times’. They emphasized that a monument to the General ‘would symbolize the start of cultivating a culture of 132 Fehmiu was born in Sarajevo, grew up in Prizren, and was educated in Belgrade. The organizers of the festival chose to honour Fehmiu because ‘he was a rare individual, who in his life [and in his tragic death] encompassed a joint legacy for both countries and societies’ (quoted in Fridman 2020, 455), referring to Kosovo and Serbia. 133 In January 2017, following his death, a commemoration was held at the CZKD, titled ‘Man against Evil: General Vlado Trifunović (1938-2017): What Do We (Not) Know about the Hero?’ (Čovek protiv zla: General Vlado Trifunović (1938-2017): Šta (ne) znamo o heroju?). All the speakers that made up the panel at the event were from the first generation of memory activists. A video of their discussion is available on the CZKD YouTube channel, at: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?feature=youtu.be&v=t_emesNKs_Q&fbclid=IwAR0dd31iJjtmvhIeBwELK3bEUM1qlfIu BYa1WQiRqLBdhY9z_q4K3hA4pUw.

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remembrance, one where respect for victims and peace would be cherished as the ultimate value, and where those who protected these values would be celebrated as the true heroes of our society’ (Youth Initiative for Human Rights 2018). As part of their effort to retrieve silenced segments of history from oblivion, YIHR ended their statement by declaring: we wish to create in the near future a public space where convicted and proven war criminals … will be replaced with stories of the unknown heroes of Yugoslavia’s bloody disintegration. Stories not only of Vlado Trifunović, but that of Miroslav Milenković, Vladimir Živković, and countless others about whom the Serbian public knows little. (YIHR 2018)

These figures became affiliated with the anti-war legacy in the 1990s, and memories of their resistance have been passed on by the first generation of activists in Serbia to the next. The names of both Milenković and Živković have come to symbolize acts of personal revolt: Živković by driving an armoured vehicle to Belgrade (from Šid) and parking it in front of parliament, and Milenković for his tragic decision to take his own life rather than choose a ‘side’ in the war. Milenković, who committed suicide on 29 September 1991, is thus the most traumatic and emblematic of these cases (Aleksov 2012, 122-123). As Nataša Kandić wrote: Miroslav Milenkovic, a father of two and a reservist from Gornji Milanovac, found himself between two groups of mobilised reservists at the cattle market in the Vojvodinian town of Sid. Milenkovic was faced with a choice – to join the group which had laid down their guns and refused to go to the front, or to join the group preparing to set off for the first battle in that war at Tovarnik, Croatia. Miroslav Milenkovic would not choose. He killed himself. (Kandic 2000)

Twenty years later, Bojan Aleksov (2012), who was an anti-war activist in the 1990s, wrote in his reflections that Milenković, like Trifunović, had become ‘a symbol of the senselessness of war’ (123). He explained that ‘during daily vigils for the war dead’, held by activists in Belgrade as the wars raged, ‘anti-war activists collected messages (epitaphs) dedicated to [Milenković] and published them as the first anti-war book’ (ibid.). The book was titled Grobnica za Miroslava Milenkovića (The tomb of Miroslav Milenković). As I discuss below, when the War in Serbia (Rat u Srbiji) website was launched in 2020, these individuals and their anti-war actions were again

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brought to light.134 The existence of individuals in this wartime generation who stood against the wars and nationalism, and against the mandatory draft, remains an important legacy for younger memory activists in Serbia. Learning about the actions of these resisters in the 1990s is at the core of memory of activism in Belgrade, and across Serbia, and has shaped this second generation of activists, who still engage with similar issues, in an environment of apathy and denial. They do so by disseminating knowledge about the past, and in the case of young activists who came of age after the 1990s, or even after 2000, they do this partly by utilizing online platforms. Their engagement with alternative knowledge and data is interactive, simultaneously occurring online and off, and onsite actions are instantly documented, hashtagged, and shared on social media and other digital platforms. One such example is the new War in Serbia website and the hashtag launched along with it.

#JesteSeDesilo: disseminating knowledge as an act of silence breaking In early June 2020, YIHR launched the War in Serbia (Rat u Srbiji) website (www.ratusrbiji.rs), created as a platform to compile crucial information about ‘various war crimes and other grave human rights breaches that occurred between 1991 to 2001 on the territory of Serbia’. The site’s ‘knowledge database’ contains data and analysis on mass graves, detention camps, the persecution of ethnic minorities, the forced mobilization of civilians, and crimes committed by paramilitary units. It also includes an interactive map of locations identified by activists as important due to their relationship to wartime events, including the sites of prison camps and anti-war and anti-mobilization protests. Though online platforms are relatively easy to access, young people in Serbia must often make special efforts to f ind critical analysis about the decade of the 1990s, or to engage in critical discussions about the wars that occurred during the break-up of Yugoslavia; not to mention f inding and engaging with information about people who resisted those wars or opposed the politics that laid the groundwork for violent conflict. As noted in previous chapters, the most widely available discourses in Serbia are those of victimization, echoed in formal education and 134 The website can be found at both www.warinserbia.rs and www.ratusrbiji.rs, in local language and English.

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official channels. This hegemonic narrative of victimization marginalizes memory activists by design, and recognizing this, young YIHR activists feel an urgency and necessity to translate and transfer their knowledge, acquired through their engagement with the legacies of the 1990s, to even younger generations. The War in Serbia site, developed as part of YIHR’s attempt to continue renewing and reinventing its actions and its engagement with youth, was announced on their Facebook page on 1 June 2020, where they posted the image featured on the site’s homepage (see Figure 9) along with the hashtag #JesteSeDesilo (#ItDidHappen). The text of the post noted that: The goal of the site during this period of ongoing glorification of convicted war criminals in Serbia, is to present the facts in a clear way and break through the myth that there was no war in Serbia, as well as that the state of Serbia did not part take in the wars of disintegration of the second Yugoslavia. Because #ItDidHappen.135

On the website itself, YIHR emphasizes the empirical and educative objectives of the platform, calling it ‘an antithesis to the practice of forgetting the atrocities of war’, aimed at informing the public by ‘connecting court-determined facts, official data of state and international institutions, testimonies of witnesses, survivors and victims’ families, as well as public information gathered by civil society organizations in Serbia’. The black-andwhite image chosen by activists for the homepage (and used in the YIHR social media campaign) is meant to symbolize the silence that has pervaded their society, especially since the discovery of mass graves of Kosovar Albanians in Serbia. As one activist explained to me, the photo – showing a refrigerated truck, half submerged in the Danube – ‘most faithfully shows the attitude of the state towards crimes and victims and the intention to deny and hide these facts.’ The truck captured in the image, which surfaced in Eastern Serbia in 1999, held the bodies of ‘86 bludgeoned and mangled bodies, presumed to be Kosovar Albanians’ (Simons 2002).136 The incident did not become public until 2001, during the Milošević trial, and the image came to signify the shock activists felt towards the news; but even more so, it became a symbol of their crucial effort to disseminate knowledge 135 See the 1 June 2020 YIHR Facebook post at: https://www.facebook.com/YIHRSrbija/ posts/3920671561308700. 136 See https://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/26/world/danube-s-grisly-tale-staring-milosevicin-the-face.html.

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Figure 9 Image posted on the YIHR Facebook page, showing the #JesteSeDesilo hashtag, with text announcing the launch of the War in Serbia website, 1 June 2020

that would otherwise be buried under layers of silence, or submerged in the Danube.137 In the days following the launch of the War in Serbia website, YIHR promoted the platform’s content on social media, accompanying posts with the #JesteSeDesilo hashtag. These posts discussed various themes and events – from the detention camps that existed in Serbia during the 1990s, to the Scorpions Video leaked in 2005 (see Chapter 2). The information was not new, but YIHR’s innovation was to make it all available in one place, to clearly frame it as an engagement by their generation with the legacies of the 1990s, and 137 See Chapter 3 for a discussion of memory activism related to the discovery of mass graves in Batajnica.

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to direct it at young people. Shortly after the website was introduced, YIHR activist Marko Milosavljević explained on the Talasna dužina (Wavelength) podcast that their aim was to ‘create a certain digital public space, and … put an emphasis on certain topics, certain cycles of violence which took place during that time in Serbia, but which are often unknown in Serbia … hidden behind the dark veil that covers the past’ (Nikolić 2020). To the great surprise of these young activists, the website spurred an almost immediate response from Ivica Dačić, then the Serbian Minister of Foreign Affairs and president of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS). He issued a statement accusing YIHR of politicizing the issue of war crimes and criticizing the organization for addressing the subject at all: In Serbia, everyone thinks that anything is allowed … I don’t understand the point of this initiative today when The Hague Tribunal and national courts have been working on this all these years and decades. What is the new information that someone could possibly hear or find somewhere now? I can only say that this is just another way to politicize the topic of war crimes, and I would especially like to see how much [of this] they would do when it comes to war crimes committed against the Serbian people in some other states of the former Yugoslavia, but this seems to me like a good way to get funding from international organizations that are working on this [topic]. These matters will be dealt with by the courts, and should be dealt with by the courts. (N1 2020)

A number of claims made by Dačić – regarding funding from international donors, the politicization of war crimes, and his questioning of the activists’ sincerity by implying they wouldn’t engage similarly with information related to crimes committed against Serbs – essentially framed their actions as a betrayal of Serbia. Two days after his statement was issued, these claims were picked up by the daily tabloid Večernje Novosti and featured in an article titled ‘They Make Serbs the New Nazis with Euros from Berlin: New NGO Portal Is Full of Lies’.138 Even if it was somewhat unexpected, given that the actions of YIHR are more commonly met with silence from state authorities, Dačić’s official statement was viewed by the activists as important in a number of ways. According to Milosavljević, YIHR not only considered it another official defence of the politics of the Milošević regime in the 1990s but saw it as a clear 138 See https://www.novosti.rs/vesti/naslovna/politika/aktuelno.289.html:868524-Od-Srbaprave-nove-naciste-uz-evre-iz-Berlina-Novi-portal-NVO-obiluje-lazima

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indication that the state still does not want these topics openly discussed in everyday public discourse or made part of any political agenda (Nikolić 2020). Coming from Minister Dačić in particular, the statement carried extra weight, Milosavljević noted, as Dačić had attended a 2013 event when he was prime minister of Serbia – the opening in Belgrade of the Bogujevci // Visual History exhibition – that had represented a rare gesture of goodwill and acknowledgment of the crimes committed against Kosovar Albanians.139 As discussed in the previous chapter, such acts of empathy and compassion towards victims, especially if they are members of another ethnic group, are exceptional in regional and local memory politics. For memory activists who choose to identify with victims as victims, their act of recognizing and engaging with knowledge about crimes committed is intentionally disconnected from their ethnic belonging, fostering agency and direct action through truth seeking rather than resignation to or apathy towards policies of denial. Indeed, the aim of YIHR activists in launching the War in Serbia website was precisely to push topics related to the legacies of the 1990s into the public, to get them talked about, to educate and inform people. Milosavljević emphasized the objective of the website ‘to translate facts that were established in court into society, and through that, to open up, empower, and institutionalize discussions about these topics’, adding that ‘it’s precisely this that Ivica Dačić calls politization, because he and the entire ruling establishment do not want that to happen’ (Nikolić 2020). Ivan Đurić (2020), then the acting director of YIHR, also responded to Dačić, arguing that ‘war crimes from the 1990s cannot be politicized today, they have been the toll or the consequence of political goals’, the other consequences of which include the ‘rhetoric of conflict, animosity and hatred … vivid in public, as [though] the wars have not ended at all’. The content of the War in Serbia website serves as an archive of knowledge and memory, as Hoskins (2018b) framed it, so that information about this recent violent past will remain available for years to come. Well beyond the #JesteSeDesilo hashtag, YIHR has developed an entire platform to 139 The exhibition featured the survivors of the March 1999 Podujevo massacre in Kosovo – the Bogujevci siblings. The crime was committed by a Serbian paramilitary unit, and the event, hosted by the Cultural Centre of Belgrade and supported by the Belgrade based NGO Heartefact, was extremely uncommon in offering an occasion for engagement with and exposure to the voices of Albanian victims from Kosovo, inside Serbia. For details of the exhibition, see Cultural Centre Belgrade 2013 (available as a PDF at: https://docs.rferl.org/sh-SH/2013/12/17/27109dc030aa-4241-b4f7-4d9ff9f0737f.pdf) as well as: https://heartefact.org/production/exhibitions/ bogujevci-visual-history. For more on the environment surrounding the exhibition, and Dačić’s decision to attend, see Ristic 2013.

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testify that it did happen, by inviting users to disseminate and engage with these archives of knowledge. In Serbia today, this archive is both a record of counter-memory and memory of activism, as it builds on the existing work and previous research of local organizations such as the Humanitarian Law Center, and international institutions such as the ICTY. The materials featured on the website are also meant to be used by activists, in educational workshops delivered across the country to young participants. In 2019 and early 2020, YIHR organized six such workshops, all in locations where war crimes took place: Priboj, Sjeverin, Štrpce, Begejci, Stajićevo, and Batajnica. Still, these young activists do not necessarily expect users of the War in Serbia website to come to conclusions or find concrete answers. In fact, Milosavljević acknowledged on the Talasna dužina podcast that ‘education, especially related to dealing with the past, does not [always] end with clear answers but rather with more questions’. It is for this reason, he explained, that YIHR is so invested in providing a platform for ‘young people to read more about these issues, to become curious, to start asking questions and exploring’ (Nikolić 2020). Hence, the website was built to be interactive, allowing visitors to engage with its growing knowledge database in order to explore a number of themes (currently, nine) through various sources and from various perspectives. A clickable map of important sites of memory also links each marked location to more detailed information about the acts, events, or tragedies that occurred there. By featuring memory of the 1990s-era anti-war movement in Serbia and engaging with knowledge about actions of war resistance and draft evasion from the wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo, the site is firmly positioned not only as a platform for memory activism but as an important means of promoting and engaging with memory of activism. Many people born after the 1990s in Serbia have no knowledge at all of the anti-war movement, or that there were war deserters and conscientious objectors who acted on their convictions and refused the call to arms. The website offers descriptive texts and images of some of these actions, especially those documented in 1991 and 1992, when large demonstrations were still taking place in Belgrade against the wars in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Moreover, it features a ‘chronology of resistance’ that references academic literature and journalistic accounts.140 140 A chronology of events as memory of activism can also be found in the 2001 publication The Last Decade: Serbian Citizens in the Struggle for Democracy and an Open Society 1991-2001, edited by Velimir Ćurgus Kazimir.

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This transgenerational knowledge is important to YIHR activists. According to Milosavljević, in a society facing a great lack of knowledge, engagement with these issues allows for valuable learning from past experiences: ‘This story about the anti-war movement is here to motivate us, on one hand, but also to show us the mistakes that were made in communicating to society’ (Nikolić 2020). Over time, YIHR will likely continue to enrich the War in Serbia website with more data and content, as there is so much more to share and learn from. I noticed for example, in the themed section on forced mobilization in Serbia, that they provide readers with merely an introduction and framework to engage with this history. Beyond stories of draft evasion, considerably more can be shared and remembered in relation to the appearance of conscientious objection in Serbia in the 1990s – as a notion and an act, and also as a new term in Serbian (prigovor savesti).141 And, while many deserters and draft evaders acted alone, the support some of them received from organizations such as the Center for Anti-war Action (CAA) or the Yugoslav Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (YUCOM) can feature in memory of activism as well. The Women in Black also supported conscientious objectors throughout the 1990s, as was documented by the organization itself, and even continued this work into the early 2000s, as long as conscription was mandatory in Serbia.142 This history 141 In 2004, during my research on anti-war activism in Serbia, I was fortunate enough to have extensive conversations and lengthy interviews with Bojan Aleksov about his activism, war resistance, and engagement with the development of conscientious objection in Serbia and the region. As I learned from him, in the early 1990s even the term itself was unfamiliar. The Women in Black later joined anti-war, anti-militarist networks such as War Resisters’ International (WRI) and the European Bureau of Conscientious Objection (EBCO). Aleksov shared his reflections in an edited volume about anti-war activism in the post-Yugoslav space, years after he left the country and entered his academic career (Aleksov 2012). He notes that very little of that resistance was in fact articulated and genuinely anti-militarist. He also makes important observations regarding the socio-economic differences between rebelling soldiers from rural areas and activists from Belgrade who came from the privileged Yugoslav intelligentsia and establishment (2012, 123). As a deserter himself from the war in Croatia, and a veteran of years of anti-war activism, Aleksov engaged again with the issue of conscientious objection during the war in Kosovo, creating a safe house for deserters in Budapest. He also contributed to Women in Black publications on the topic (for example, see Aleksov 1994). For more on the topic of conscientious objection, see Lilić and Kovačević-Vučo 2001. 142 In 1996, the organization launched a quarterly journal on the topic of anti-militarism and conscientious objection, entitled Prigovor (Objection). Nine issues of the journal were published through February 2002, and it was circulated together with the magazine Odgovor (Response). Prigovor was the only journal in Serbia to engage with the topic of desertion and conscientious objection.

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reveals a memory of activism that highlights the group’s anti-militaristic, anti-nationalist, and feminist roots. In the War in Serbia knowledge database, the section on forced mobilizations concludes by referencing several proposals already put forward for the commemoration of anti-war activists and deserters. The text quotes the late columnist Stojan Cerović, a deserter himself in the early 1990s, who proposed a monument to the Unknown Deserter, to honour ‘those who refused a call to kill and be killed in [Milošević’s] war’. Later, as the website notes, sociologist Janja Beč proposed erecting a monument to deserters in Vojvodina, arguing that ‘it is time to talk about how many people refused to go to war’, and calling deserters ‘the true heroes of these wars, of all wars’.143 As I mentioned earlier, online actions by young memory activists in Serbia never stand in isolation from onsite actions and civic engagement. In this case, the memory of activism content on the War in Serbia website parallels the onsite actions embedded in public tours offered by the Centre for Public History (CPI), which leads a walking tour in Belgrade to sites of memory for the anti-war movement in the 1990s. CPI claims that these sites would otherwise exist only in people’s private memories, and highlights their absence from collective memory, from discussions of the consequences of the 1990s in Serbia, and from public spaces. As time passes, I expect memory of activism to continue to develop and grow among young people engaged in activism and critical education.

#WhiteArmbandDay: from local to regional and transnational memory activism The last hashtag I will analyse here is associated with the transnational online memory network that mobilizes for White Armband Day, and represents another form of engagement by activists from Serbia with regional and transnational digital memory activism. This network and the #WhiteArmbandDay (#DanBijelihTraka) hashtag have emerged from what began as a one-man protest against genocide denial in the Bosnian town of Prijedor in 2012. It has since grown into an annual commemorative event, which takes place on 31 May online and onsite. It was my early exposure to engagement with the #WhiteArmbandDay hashtag that initially sparked my interest in researching practices of online memory activism and online 143 Estimates are that about 200,000 draftees refused to take part in the conflicts, seeking asylum in European countries and elsewhere (Lilić and Kovačević-Vučo 1997).

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commemorations. As Katarina Ristić and I showed in an earlier study of this hashtag, thousands of people have participated in this online commemoration since 2012, crossing all borders of language and ethno-national belonging, by posting images of themselves wearing a white armband to remember the order given in 1992 to non-Serbs in Prijedor to mark their houses with white flags and wear a white band on their left arm (2020).144 By using online platforms to engage in alternative commemoration, and by internationalizing the cause, memory activists paved the way for previously banned onsite commemorations to take place, beginning in 2013; 31 May has thus emerged as an important date on the Bosnian calendar and other anti-nationalist alternative calendars in the region (Fridman and Ristić 2020; Fridman 2015). In this chapter, I take a special interest in engagement with 31 May, as framed and promoted online through the #WhiteArmbandDay hashtag, by memory activists in Serbia. Various groups and individuals have marked 31 May with online commemorations since 2012, using the #WhiteArmbandDay hashtag to designate this mnemonic action (see Figure 10). Since 2013, the White Armband Day has also been commemorated through onsite events, including an annual march in Prijedor, where such commemoration was once prohibited by local authorities. Posts by social media users about onsite events also use the same hashtag, thereby archiving these actions online (see Figure 11). The #WhiteArmbandDay campaign is a notable case, having begun as a commemoration of the victims and crimes committed in Prijedor held online, as a way of getting around the local ban. Its evolution into an onsite commemoration has fuelled a demand from activists to erect a monument in Prijedor to local victims of genocide, as they insist on disseminating memory of a place and time that is otherwise being negated, silenced, and denied by state authorities (Fridman and Ristić 2020). For memory activists from Serbia, it was only natural to view the #WhiteArmbandDay as an opportunity to join in support and solidarity with activists in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the region, as it allowed for enhanced engagement with the themes of silence and denial that inspire their ongoing struggles in their own society. The online commemoration also offered a platform for individuals and groups in Serbia to express 144 The crimes committed in Prijedor have been well documented in a number of ICTY judgments. After the takeover of Prijedor and outlying areas by Serb forces, thousands of Muslim and Croat civilians were detained in the Omarska, Keraterm, and Trnopolje camps (Fridman and Ristić 2020). For more on how memory activists in Belgrade have engaged specifically with memory of the Omarska concentration camp, see Fridman 2015.

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Figure 10 A Twitter post marking the 31 May 2017 online #WhiteArmbandDay commemoration

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Figure 11 A Twitter post sharing images of the 31 May 2017 onsite commemoration of White Armband Day in Prijedor, Bosnia and Herzegovina, using the #WhiteArmbandDay hashtag

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compassion and empathy for the families of victims by acknowledging their memory. Thus, civil society groups in Serbia have actively engaged in the online campaign since it was launched by organizers of the group, Stop Genocide Denial, in 2012.145 The 2013 #WhiteArmbandDay campaign is of particular interest here, in our discussion of online commemorative practices. Likewise led by the Stop Genocide Denial organizers, their effort that year to enhance online engagement with memory related to #WhiteArmbandDay generated a great deal of regional participation, especially from members of organizations in Serbia that grapple with these themes. The 2013 action allowed individual participants to connect with the personal story and biography of a child who was killed in Prijedor, and after organizers offered the blueprint, other activists and survivors joined in by recording and sharing videos. These videos remain available on the Stop Genocide Denial Facebook page, which thus serves as an archive of this action and chronicles its aim to bring to fruition the construction of a monument commemorating the children killed in Prijedor during the war.146 Among these videos are those recorded by prominent activists in Serbia, who filmed themselves wearing a white arm band, each personalizing their message by devoting it to the story of a single victim. Marijana Toma, the deputy executive director of the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) at the time, noted the importance that ‘we as people … remember those who were not given the right to grow up to become adults’, emphasizing in her video that the victim she was commemorating, ‘if he was alive today, would already be 21 years old … He could have been a student at the faculty, or engaged in sports’ (quoted in Fridman and Ristić 2020, 83). In his video, Mirko Medenica, who works with CPI, underscored the different realities lived by people in the region in 1992, and the importance of that to his engagement with memory work today: On White Armband Day, I wish to remember Frida Bačić. In the summer of 1992, I was on the Adriatic Coast with my mother and brother. Frida was not so lucky. On 25 July, she disappeared, only because she was a 145 When a photo of Emir Hodžić, a Prijedor-born survivor and activist, standing alone in Prijedor’s main square in late May 2012 went viral on social media, it was integrated into the ‘Stop Genocide Denial’ campaign, followed by the use of the hashtag in both English and local language. From their inception, the Facebook page and website for Stop Genocide Denial have served as the main online platforms for sharing content and mobilizing participants (Fridman and Ristić 2020). For a detailed account by Refik Hodžić, one of the prominent actors behind this initiative, see Hodzic 2015. 146 See https://www.facebook.com/pg/StopGenocideDenial/videos/.

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member of another (national) group. This memory is important to me because I do not want this tragedy to continue.

Sandra Orlović, then the HLC executive director, also expressed the importance of marking White Armband Day on the calendar and commemorating it in Belgrade: I live in Belgrade. I was born in Tuzla in 1980. In the very same year, Aladin Behlić was born in Prijedor. Aladin spent his childhood in Zecovi near Prijedor. Aladin was killed when he was a 12-year-old boy, in his village, by soldiers from the Army of Republika Srpska … to this day, his body has still not been found. Today in Prijedor, the town of Aladin’s birth, it is forbidden to remember him publicly. Because of that, I will remember him on 31 May, and his childhood that was abruptly brought to an end.

As this chapter has shown, the #hashtag #memoryactivism framework allows for in-depth analysis of the engagement of memory activism with various forms of action and solidarity that occur online and complement onsite campaigns and actions. Each of the hashtags analysed in this chapter reveals another layer of nuance in engaging with themes addressed in memory activism in Serbia, as well as with the memory of activism. The complexity of this activism is also apparent in this analysis, as it resonates not only on the local or national level in Serbia but as a part of the regional dynamics of engagement with memories of the 1990s. In the next chapter, I argue that memory activism in the successor states of the former Yugoslavia should therefore be analysed as a region of memory. In that context, online platforms play an important role in the interconnectivity of actors, actions, and claims and their regional belonging, though always remaining complementary to onsite activism.

Bibliography In citations and references, authors’ names are spelled as they appear in the original publication. Aleksov, Bojan, ed. 1994. Deserters from the War in Former Yugoslavia. Belgrade: Women in Black. Aleksov, Bojan. 2012. ‘Resisting the Wars in the Former Yugoslavia: Towards an Autoethnography’. In Resisting the Evil: [Post-]Yugoslav Anti-War Contention, edited by Bojan Bilić and Vesna Janković, pp. 105-126. Baden-Baden: Nomos.

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Avramovic, Filip. 2016. ‘Belgrade Protesters Rally for Srebrenica Case Activist’. Balkan Insight, 3 February. https://balkaninsight.com/2016/02/03/belgrade-protesters-rally-for-srebrenica-case-activist-02-03-2016/ (accessed 30 August 2021). Bennett, W. Lance, and Alexandra Segerberg. 2012. ‘The Logic of Connective Action: Digital Media and the Personalization of Contentious Politics’. Information, Communication & Society 15 (5): 739-68. Bonilla, Yarimar and Jonathan Rosa. 2015. ‘#Ferguson: Digital Protest, Hashtag Ethnography, and the Racial Politics of Social Media in the United States’. American Ethnologist 42 (1): 4-16. Cultural Centre Belgrade. 2013. Bogujevci // Visual History: A Homage to All the Families and Victims of War, curated by James Walmsey, produced by Heartefact. Dragojlo, Sasa. 2015. ‘Belgrade Bans Rallies on Srebrenica Anniversary’. Balkan Insight, 10 July. http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/serbian-police-bannedall-saturday-rallies (accessed 30 August 2021). Đurić, Ivan. 2020. ‘It Has Happened: War in Serbia’. Remarker, 20 June. https://remarker.media/politics/it-has-happened-war-in-serbia/ (accessed 30 August 2021). Fridman, Orli. 2015. ‘Alternative Calendars and Memory Work in Serbia: Anti-War Activism after Milošević’. Memory Studies 8 (2): 212-226. Fridman, Orli. 2020. ‘Peace Formation from Below: The “mirëdita, dobar dan!” Festival as an Alternative to Everyday Nationalism’. Nations and Nationalism 26 (4): 447-460. Fridman, Orli, and Katarina Ristić. 2020. ‘Online Transnational Memory Activism and Commemoration: The Case of the White Armband Day’. In Agency in Transnational Memory Politics, edited by Jenny Wüstenberg and Aline Sierp, pp. 68-91. New York: Berghahn Books. Hodzic, Refik. 2015. ‘Flowers in the Square’. International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ). https://www.ictj.org/sites/default/files/subsites/flowers-squareprijedor/ (accessed 30 August 2021). Hodzic, Refik (@ledenik1). 2017. ‘Prijedor danas. #DanBijelihTraka #WhiteArmbandDay’. Twitter, 31 May 2017. Hola, Barbora, and Olivera Simić. 2018. ‘ICTY Celebrities: War Criminals Coming Home’. International Criminal Justice Review 28 (4): 285-290. Hoskins, Andrew. 2018a. ‘The Restless Past: An Introduction to Digital Memory and Media’. In Digital Memory Studies: Media Pasts in Transition, edited by Andrew Hoskins, pp. 1-24. New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis. Hoskins, Andrew. 2018b. ‘Memory of the Multitude: The End of Collective Memory’. In Digital Memory Studies: Media Pasts in Transition, edited by Andrew Hoskins, pp. 85-109. New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis. Inicijativa miadih (@YIHRSerbia). 2017. ‘Inicijativa će i u 2018.godini nastaviti borbu za društvo u kome počinioci ratnih zločina nisu uzori a poricanje se ne smatra

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činom vrhunskog patriotizma. Na Dan ljudskih prava, iz celog regiona još jednom poručujemo da zločinci #NisjuNašiHeroji #JoHeronjteTane #NotOurHerous’. Twitter, 10 December 2017. Kandic, Natasa. 2000. ‘An Impossible Choice: Miroslav Filipovic Has Been Jailed for Seven Years for Choosing to Stick by His Professional Principles’. IWPR, 16 August. https://iwpr.net/global-voices/impossible-choice-0 (accessed 30 August 2021). Kozlowska, Hanna. 2015. ‘#147notjustanumber is the hashtag that gives life to each person slain in the Kenya attack’. Quartz, 6 April. https:// qz.com/377336/147notjustanumber-is-the-hashtag-that-gives-life-to-eachperson-slain-in-the-kenya-attack/ (accessed 30 August 2021). Lievrouw, Leah A. 2011. Alternative and Activist New Media. Digital Media and Society Series. Cambridge: Polity. Lilić, Stevan, and Biljana Kovačević-Vučo. 1997. ‘Conscientious Objection as a Fundamental Human Right’. Paper presented at the International Meeting of Conscientious Objectors in Times of War, Linz, 16-17 May. Lilić, Stevan, and Biljana Kovačević-Vučo. 2001. Prigovor Savesti. Belgrade: The Yugoslav Committee for Human Rights. Markham, Anette N. 2018. ‘Ethnography in the Digital Internet Era: From Fields to Flows, Descriptions to Interventions’. In The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, edited by Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln, pp. 650-668. Los Angeles: SAGE. Mašić, Dušan (@dusanmasic). 2015. ‘Da li bi mogli da skupimo 7000 lujdi I prilegnemo pred Skupstinu Srbije u julu povodom 20 godina Srebrenice?’. Twitter, 17 April 2015. Mašić, Dušan (@dusanmasic). 2015. ‘Da 7000 nas legne ispred Skupstine RS povodm 20 godina Srebrenice? Prijavi se za #sedamhiljada’. Twitter, 18 April 2015. Mašić, Dušan (@dusanmasic). 2015. ‘Od 11-12 neka ovo bude vas profil. Ne zbog #sedamhiljada. Zbog zrtava Srebrenice’. Twitter, 11 July 2015. Merrill, Samuel, Emily Keightley, and Priska Daphi. 2020. ‘Introduction: The Digital Memory Work Practices of Social Movements’. In Social Movements, Cultural Memory and Digital Media: Mobilising Mediated Remembrance, edited by Samuel Merrill, Emily Keightley, and Priska Daphi, pp. 1-30. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Merrin, William. 2014. Media Studies 2.0. New York: Routledge. Milekic, Sven. 2017. ‘Yugoslav General Who Staged Croatia Retreat Dies’. Balkan Insight, 17 January. https://balkaninsight.com/2017/01/17/disputed-ex-yugoslavgeneral-dies-in-belgrade-01-17-2017/ (accessed 30 August 2021). Milinković, D. 2020. ‘Od Srba prave nove naciste uz evre iz Berlina: novi portal NVO obiluje lažima’. Večernje Novosti, 4 June. https://www.novosti.rs/vesti/ naslovna/politika/aktuelno.289.html:868524-Od-Srba-prave-nove-naciste-uzevre-iz-Berlina-Novi-portal-NVO-obiluje-lazima (accessed 30 August 2021).

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N1. 2020. ‘Pokrenut sajt ratusrbiji.rs, Dačić kaže da se radi o politizaciji ratnih zločina’, 2 June. https://rs.n1info.com/vesti/a605933-pokrenut-sajt-ratusrbijirsdacic-kaze-da-se-radi-o-politizaciji-ratnih-zlocina/ (accessed 30 August 2021). Nikolic, Ivana. 2016. ‘Serbian Activist Faces Court for Commemorating Srebrenica’. Balkan Insight, 29 January. https://balkaninsight.com/2016/01/29/serbian-activistfaces-trial-for-commemorating-srebrenica-01-28-2016/ (accessed 30 August 2021). Nikolić, Miloš. 2020. ‘Marko Milosavljević – Znanjem protiv zaborava zločina – rat u Srbiji’. Talasna dužina, 15 June. Podcast, website, 48:00. https://talas.rs/2020/06/15/ talasna-duzina-44/ (accessed 30 August 2021). Ristic, Marija. 2013. ‘Serbia PM Shows up at Kosovo Massacre Exhibition’. Balkan Insight, 19 December. https://balkaninsight.com/2013/12/19/kosovo-art-showopens-in-belgrade-amid-protests/ (accessed 30 August 2021). Ristic, Marija. 2015. ‘Candle-Lit Srebrenica Memorial Held in Belgrade’. Balkan Insight, 11 July. http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/belgrade-lightscandels-for-srebrenica-victims (accessed 30 August 2021). Simons, Marlise. 2002. ‘Danube’s Grisly Tale, Staring Milosevic in the Face’. The New York Times, 26 August, p. 10. Vladisavljevic, Anja. 2018. ‘Croatia Unveils Tudjman Monument to Applause and Criticism’. Balkan Insight, 10 December. https://balkaninsight.com/2018/12/10/thegreatest-monument-of-former-croatian-president-unveiled-in-zagreb-12-10-2018/ (accessed 30 August 2021). Watson, Brendan R., and Michelle Simin Chen. 2016. ‘@TodayIn1963: Commemorative Journalism, Digital Collective Remembering, and the March on Washington’. Journalism Studies 17 (8): 1010-1029. Yang, Guobin. 2016. ‘Narrative Agency in Hashtag Activism: The Case of #BlackLivesMatter’. Media and Communication 4 (4): 13-17. YIHR Kosovo (@YIHRKosovo). 2017. ‘Today, we show solidarity to our Bosnians and Herzegovinians friends marking a painful chapter with White Armband Day. #WhiteArmbandDay’. Twitter, 31 May 2017. Youth Initiative for Human Rights. 2018. ‘They Are Our Heroes: A Monument to Commemorate the Living Army’s General in Belgrade’. Press release, 22 September. https://www.yihr.rs/en/they-are-our-heroes-a-monument-tocommemorate-the-living-armys-general-in-belgrade/ (accessed 30 August 2021). Youth Initiative for Human Rights. 2019. ‘War Criminals Have No Place in Government!’. Press release, 5 February. https://www.yihr.rs/en/war-criminals-haveno-place-in-government/ (accessed 30 August 2021). Živić, Petra. 2015. ‘Dušan Mašić: zašto sam ja među #sedamhiljada’. Vice, 22 June. https://www.vice.com/sr/article/ypd9xb/sedamhiljada (accessed 30 August 2021).

5

Regions of Memory The Post-Yugoslav Space as a Region of Memory Activism Abstract In this chapter, the post-Yugoslav region is approached as a ‘region of memory’, to gain broader insights into the dynamics of regional memory politics. Despite the prevalence of ethnonational forms of engagement with the legacies of the 1990s in post-Yugoslav states, this region of memory features emerging platforms where activists claim agency through alternative counter-memories, and where civic engagement is growing and joint action is evolving. Regions of memory advance our understanding of memory activism by transcending the national, facilitating the articulation of regional mnemonic claims, beyond ethnicity. By allowing for agency in various forms and establishing networks for commemorative solidarity, the actions of memory activists from below position the post-Yugoslav region as a ‘region of memory activism’. Keywords: region of memory, region of memory activism, post-Yugoslav states, commemorative solidarity

It was in the summer of 2020 when the plan of Belgrade city authorities to rename a number of streets was announced by Deputy Mayor of Belgrade Goran Vesić, who said that a majority of streets currently recalling places where ‘Serbia is not respected’ – especially locations in former Yugoslav republics – were set to be changed (Stojanovic 2020). Vesić declared that Belgrade should no longer name streets for ‘areas where everything reminiscent of Serbianness has been erased’ (Stojanovic 2020; Danas 2020). Efforts such as this to obliterate traces and legacies of the socialist Yugoslav past, undertaken over the last three decades across the region, are clearly still ongoing; and changes to street names and urban spaces represent just one

Fridman, Orli, Memory Activism and Digital Practices after Conflict: Unwanted Memories. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463723466_ch05

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manifestation of this process.147 Against this trend, however, research has shown that many who trace their roots in Yugoslavia engage with that socialist past not just in the context of how they or their families used to live, but rather, how they want to live now (Balunovic 2020). For some, looking backwards, Yugoslavia remains the symbol of a ‘normal’ life (Spasić 2012); but for some, looking forwards, it is a symbol of the potential for a better future (Palmberger 2008). While the focus of this book is on the analysis of memories from the decade after Yugoslavia dissolved, this analysis inevitably addresses processes of continuation and change related to engagement with and the existence of the socialist Yugoslav past as a political phenomenon. This shared past, among other things, positions memory activism vis-à-vis the legacies of the wars of the 1990s as a regional phenomenon that interacts with other discussions taking place at the regional level, in the so-called post-Yugoslav space, or the Yugosphere148 (Judah 2009). Here, I approach the post-Yugoslav region as a ‘region of memory’ and argue that this grants us broader insights into the dynamics of regional memory politics. Despite visible, state-sponsored, ethnonational forms of engagement with the legacies of the 1990s in postYugoslav states, in this region of memory, platforms are emerging where activists claim agency through alternative counter-memories, and where civic engagement is growing and joint action is evolving. Regions of memory advance our understanding of memory activism by transcending the national and allowing for the articulation of regional mnemonic claims, beyond ethnicity only, as shaped from below. A closer read of the joint regional actions of memory activists concerning legacies of the wars of the 1990s brings to the forefront the ways in which these actions, when they cross national borders, in fact mirror each other and enable the creation of networks of commemorative solidarity for peace formation. I approach these actions, when generated from below by local actors, as grounded in a critical civic emancipatory peace (Richmond 2006). 147 On changes to street names, see Radović 2008 and 2013. Other prominent processes of material change include the demolition of Yugoslav monuments (Kirn 2014) or their neglect (Horvatinčić 2015), as well as changes to history textbooks (Stojanović 2009 and 2016; Pavasović Trošt 2018). 148 The terms Yugosphere and Yugonostalgia have both sought to capture the Yugoslav concept, and regional networks, after Yugoslavia. The term Yugosphere is oriented towards the present, encompassing ongoing connections (political, cultural, economic) between post-Yugoslav states and people since the 1990s, and reflecting their common backgrounds as well as a re-emergence of regional cooperation within social networks based on past and present links in the Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav space (Bieber 2014, 5). As Judah (2009) has explained, his use of the term Yugosphere was meant to highlight an unappreciated dynamic at work on the ground, which should be considered in analysis of the region, its problems, and its future (vi).

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Thus, ‘regions of memory activism’ are located within regions of memory and become evident when we map out and place side-by-side a variety of regional initiatives consisting of bottom-up cooperation, as well as networks of joint regional actions and claims, that are typically analysed separately in the current literature. By doing so, I show that memory activists regard their local mnemonic struggles and claims as regional, by definition; while in previous chapters I have mostly discussed the practices of memory activists in Serbia, here I highlight the interconnectivity of these mnemonic claims and actions within the post-Yugoslav space as a region of memory. At the same time, I acknowledge there are many local and regional divisions, disagreements, and conflicts, though these are not prominent in my analysis. Previous literature has extensively critiqued civil society in the region and NGOs, addressing questions of ownership and innovation.149 My interest is in the actions of memory activists from below, as they allow for agency in various forms and establish networks for commemorative solidarity, and the post-Yugoslav region as a ‘region of memory activism’. Such regions can clearly be identified in other post-conflict regions, where memory activists are grappling with unwanted memories and working against official denial.150 Memory activism in its regional form rejects nationalist and revisionist forms of engagement with the past, dominant in post-Yugoslav states in recent decades. In essence, it argues for memory that reaches beyond the ethnicization of victims and the politics of victimization (Fridman and Ristić 2020). It is multidirectional, opening ‘dialogic space’ that enables memory activists, as communities of memory, to bring ‘new visions of solidarity and new possibilities of coexistence’ (Rothberg 2014, 654). The memory activism discussed throughout this book, approached as a strand of peace activism, is engaged in the alternative production of knowledge and alternative commemorations that surpass 149 See for example Bojicic-Dzelilovic et al. 2013, and Stubbs 2007. 150 My own thought process, which led to my analysing the Post-Yugoslav space as a region of memory, was informed by other similar regional frameworks for memory and conflict-focused analysis. For example, see the works of Elizabeth Jelin (2003) on post-dictatorship and memory of repression in the Southern Cone of Latin America, or Purdeková’s (2020) case study of the Great Lakes Region of Africa. I also drew inspiration from discussions that took place at the 2012 and 2016 Regions of Memory conferences in Warsaw, as part of the Genealogies of Memory network (see https://enrs.eu/edition/genealogies-of-memory-2012 and https://enrs.eu/edition/ genealogies-of-memory-2016), and from the 2016 MSA panel discussion on regions of memory organized by Joanna Wawrzyniak.

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national frameworks and nationalism, advancing our thinking about the existence and signif icance of regions of memory. Whether considered transnational or meta-national, as a region of memory, the post-Yugoslav space can be understood as ‘a common multiethnic space predicated on anti-nationalism’ (Kirn 2014). By demanding engagement with the unwanted memories of the wars of the 1990s, memory activists, among others, insist that the region continues to be a region of memory and, as such, a region of specif ic, political mnemonic claims. For the first generation of memory activists, this regional perspective may have been obvious, as they came of age in a Yugoslavia that was a single cultural and political space; but the second generation had to claim the regional aspect of their work, and thus of their identities, and build a transnational and regional political framework that holds the potential for resistance and emancipatory change. In previous chapters, I have shown how this offers an alternative to ongoing contests in the political arena over victimization, allowing for remembrance that moves beyond the narrow ethnic and national identification of victims; and in doing so, supports networks of regional ‘commemorative solidarity’ (Athanasiou 2017), acknowledgment, and even innovation and hope (Rigney 2018). *** In 2016, in the discussion that followed the premier of the documentary Dubina dva (Depth Two) in Belgrade’s Beldocs International Film Festival (see Chapter 3), Zagreb-based journalist Saša Kosanović expressed his concern that ‘countries in the region are nurturing a generation of young people who know nothing about the armed conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, and that it is being left to their personal desire and motivation to engage in work related to topics about the past’. Kosanović noted that films such as Dubina dva give voice to victims who can no longer speak, but emphasized the risk ‘that [its message] will remain locked inside a closed circle of like-minded people’ (Humanitarian Law Center 2016). By engaging with alternative commemorations and the alternative production of knowledge, regional memory activism pushes outside these closed circles to fill the void in knowledge that has been deliberately created over three decades, since the wars began. As activists establish networks and put forward demands that require them to cross borders, they create more platforms for regional activism from below, and insist even more strongly on the post-Yugoslav space as a region of memory.

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In what follows, I start by tracing various existing networks of regional civic activism from below, in order to position memory activism within them. I utilize available frameworks from discussions in the fields of memory studies and Southeast European studies to address acts of citizenship within regional actions and actors, allowing us to distinguish between a term such as ‘regional cooperation’ – which is rather vague, is often associated with EU policies towards the Western Balkans, and places an emphasis on ‘regional stability’ – and the notion of a ‘region of memory’, where counter-memory claims, alternative calendars, and commemorative practices establish networks of ‘regional commemorative solidarity’ and ‘regional memory activism’. Approaching the post-Yugoslav space as a ‘region of memory activism’ is innovative in that it examines alongside each other actions that are rarely considered interconnected or related. From regional networks of solidarity and activism in new social movements to the appearance of the ‘new Left’; from the 2017 Declaration on the Common Language (Deklaracija o zajedničkom jeziku) and calls for regional solidarity to memory activism that remembers Yugoslavia and the anti-fascist struggle through singing; in its regional variation, memory activism generates rich empirical data. Finally, I discuss how existing networks such as the Coalition for RECOM, the Women’s Court (Ženski sud), or historians against revisionism, formed mostly by members of the first generation of memory activists, set the foundation for a region of memory activism related to unwanted memories of the wars of the 1990s.

Regions of memory and of memory activism In recent discussions on the ‘spatial turn’ in the social sciences, regions are understood to be socially and politically constructed, as well as subject to diverse meanings. Indeed, according to Solioz and Stubbs (2012), the definition of a ‘region’ may vary according to the problem or question at hand. They contend that regions – as ‘flexible constructs, contingent on social practices’ – consist of ‘dense and interlocking “social networks” of collaboration and interaction, as well as of conflict and contestations’ (2012, 17). Accordingly, when approached as ‘imagined communities’, regions consist of ‘complex, overlapping, and … competing identities, identifications and visions’; and while ‘they do bear traces of historical legacies’, regions are ‘continually being redefined and reconstituted by a wide range of diverse and various practices or “narratives”’ (Solioz and Stubbs 2012, 17). In their article on New Regionalism Theory, Hettne and Söderbaum (2000)

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distinguished between the ‘current ideology of regionalism, i.e. the urge for regionalist order’, and the process of regionalization, which ‘leads to patterns of cooperation, integration, complementarity and convergence within a particular cross-national geographical space’ (461). As Solioz and Stubbs argue, this latter process may also be viewed as an ‘open regionalism’ that moves away from notions of geo-economic programmes and is characterized by ‘multidimentionality, complexity, and fluidity’ (2012, 19). Building on such frameworks, I propose another – the ‘region of memory activism’ – as a space for the analysis and understanding of memory dynamics and memory politics. In the mnemonic actions and claims interacting and occurring at the regional level, this framework also functions as an element of conflict dynamics (Purdeková 2020, 1184). In its regional form, memory activism allows us to trace memory practices shared by actors across national boundaries, and more specifically, the counter-memories created, shared, and disseminated across those borders. My choice to approach the post-Yugoslav space as a region of memory corresponds to a wealth of existing literature that has already engaged with the region as a space of shared culture (Švob-Đokić 2012; Bieber 2014); shared nostalgia, as in the study of Yugonostalgia151 (Velikonja 2008 and 2015; Volčič 2007; Popović 2017), shared memorial sites (Kirn 2014); joint emancipatory action (Horvat and Štiks 2015) and citizenship regimes (Shaw and Štiks 2013; Štiks 2015b); and narratives of solidarity and new social movements (Vasilijević 2016 and 2021). As a framework for analysis of the legacies and memories of the wars of the 1990s, the regional dimension is clearly useful and relevant. The transition towards the post-Yugoslav and the post-socialist context, as Kirn (2014) has argued, ‘brought a highly charged nationalistic memory to the fore, at the expense of – to the point of erasing – the earlier anti-fascist, socialist, Yugoslav memory, which was transnationalist par excellence’ (314). As I discuss in Chapter 1, from the perspective of memory politics, this meant that the order of memories in every state that emerged from the former Yugoslavia was successfully narrowed and nationalized at an early stage (Kuljić 2009). These hegemonic narratives strengthen nationalized memory politics and state-sponsored ethnicized commemorative events, which continue to develop and even deepen in post-Yugoslav memoryscapes today. Yet, as Pavlaković (2020) emphasizes, it is not only in commemorative practices that memory politics manifest, as various other spheres have become fertile 151 Yugonostalgia, and nostalgia more broadly, can be understood as another form of countermemory, or memory created in public spaces without the control of the state and beyond the control of dominant discourses promoted by political elites (Boym 2001).

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ground for ideological battles; from the field of education (especially history textbooks and curricula development), to popular culture (films, theatre, graffiti, and music), to museums, to sports fandom, all which ‘perpetuate narratives and employ symbols transmitting selective visions of the past, at times even more influential than official commemorations’ (28). At the same time, as I will show in this chapter, these very same spheres are not only sites of mnemonic contestation but also of engagement and action for various activist groups, including memory activists as they put forth a common shared past and shared claims for the future. Reflecting on regions of memory activism allows for movement between and among different scales of memory and conflict analysis, from the local and national to the regional and transnational, signalling the multiscalarity of memory creation (De Cesari and Rigney 2014, 5). In all forms, memory activism claims a critical engagement with the past as it puts forward demands for the future, in a search for the inclusion of frameworks of remembrance that go beyond the crisis of present times. In this way, memory activism that establishes networks of regional commemorative solidarity and regional claims holds the potential to set a foundation for peace formation from below. To distinguish between existing frameworks for regional cooperation, regional networks for joint action and claims, and regional memory activism, in what follows I examine some established regional initiatives, placing those efforts in the context of the region as a region of memory activism.

Regional cooperation as a ‘crowded playground’ The notion of ‘regional cooperation’ has largely come to be associated with the policymaking world and, as Bechev (2006) has noted, is a process driven to a significant degree by ‘extra-Balkan actors such as the EU, NATO, USA and the international financial institutions’ (27). In the 2000s, however, the idea of regional cooperation in Southeast Europe was in fashion, as indicated by its frequent mentions in official EU speeches, in policy papers, and in the media.152 Setting up regional frameworks for cooperation was 152 For a detailed and chronological analysis of the evolution of the EU’s policy of promoting regional cooperation, see Bachev 2006. In 1999, the EU established the Stability Pact for Southeast Europe (SP), after the war in Kosovo ended, which later morphed into the Regional Cooperation Council (RCC). Once Romania and Bulgaria left the region with their 2007 accession to the EU, followed by Croatia’s 2013 accession, the EU focused its regional cooperation efforts on the so-called Western Balkan Six (WB6): Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia,

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expected to stimulate reform and incentivize EU assession, but the EU crisis, Brexit, and EU enlargement fatigue all challenged this assumption. It has been reasonably argued that local politicians in the region simply pay lip service to Brussels, which is primarily concerned with technical issues and stability, and not with essential processes of change. Bieber’s term ‘stabilitocracy’ (2017) aptly describes what many local actors know to be true: the EU mission of regional cooperation risks ‘becoming an empty vessel’ (Taleski 2017, 15). Launched in 2014, the Berlin Process has served as one impetus for regional cooperation in the Western Balkans, bringing EU and non-EU states together in a series of annual meetings known as the Western Balkans Summit Series.153 Interestingly, the initiative has been broadened to also encompass a Civil Society Forum (launched at the 2015 Vienna summit) as well as a Youth Forum (launched at the 2016 Paris summit) that set the stage for establishment of the Regional Youth Cooperation Office (RYCO) – an ‘independently functioning institutional mechanism, founded by the Western Balkan 6 … aiming to promote the spirit of reconciliation and cooperation between the youth in the region’.154 Yet the fact remains that governments in the region are the chief consumers of regional cooperation. This highlights the limitations of the frameworks for cooperation applied to date, manifesting mainly as ‘meetings between government officials, which do not necessarily impact or improve the everyday life of people’ (Bechev et al. 2015, 4). Still, regional cooperation between governments, and indeed the will to cooperate, especially when it comes to contested issues related to the recent wars, is crucial to resolving the destinies of thousands of missing people, many of whom still lie in unknown graves (Bomberger 2019a). On the eve of the 2019 Western Balkans summit in Poznań, Kathryne Bomberger (2019b), the Director-General of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), reminded regional leaders, and publics, of the joint declaration signed the previous year at the London summit, restating the commitment of regional governments to intensify multilateral cooperation to account for the missing. She noted that, ‘although governments in the Balkan region Montenegro, and Serbia. According to the RCC website, its mission is to serve the ‘regional cooperation and Euro-Atlantic integration of South East Europe in order to spark development in the region to the benefit of its people’ (see https://www.rcc.int/pages/2/about-us). 153 The Berlin Process, initiated by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, was ‘aimed at stepping up regional cooperation in the Western Balkans and aiding the integration of these countries into the European Union’. See https://berlinprocess.info/about/. 154 See https://www.rycowb.org/?page_id=152.

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have accounted for more than 70 per cent of the 40,000 persons who went missing in the decade after 1991, 12,000 people remain unaccounted for’ (Bomberger 2019b). This issue goes well beyond EU politics or EU enlargement, as it relates to the wellbeing and search for justice of many families and individuals throughout the region. According to Solioz and Stubbs (2012), new regionalism is marked by ‘the proliferation of actors both constituting of and constituted by a regional scale’ (20). Arandarenko and Golicin (2007) have called this the ‘crowded playground’; Solioz and Stubbs (2012) contend it has become even more crowded due to the ‘dramatic expansion’ of ‘non-state actors’, which they claim underscores the need to understand regional cooperation in Southeast Europe as a multi-actor and a multilevel process. The initiatives I discuss below also make clear that it is necessary to broaden this analysis by looking at a variety of actors and ongoing emerging joint actions. By doing so here, I point to the potential for broader claims of local agency, and the understanding that change must be initiated from within if the agenda of regional cooperation is to include and articulate claims of social justice, that is the ‘emancipatory politics of justice in a world marked by globalizing, neoliberal trends’ (Jansen 2013, 237). Analysis that is more inclusive of emerging regional networks of resistance, rebellion, and activism, and which moves beyond the question of EU integration, allows such articulations to become more apparent and possibly more relevant. An upsurge in social and political activism resisting neoliberal capitalist transformations in the post-Yugoslav space has given rise to progressive left-wing movements that may, among other things, make it possible in the future to engage more widely with mnemonic claims put forward by memory activists, especially with memory related to the recent past.

Regional networks of joint action and joint claims Regional networks of joint action and solidarity have become more visible in the streets of former Yugoslav cities in recent years, as well as on social media, prompting a growing number of academic publications on the topic (Horvat and Štiks 2015; Bieber and Brentin 2018; Fagan and Sircar 2017).155 155 At the time of this writing, for instance, a number of online webinars were taking place on the subject, such as ‘Društveni pokreti – nova nada za region’ (Social movements – new hope for the region), organized by the University of Belgrade’s Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory and the Ne davimo Beograd movement (see https://nedavimobeograd.rs/ drustveni-pokreti-nova-nada-za-region/).

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The creation of networks through which joint action and joint claims are put forward in the Western Balkans is in many ways an echo of worldwide trends; but situated within the specific context of the region, is characterized by a rise in political and social activism in progressive and new social movements and groups. A wave of protests that began in 2011, related to the post-2008 global financial crisis, followed by mass flows of migration along the ‘Balkan Route’ since 2015, have led to the formation of new cross-border alliances and movements (Hofman 2020, 158). Vasiljević (2019) proposes that demands for political and institutionalized solidarity have arisen partly ‘in reaction to growing authoritarian tendencies and a lack of accountability for local political and economic elites in the region’ (308).156 This civic resistance and activism has emerged around a variety of issues in recent years as ‘the nexus between corrupted power and citizens’ agency in a captured state’ has become more visible in post-Yugoslav countries (Vasiljević 2020). For example, environmental problems are increasingly ‘mobilising citizens to protest against corruptive and clientelist regimes’ as ecological issues become a common concern for the entire region (Vasiljević 2020).157 In the post-Yugoslav space, the ‘new Left’ is an umbrella term that generally encompasses ‘progressive political and social movements as well as ideologically profiled organizations that present themselves or are labelled as the “radical left”’ (Štiks 2015a, 137; see also Štiks and Stojaković 2021). It is characterized by: A critique of electoral democracy, coupled with experiments in … direct, participatory, horizontal democracy. A critique of the neoliberal capitalist transformation of post-socialist societies … A critique of the conservative, religious, patriarchal, and nationalist ideological hegemony … A defence of common, public, and natural goods and resources … against privatisation and profit-oriented exploitation. An internationalist, anti-nationalist, and antifascist approach to the Balkan region … [And] open resistance to widespread historical revisionism. (Štiks and Stojaković 2021, 23) 156 As an example of mass solidarity in the region, crossing the borders of post-Yugoslav states, Vasiljević (2019) points to actions that helped victims of the disastrous flooding that affected Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia in May 2014 (307). These mobilizations for solidarity with the most vulnerable, she argues, could be seen as struggles to regain political subjectivity and agency (Vasiljević 2021, 283). 157 Such regional actions include the ‘Trees of Friendship’ (Drvo prijateljstva) action, which took place in late 2020 in Belgrade, Skopje, Tirana, Pristina, and Sarajevo simultaneously. It was initiated by the European Fund for the Balkans (EFB) and implemented in Belgrade by EFB, Ne davimo Beograd, and Danas.

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Mapping out the movements of the actors Štiks and Horvat (2015) call ‘new rebels’ reveals a diversity in their struggles, ideologies, and actions. From anti-regime demonstrations to student-led occupy movements, each has had as its primary goal the undermining of ‘the (neo)liberal hegemony that since 1989 has successfully delegitimised left traditions and promoted multi-party electoral democracy … and the free market as the only game in town’ (Štiks and Horvat 2015, 15). Among these various initiatives, the 2017 Declaration on the Common Language (Deklaracija o zajedničkom jeziku) established regional claims that I consider central to the region of memory activism I envision here, as it aimed to counter nationalist divisions in the former Yugoslavia. Initiated by the Belgrade-based literary association Krokodil as part of their Jezici i nacionalizmi (Languages and nationalisms) project,158 and drafted by linguists from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, and Serbia, the document asserts that these four ex-Yugoslav republics use a polycentric language ‘spoken by several peoples in several countries with recognizable variants’.159 It also argues that ‘the existence of a common polycentric language does not call into question the individual right to express one’s belonging to different nations, regions, or countries’ (Milekic 2017). Snježana Kordić, one of the linguists who worked on the draft Declaration, has suggested that recognition of a common language could bring an end to the ‘two schools under one roof’ system still used in some parts of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, which divides students within schools according to language and ethnicity, and may thus ‘stop producing future generations of nationalist party voters’ (Milekic 2017). The initiative was predictably critiqued from the right, but also generated considerable support and discussion; many saw the Declaration as crucial to combating legacies of the region’s recent violent past. Svetlana Slapšak (2017) called it ‘the basic text of a calm but revolutionary change … [and] of the new Yugoslav identity’, and Boris Buden (2018) claimed that the Declaration could be ‘reduced to a single paradox: the very thing the Declaration ideologically conceals is the best reason for signing it – the irreducible political essence of the question of language in former Yugoslavia’. As Igor Štiks put it, ‘stating the obvious – that it is a common language from a linguistic point of view – became the most radical act’ (interview by author, December 2020). 158 According to the Krokodil website, the project dealt with ‘the very important topic of the misuse of linguistic science’ for political purposes in the region of the former Yugoslavia. See http://www.krokodil.rs/eng/languages-and-nationalisms/. 159 See the Declaration (in local language) at: https://jezicinacionalizmi.com/deklaracija/.

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Krokodil’s creation of a Zajednička čitaonica (Common Library) is essentially the afterlife of its Languages and Nationalism project and the Declaration. According to their website, the library is part of a pursuit of the best means to apply pressure on political authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia and thus influence legislative change when it comes to the recognition of the fact that the 4 ‘political languages’ spoken in the region are actually nothing but equal variants of the one and the same yet unnamed polycentric language.

The aim of the project is to ‘create space for writers and thinkers from the four countries of the region to express and confront their views on the subject through series of debates’.160 Three years after publication of the Declaration on the Common Language, the Declaration of Regional Solidarity (Deklaracija o regionalnoj solidarnosti) was jointly written and announced by four political parties from Croatia, Serbia, and Slovenia, in July 2020.161 It was signed by almost 2,000 signatories, including prominent intellectuals and social figures from across the region, who joined the call for regional solidarity ‘in light of the unprecedented crisis brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the profound economic, social, and political challenges now facing our societies’ (Štiks and Stojaković 2021, 123).162 The Declaration proposes a model for regional solidarity that centres principles like equality, collaboration, and mutual aid, and argues that the ‘many common social and economic challenges’ shared by former Yugoslav republics can only be solved ‘through collective effort and regional solidarity’ (Štiks and Stojaković 2021, 124). A number of statements put forward in the Declaration are innovative, and relevant to the work of memory activists and the regional platforms of peace formation I explore here. Notably, a list of what signatories are committing to fight against is followed by a list of issues they are committed to fight for. In the first list, they articulate their stand against ‘the incitement of conflict, inter-ethnic hatred, and other threats to good neighborly relations’ and against ‘the relativisation, minimisation, and glorification of mass crimes committed against civilian populations’ (Štiks and Stojaković 2021, 125). In 160 See http://www.krokodil.rs/eng/common-library/. 161 The parties involved in drafting the Declaration were: the Worker’s Front and New Left, from Croatia; the Social Democratic Union, from Serbia; and the Left (Party), from Slovenia. 162 The Declaration and a list of the political parties that initiated it are also available in English at: https://regionalnasolidarnost.info/english/. To view signatories of the Declaration, see https:// regionalnasolidarnost.info/lista-potpisa/.

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the second list, the last of twelve points calls for ‘the support of all official and informal initiatives that foment connection, collaboration, peace, and mutual respect among the peoples and nations of the former Yugoslav territories, as well as their neighboring countries’ (Štiks and Stojaković 2021, 127). Though the signing and announcement of the Declaration has not actually advanced this collaboration (among other reasons, due to internal splits in the political party from Serbia that was involved in initiating it), and thus has not generated any real results, I nonetheless view the inclusion of these statements as innovative and important, for having articulated the connection between socio-economic claims and claims related to legacies of the wars of the 1990s. It has been more common among those defining themselves as part of ‘the Left’ to deal almost solely with issues of political economy, leaving the issues of war crimes and identity politics aside. Filip Balunović, one of the authors of the Declaration on Regional Solidarity, has acknowledged this, emphasizing that the Declaration is important because the Left must ‘start talking about things that have been considered irrelevant (to us) thus far … as we cannot neglect the facts on the ground, including the traumas carried by communities from the recent war’ (interview by author, December 2020). While he comfortably uses the term ‘dealing with the past’, which I have often heard disparaged by activists in Serbia, he and others from the Left are critical of some of the actors involved in memory activism. As Balunović explained: ‘I am highly critical, for example, of what YIHR in Serbia does – because it is called an “initiative for human rights” but not an initiative for civic and political rights – and as such, it is de facto dealing only with one corpus of rights, neglecting social and economic rights’ (interview by author, December 2020). While the title of the Declaration calls for regional solidarity, it is clear that the cohesion and communalism it implies are rather rare, and the ability to establish the wider networks of commemorative solidarity that sit at the centre of this study is even more elusive. There are certain obstacles that seem to disable joint actions, and plenty of divisions and critiques continue to come into play, at times ideological and at times merely interpersonal. Activists from the Left in Serbia are, for the most part, unlikely to be present at the alternative commemorative events discussed in earlier chapters, for instance. Perhaps, however, this Declaration has the potential to serve as a new and innovative platform to not only reconstruct the Balkan Left in the twenty-first century, as its authors aim to do, but also to lay the foundation for a broader range of actions and actors related to the mnemonic claims and commemorative solidarity that are at the heart of critical and countermemories of the wars in the 1990s. An actor’s experiences, positions, and

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engagement in the region may vary significantly based on their generational belonging, location (with nuanced dynamics at play within each Yugoslav successor state), and individual histories, but as Igor Štiks explained, the Declaration references a spectrum of what constitutes the position of ‘the Left’, including a stand ‘against war crimes, which won’t make anyone less left’ (interview by author, December 2020). Importantly, Štiks also noted that the Declaration makes a connection between the revival of memory of the anti-fascist struggle with respect for human rights, as a reminder not to reject the concept of human rights simply because they are seen as having been imposed by liberals or Europeans (interview by author, December 2020).163 Accordingly, while political divisions are well known and the critique of liberal civil society from the Left is very harsh, especially in leftist circles in Serbia, the Declaration attempted to rise above all this to offer clarity on positions and claims as well as a broad platform for joint action. The political claims of both the Declaration on the Common Language and the Declaration on Regional Solidarity can be seen as attempts to push back against and even combat the regional memory politics of nationalism, revisionism, and denial. As such declarations emerge in the post-Yugoslav region, as a region of memory, they contribute to the proliferation of claims from below that exist in relation to other divisive issues tackled by activists. One example is the revival of and engagement with memories of the anti-fascist struggle in Yugoslavia, as I discuss below.164 While my focus here has been mostly on mnemonic claims from below related to the 1990s, and hence has offered only a snapshot of the work of memory activists on other issues, by bringing discussions about the wars of the 1990s and the end of Yugoslavia together with discussions of the memory of Yugoslav anti-fascism, as an added layer of memory politics and related memory activism, we can better grasp the ways the region functions as a region of memory and as a region of memory activism.

Remembering Yugoslavia and the anti-fascist struggle Resistance expressed as strong critique of what came after socialism can be seen across the region in the work of memory activists seeking to revive ‘the 163 I thank Igor for sharing his experience and views in detail, after being part of the team who drafted both the Declaration on the Common Language and the Declaration on Regional Solidarity, as well as the challenges of harmonizing the positions of the many actors involved. 164 On the other side of this issue, and beyond the scope of this study, is anti-communist memory that also generates commemorative practices, analysed by Jelena Đureinović (2000) as another form of memory from below.

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memory of the anti-fascist struggle in Yugoslavia and the socialist revolution it brought about’ (Štiks 2020, 467). Using this socialist past as a political act, as Tanja Petrović (2015) has argued, turns it into a reservoir of memories of agency, of a sense of meaningful belonging, and of active citizenship. Activists who engage with historical revisionism related to World War II and socialist Yugoslavia are confronting a memory politics in which anti-fascist resistance, socialism, communism, and totalitarianism have been made synonyms in public and official discourse, diminishing their conceptual, ideological, and cultural differences (Hofman 2020, 164). In doing so, these activists employ the Yugoslav anti-fascist past as a transnational memory that stands as an alternative to nationalized practices of remembrance (Hofman 2020, 163). This is a form of resistance against what Hofman (2020) has dubbed the ‘new official anti-fascism’ (165) and Đureinović (2020) has analysed as the nationalization and ethnicization of World War II through the reframing of this anti-fascist past exclusively within a national context. Hofman (2020) researched the practice of collective singing used by post-socialist activist choirs as a form of memory activism, drawing muchdeserved attention to the important yet neglected role of sound in studies of memory activism.165 She approaches collective singing as an important channel through which the memory of anti-fascism operates (160) and argues that memory activism through singing is used to legitimize the memory of Yugoslav anti-fascism and socialist Yugoslavia by way of an intense affective engagement with Partisan songs (164). As one choir member put it, singing these songs (especially ‘Po šumama’) counters the erasure of anti-fascism from official memory politics, which has resulted from ‘the aggressive nationalization of the mnemohistorical landscape after the disintegration of Yugoslavia’ (Hofman 2020, 162). Thus, according to Hofman (2020), singing the songs of Partisans in alternative commemorative events evokes not only ‘the anti-fascist past, but also socialist Yugoslavia as a multicultural society, which after the break-up of the country, was marked as a criminal regime and a threat to the newly formed nation states’ (163). Hofman featured the experience of one interviewee, a member of the 29 November Choir (Hor 29. Novembar) in Vienna. His parents migrated from Yugoslavia to Austria and, prior to joining the choir, he had no knowledge of Partisan songs. Through his participation in the choir, he discovered and 165 During my research on the Mirëdita dobar dan! festival in Belgrade (see Fridman 2020), I came across the choirs a number of times, as they stood outside the entrance to the Center for Cultural Decontamination (CZKD) singing in the street, often in front of right-wing demonstrators with a line of policemen standing as a barrier between the two groups.

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connected to the lost collective memories these songs brought forth. This journey – from a complete lack of knowledge to discovery and intensifying interest – was an important theme that arose consistently during my research, in the many conversations I had with the second generation of memory activists in Serbia. At first, this came as a surprise to me, as most of this generation was born during and after the 1990s and had little or no awareness, for example, of the Yugoslav calendar. A date such as 29 November (once celebrated as Republic Day in Yugoslavia) meant nothing to many of them.166 But in interviews and conversations with this second generation of activists, they often spoke about the process of coming to know of and learn more about the history of Yugoslavia, in part through memory activism having to do with the 1990s. Indeed, asking questions and making claims related to events in the 1990s has often required activists to acquire knowledge about what came before this decade. Being on the ‘right side’ of history in World War II has meant a great deal to some of them, as I heard Anita Mitić, the former director of YIHR in Serbia, discuss with young students, who view the wars of the 1990s as a contravention of this earlier legacy.167 Though these struggles are often treated separately in literature about memory activism, and even among activists, they have significant intersections, in that they resist the memory politics established in recent decades. As Štiks (2020) has argued, this post-socialist resistance ‘cannot be just a matter of periodisation’ (18); actions, activists, and movements today ‘cannot … avoid a dialogue with [the region’s] socialist heritage and ideals’(478-479).168 It is this heritage – which has been ‘marginalised, dismantled or demonised in a post-socialist period marked by historic revisionism, nationalism and rampant capitalism’ (Štiks 2020, 19) – that memory activists revive in public spaces and on streets in the region, through their actions. And Štiks contends that ‘even … where the relationship to a socialist past is not as visible, we can see its traces in the promotion of ideals of equality, participation, and solidarity’ (2020, 479). 166 The date marks the proclamation of Yugoslavia in Jajce in 1943. 167 In a conversation I had with Mitić, she recalled a visit to the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC, where she experienced a profound moment of confusion. As she walked into the museum, she felt a sense of pride in seeing the Yugoslav flag among those of the Allied forces. Yet, in the next room, commemorating post-World War II genocides, the exhibit began with Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Srebrenica genocide, evoking exactly the opposite feeling. 168 To illustrate the aesthetics of resistance in the post-Yugoslav space, Štiks highlights various forms of engagement with this heritage, from plays (analysing performances by the Serbian director Bojan Đorđev) to murals (analysing one painted by the Belgrade-based KURS collective) to artistic interventions (by Croatian artist Igor Grubić).

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Similarly, activists within the post-Yugoslav region who promote countermemories and alternative commemorations related to the wars of the 1990s offer non-nationalized practices of remembrance, resisting the glorification and commemoration of war crimes committed during those wars. Moreover, they insist on remembering victims in a de-ethnicized manner, taking a deliberate stand against the politics of victimization (Fridman and Ristić 2020; Pavlaković 2019 and 2020), which manipulates numbers and disrespects victims, survivors, and their families in the service of hegemonic narratives. This approach by activists can be traced, as I discuss below, in platforms for engagement with knowledge about legacies of the wars of the 1990s as well as in alternative commemorative actions across the region, as a region of memory activism.

Regional platforms for engagement with memories of the wars of the 1990s A number of regional platforms for engaging with memories of the wars of the 1990s have come into existence in the last decades. The materials, knowledge base, and legacies of these initiatives are considerable and are yet to be evaluated in a broader and a more comprehensive study that places these platforms next to each other, in dialogue with one another. Still, there is a solid body of knowledge on various efforts in isolation, as scholars have systematically studied and analysed initiatives such as RECOM (Kostovicova 2010, 2017; Kostovicova and Bicquelet 2018; Nießer 2017; Touquet and Vermeersch 2015), the Women’s Court (Ženski sud) (Trevisani 2019; Duhaček 2015), or joint projects for history education (Šuica et al. 2020; Jovanović and Marić 2020). In this section, I will briefly review a number of these, and demonstrate their importance and relevance to the work and practices of memory activists in the region. I will also turn to the wealth of materials available in print and online, created by activists themselves. Embedded in these structures, approaches, and actions, which all remain ongoing at the time of writing, is a regional approach and a view of the post-Yugoslav space as a region of memory. Producing and engaging with alternative knowledge about the wars of the 1990s places some of these initiatives precisely at the core of my inquiry, as they contribute to our understanding of memory activism as a strand of peace activism and engage with alternative knowledge production of unwanted memories on a regional level, outside the channels of the state, and from below.

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As early as 2006, attempts to create a regional truth and reconciliation commission resulted in an organized RECOM (Regional Commission) initiative, for which the groundwork was laid at several regional forums for transitional justice. The Coalition for RECOM was established in 2008, at the Fourth Regional Forum for Transitional Justice, in Pristina, as a network in support of a ‘Regional Commission to establish all the facts about war crimes and other gross human rights violations perpetrated within the territory of the former Yugoslavia between January 1st, 1991 and December 31st, 2001’.169 It has been described as ‘an ambitious project that is strongly supported and generously funded by international donors’ (Di Lellio and McCurn 2013, 130), but it began as a consortium of three prominent regional NGOs: The Humanitarian Law Center in Belgrade, Documenta in Zagreb, and the Research and Documentation Center in Sarajevo (Touquet and Vermeersch 2015, 65). Between 2006 and 2011, the RECOM process facilitated regular civic consultations and dialogue among people throughout the region (Nießer 2017). Nataša Kandić – who plays a central role in the RECOM effort – has claimed this was one of the main objectives driving the Coalition, with the aim to then enter a political implementation phase in which facts could be established on a regional level (Kandić et al. 2017, 5).170 The Coalition for RECOM has been subject to plenty of critique, as well as allegations of interpersonal and inter-organizational conflict.171 However, as Pavlaković (2020) put it, while ‘the lack of political will in the post-Yugoslav space makes it unlikely that a true commission will be enacted, the efforts of RECOM have considerably contributed to promoting dialogue and assisting victims of violence’ (22).172 169 See https://www.recom.link/en/a-brief-history-of-the-recom-process/. 170 Nießer’s analysis offers a comprehensive timeline for work on RECOM since 2006 by focusing on the civic process that preceded the turn towards political implementation, including the civic consultations which culminated in a proposed statute (finalized in March 2011), followed by the campaign to collect signatures. Many of the second generation of memory activists I spoke to, members of YIHR in Serbia, were engaged in signature collection in the spring of 2011. 171 For example, Di Lellio and McCurn (2013) bring up two important issues: the language in use in regional meetings, as some participants from Kosovo were not well versed in Serbian or English (138); and the fact that addressing the history of state repression in Kosovo in the 1980s would fall outside the timeframe covered by the RECOM initiative, from 1991 to 2001 (142). 172 Kostovicova (2010) also highlighted the diversity of groups that have joined the Coalition for RECOM, which at one point offered a space for collaboration between actors and NGOs who exemplify opposite normative poles of civil society in Serbia (the HLC and the Association of the Families of the Kidnapped and Killed in Kosovo and Metohija), and as such, forged otherwise rare intra-ethnic dialogue on the issue of war crimes (292-293).

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The work of the Coalition, the network it has created, and the writing it has generated have shed light on an interesting process I previously noted: namely that, if earlier engagement and work with legacies of the wars of the 1990s was framed and discussed mostly in the conceptual theoretical framework of the field of transitional justice, in recent years, there has been a shift towards frameworks from the growing field of memory studies (Fridman 2015). And it is not only scholars making this turn, but NGOs and activists, too. In fact, in mid-2019, the HLC – the leading force behind the RECOM initiative – announced a job vacancy for the position of ‘Memory Activism Program Coordinator’. HLC has since launched the website Memory Cultures in Dialogue (Kulture sećanja u dijalogu), which hosts a podcast and blog where memory studies scholars, among others, engage in regional and local discussions about memory politics in the post-Yugoslav space.173 Platforms such as this engage critically with transitional justice frameworks and generate material that contributes to the already existing wealth of alternative knowledge that has been produced over the years by HLC; they also support the pursuit of the Coalition for RECOM to establish and disseminate facts and sources.174 Another regional platform for reconciliation, the Women’s Court (Ženski sud), has rightly been analysed within the history of the regional feminist movement. As Trevisani (2019) argued, ‘the structure, purpose and the feminist approaches of the Women’s Court distinguish it from all other attempts for restorative justice and reconciliation in the region, including RECOM’ (5). Officially known as the ‘Women’s Court – a Feminist Approach to Justice’ (Ženski sud – feministički pristup pravdi), this regional grassroots initiative was intended to offer a critique of and an alternative to national and international politics of justice.175 The idea had been discussed as early as the 1990s among anti-war and anti-nationalist feminist groups, inspired by the global movement of women’s courts and tribunals (Trevisani 2019, 173 See https://www.kulturesecanja.org/en/. 174 As Sven Milekić noted in Reconciliation through the Berlin Process: the Role of RECOM (Kandić et al. 2017): ‘young people need the facts to confront the crimes, and owing to the regional nature of these conflicts, the facts can only be established by RECOM’ (16). 175 The main claim of organizers was that the ICTY and local courts dealt exclusively with sexual violence against women, while the Women’s Court would demonstrate the specificity of violence against women in other areas as well – economically, politically, and socially – and how these were expressed and reinforced along sex and gender lines (Iveković as quoted in Trevisani 2019, 3). The Women’s Court, in line with its feminist approach and methodology, also welcomed expressions of emotion in the testimonies of women, distinguishing itself from institutional justice mechanisms. Importantly, the work of the Women’s Court was an act of recognition and acknowledgment of injustices committed in the past (Duhaček 2015, 169).

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2; Zajović 2015).176 It was formally launched in 2010, led by the Women in Black from Serbia, along with an organizational board that includes the CURE Foundation and the Mothers of the Enclaves of Srebrenica and Žepa (Bosnia and Herzegovina), The Centre for Women’s Studies and the Centre for Women War Victims (Croatia), the Kosovo Women’s Network, the National Council for Gender Equality (Macedonia), Anima (Montenegro), and the Center for Women’s Studies (Serbia).177 The Women’s Court heard public testimonies in Sarajevo, over three days in May 2015, following a four-year process of meetings, trainings, regional educational seminars, and public presentations across the region.178 The objective was to build a ‘network of solidarity of witnesses, activists, therapists, experts, and artists … to create a feminist model of peace, justice and accountability’.179 As Staša Zajović (2015) explained, almost all members of the Initiative Board for the Women’s Court have actively participated in RECOM, but the broad scope of RECOM activities has meant that this ‘exceptionally important regional initiative’ has not entirely met the expectation of fulfilling a feminist justice (9); strengthening the determination of feminist activists to develop the Court. In this post-Yugoslav context, feminist activism has assumed new and additional forms, building on the dissident legacies of an earlier feminist politics that fought against gendered violence. As activists continue to voice feminist critique and mnemonic claims, they have become implicated in questioning neoliberal capitalism, especially in respect to gendered and racialized regimes (Athanasiou 2017, 34). According to Daša Duhaček (2015), the goal of the Women’s Court for Yugoslavia was not to produce and publicize names, but ‘to clearly point to and offer ample evidence of’ the role played by social, economic, and political institutions and forces that ‘should bear responsibility for decades of devastation’ in the region (174).

176 The idea for a regional women’s court was reintroduced in 2000, in a meeting that took place in Sarajevo. It can be traced to the late Yugoslav sociologist and feminist activist from Belgrade, Žarana Papić, and Corinne Kumar, a peace activist from India and coordinator of the global movement of women’s tribunals. The first ever women’s court was organized in 1992 in Lahore, Pakistan. Since then, about 40 women’s courts have been established worldwide (Zajović 2015, 8). 177 See https://www.zenskisud.org/en/o-zenskom-sudu.html. 178 Testimonies are documented in a f ilm, with English subtitles, available on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbdAwXHpX5E. 179 See the document sent to supporters of the Women’s Court, inviting them to the May event in Sarajevo in Appendix 4. Also available at: https://www.zenskisud.org/en/pdf/Women’s_Court_invitation.pdf.

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For Duhaček, the generational belonging of the activists involved in the creation and legacy of the Court has been central to its function. She viewed the strength of the Court as extending from ‘the passion of this older generation of feminists from what was once Yugoslavia’, describing theirs as the legacy of feminist activists who, consciously or unconsciously, are burdened with responsibility, even at times with a feeling of guilt, because they did not – regardless of the fact that they could not – prevent or save or rescue or guard against or stop the brutal conflicts … None of this was achieved despite decades of tireless peace activism. So, the feeling is one of having a debt. Now, instead of joining in the palliative simulations of political solutions – often project/ donor driven – or useless prescriptions and so-called healing therapies, these women just want, before taking their leave of the public scene to cry out at the top of their voices an articulate, loud, resolute no to all injustices. (Duhaček 2015, 174)

Indeed, as a product and legacy of the first generation of memory activists (see Chapter 2), the Women’s Court and the Coalition for RECOM have been led by actors who came of age and lived in Yugoslavia – now reduced to a region that is perpetually post-something, a region of memory. The process of establishing the Women’s Court – which even entailed aesthetic contributions from theatre and artistic performers, as well as film screenings and exhibitions – reiterated the street actions and street performances employed previously by that generation of activists. Hence, the mnemonic claims of the Women’s Court were visible not only in its consultation activities and in the testimonies given by women, but also in a street action, which took the form of a march through Sarajevo. As a space where trauma, and thereby ‘overt connections between politics and emotions’ (Cvetkovic as quoted in Trevisani 2019, 6) were documented and commemorated in new ways, the Court is linked to years of public dissent and street actions that formed a platform for alternative commemoration and critical feminist engagement with the legacies of the 1990s. The website of the Women’s Court now contains a wealth of archival materials available to future generations of activists who engage with memory activism and with memory of activism as civic alternative memory that includes women’s perspectives and experiences of war (Trevisani 2019, 6). Complementing the networks that have emerged from the Women’s Court and RECOM, the field of history education has also produced initiatives that centre regional cooperation among educators, history teachers,

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and historians. Across the region, education is still instrumentalized by nationalist powers as a means to f ight local political battles, and thus serves as a tool of domination and exclusion (Ognijenović and Jozelić 2020, 10); but some actors have been creating pedagogical alternatives. Approaching the region as a region of memory, these actors all address similar challenges and questions: How can historical revisionism be tackled? How can diff icult topics related to the wars of the 1990s be taught in an environment that is hostile to critical engagement? How can curiosity, and a genuine desire to critically engage with unwanted memories, be sparked in young students, but also in their teachers? To that end, a variety of non-state initiatives in history education have emerged over the years, focused mainly on the development of alternative teaching resources and trainings, and the critical analysis of existing history textbooks.180 The European Association of History Educators (EUROCLIO) and the Center for Democracy and Reconciliation in Southeast Europe (CDRSEE) are the most notable international organizations that have taken a regional approach to addressing these issues (Đureinović and Jovanović 2020, 29).181 Both have created important networks of cooperation and have produced a wealth of empirical research and analysis through initiatives such as the ‘Learning a History that is not yet History’ (LHH) project, which was launched in 2016 in cooperation with EUROCLIO but was shaped by local ownership. This effort brought together partner organizations from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia, and Serbia.182 The URL chosen for the website of the project – www.devedesete.net, devedesete meaning ‘the nineties’ – highlights its engagement with the 1990s, and at its heart, the project was designed to introduce new paradigms for educators, to address the challenge of how to teach topics related to the wars in the former Yugoslavia during that decade. With a regional structure at its core, the LHH project approaches the region as a region of memory, facilitating cross-border cooperation among teachers and enabling joint platforms for critical education and alternative knowledge. In this way, it is meant 180 History textbooks mirror official memory politics and thus reflect what states want their youth to learn (Pavasović Trošt 2018, 720). For analysis of regional history textbooks, see Dimou 2009, and Ognijenović and Jozelić 2020. 181 The CDRSEE, which was based in Thessaloniki, is no longer operational, and unfortunately the wealth of materials on its website are no longer accessible. 182 Local partners for this project include Documenta in Croatia, the History Teachers Association of Montenegro, the Association for Social History in Serbia, and the Bosnian History Teachers Association.

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to support both educators and students in accessing factual and critical knowledge about the wars. Given the extent to which the 1990s are remembered in different and even contradictory ways within and among states in the region, it is a rather complex challenge to develop projects such as this. As Aleksandar Todosijević, one of the project designers from Serbia put it, ‘Croats still live in the 1990s, Serbs pretend that the 1990s did not happen at all, while the most chaotic situation exists in Bosnia and Herzegovina’, where curricula and syllabuses vary widely (Brkanic 2018). The project thus generated a set of recommendations for educators in post-Yugoslav states to help them teach these wars responsibly, in a document titled ‘Making Sense of the Past that Refuses to Pass’. 183 The document is aimed not only at teachers and educators but also education policymakers and educational institutions, offering practical tips for how to overcome the diff iculties related to teaching this traumatic and controversial past (Šuica et al., 133-134). The LHH platform shares some characteristics with those discussed above, including that it was initiated by the generation who experienced the wars, and is meant for students born after those wars. The actors involved in the project’s creation see their work as a potential platform for change, a way to do things differently, but are aware that mere recommendations will not result in the real change they wish to see. This is why they view policymakers as part of the LHH audience, and why they chose to work with teachers employed in state institutions.184 183 The document appears in English as a webpage on the LHH website, at: http://devedesete.net/ policy-paper/. On the same webpage, a video of Snježana Koren’s presentation of the document is also posted. One of the leaders of the project, she discusses some of the challenges of drafting these recommendations, noting that countries in the region share similar problems as far as the politicization of recent history but that their ‘starting positions now are not the same … in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, this topic is now just reduced to a list of events or, in a way, avoided; on the other hand, in Croatia, it is covered extensively in textbooks and there are annual seminars for teachers … and fieldtrips for students’. 184 This is unlike a number of projects formed as alternative education programmes, mainly addressing students at higher education levels. Examples include the Human Rights School run by the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia, and the HLC’s Regional School for Transitional Justice. Both were crucial platforms for raising awareness and engaging with alternative knowledge for many second-generation memory activists. See a collection of essays by students who took part in the Regional School for Transitional Justice, published in 2015, at: http://www.hlc-rdc.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Zbornik_II.pdf. One regional initiative that lasted only a short while was meant to create a regional master’s programme in peacebuilding, through cooperation among the universities of Belgrade, Zagreb, and Sarajevo (Džuverović and Kapidžić 2018).

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Finally, the project Ko je prvi počeo? – Istoričari protiv revizionizma (Who started f irst? – Historians against revisionism) was created as a continuation of Krokodil’s Jezici i nacionalizmi project, discussed above. The main goal of Ko je prvi počeo? is to create a space for historical and intercultural dialogue by cultivating a network of historians, writers, journalists, and students, and an even wider audience, with the larger objective of contributing to conflict resolution and an inclusive memory culture. 185 Therefore, activities of the project are aimed at creating a sustainable platform where mutually acceptable interpretations of past events (both recent and more distant) are established through a multiperspective methodology. The creators of the Ko je prvi počeo? platform clearly understand the region as a region of memory, and the project offers a range of ways to engage: summer schools, author residencies at Krokodil, workshops for educators who teach history or Serbian language and literature, and a joint declaration titled ‘Defend History’ (Odbranimo istoriju).186 In the Defend History Declaration, the working group of historians who drafted it put forth a number of regional mnemonic claims on behalf of their professional belonging, and against revisionism related to the history of World War II, Yugoslavia, and the wars of the 1990s, as well as earlier myths.187 Today, they argue, ‘history is a platform for continuing the Yugoslav Wars by other means … it is an active source of smouldering hostilities that are destroying our societies’. As with the other platforms discussed here, the materials of the Ko je prvi počeo? project generate a wealth of critical knowledge and constitute a digital archive of information and activities, of regional relevance. In December 2018, at the second conference organized as part of Ko je prvi počeo?, Dubravka Stojanović warned that ‘mentally, the wars of the 1990s are not over and are very much alive in public speeches and discourses’ in the post-Yugoslav space. Stojanović, herself was engaged with the Center for Anti-war Action in the 1990s, has been one of the leading scholars in the study and comparative analysis of history textbooks in Serbia and the region. In this project and in her work in general, she brings together her disciplinary belonging to the fields of history and memory studies, as well as her generational belonging, often interacting with younger generations 185 See (in local language): http://kojeprvipoceo.rs/o-projektu/. 186 The declaration is available in English at: http://kojeprvipoceo.rs/defend-history/. 187 The working group is comprised of prominent historians from across the region including Dubravka Stojanović from Belgrade, Tvrtko Jakovina from Zagreb, Božo Repe from Ljubljana, Husnija Kamberović from Sarajevo, and Milivoj Bešlin from Novi Sad (Serbia).

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and finding ways to bridge the gap towards critical engagement with these unwanted memories.188

Commemorative solidarity and the wars of the 1990s To close this chapter, we return to the discussion of alternative commemorative actions in their regional variation. From the point of view of memory activists in Serbia, whose actions I analysed in previous chapters, regional platforms of remembrance naturally complement their work on the national level. This is certainly the case for memory activists, as they engage in the region as a region of memory.189 As a regional organization, activists from the Youth Initiative for Human Rights (YIHR) have initiated and participated in the regional commemoration of crimes committed in the wars of the 1990s in many of their mnemonic actions. They often challenge state-sponsored events with an onsite presence, insisting on remembrance of the victims of these crimes, from all ethnic groups. For YIHR activists, regional cooperation is a way of fighting against self-victimization, through their insistence on the de-ethnicization of victims. In the earlier years of the organization, these activists joined established commemorative events, such as in Potočari, accompanying the Women in Black on their journey from Belgrade to Srebrenica (Fridman 2006); but this second generation of memory activists have created their own commemorative actions that gather young people from the region, across borders, to remember victims from other ethnic groups. These included setting up a platform for the remembrance of non-Croat victims in Croatia, 188 She was a guest on the Agelast podcast (#59, on 22 January 2021), for example and had an interesting conversation with Galeb Nikačević Hasci-Jare, the host, who belongs to the in-between generation; this is particularly true when viewed through the analysis of intergenerational communication, as many of his listeners are born after the existence of Yugoslavia and after the wars of the 1990s. 189 The region also functions as a region of memory when it comes to mnemonic provocations, for instance when it comes to sports fandom. See, for example, the case of the tank that was parked in front of Rajko Mitić stadium, home of Belgrade’s Crvena Zvezda (Red Star) football club, in the summer of 2019 (https://www.bbc.com/serbian/lat/srbija-49482510). When local tabloids in Serbia claimed the tank was from fighting in Vukovar, in Croatia, in the early 1990s (see https:// www.kurir.rs/sport/fudbal/3310615/to-je-tenk-iz-vukovara-samo-fali-hrvatska-zastava-hrvatskidomobran-tvrdi-to-je-tenk-koji-sam-u-ratu-zarobio-samo-sa-nozem), media and fans in Croatia responded (see https://sportske.jutarnji.hr/sn/morbidna-provokacija-iz-beograda-zele-u-liguprvaka-a-slave-jedan-od-najtezih-zlocina-crvena-zvezda-ispred-marakane-postavila-tenk-izvukovara-9281585). For an analysis of memory, sports, and fandom in its regional dimensions, see Hodges and Brentin 2018.

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non-Albanian victims in Kosovo, and non-Serb victims in Serbia, understood here as a platform for peace formation. Such platforms and claims contain ingredients otherwise missing from many societies emerging from conflict, and from this region: public expressions of acknowledgment, empathy, and compassion for all victims regardless of ethnicity, and joint acts of commemorative solidarity. Such alternative commemorative platforms from below, in their regional form, enable the politicization of discourses of justice (Jansen 2013) through demands to commemorate crimes committed in the 1990s rather than through the glorification of criminals who committed them. They also hold the potential to bring together more actors and broaden the scope of actions, as discussed above. As commemorations take place onsite as well as online, they inspire growing regional participation, as detailed in Chapter 4.190 Indeed, this study has shown that alternative civic calendars in one country, marking both onsite and online commemorations, may initiate alternative commemoration in another. This circulation and exchange beyond borders, within the otherwise rigid confines of national(istic) commemorative narratives and commemorative events, generates a framework for joint regional civic action from below. Joint commemorations and commemorative tours also take place throughout the region.191 For younger activists, visiting sites of mass atrocities in groups has become central to their joint commemorative practice, as a continuation of the networks of commemorative solidarity put forward by the first generation of memory activists. Every year, in the early days of August, activists in Serbia and Croatia promote and disseminate countermemories, emphasizing the memory of civilian victims of the war in Croatia. The alternative offered by this action is the joint commemoration itself, of victims claimed by otherwise separate and conflicting state-sponsored master narratives. A clear point of contention between the official Croatian and Serbian commemorative narratives has to do with Operation Storm, 190 A number of additional forms of virtual remembrance have emerged, focusing on the commemoration of war crimes and their victims; for example: the Virtual Museum of Refugees launched by YIHR in Kosovo; BIRN’s regional ‘If you were here’ campaign, featuring video testimonies of the relatives of missing persons from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Serbia on International Day of the Disappeared; and the ‘Never again for anyone’ virtual campaign that took place on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the genocide in Srebrenica, which included a performance by the Horkestar alternative choir. 191 I refer here to commemorations organized jointly. Otherwise, as I previously discussed, activists from Serbia have joined existing commemorations in Bosnia and Herzegovina (in Tuzla, Omarska, and Potočari; see Fridman 2015) and Croatia (in Ovčara and Vukovar).

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a significant 1995 battle in the war in Croatia. In August 2019, when YIHR activists chose to commemorate the Operation, they opted for a very different commemorative framework than those used in state-sponsored events, in Serbia or Croatia, employing a public history methodology and engaging in a tour of several key sites. The tour began in Ovčara, near the town of Vukovar in Croatia, where a massacre occurred in 1991. As the tour coordinator Marko Milosavljević explained: ‘We started our visit in Ovčara, because, if we want to talk about crimes during [Operation] Storm, we have to talk about what happened before … what was happening from 1991 until August 1995 … and we chose first to talk about one of the [largest] mass murders until [then]’ (Youth Initiative for Human Rights 2019). After Ovčara, the tour continued to the area near Knin (Ervenik, Varivode, and Gošić) before ending with a visit to the Jasenovac Memorial Site, where a Ustasha-run concentration camp once operated under the pro-Nazi rule of the Independent State of Croatia during World War II. Alongside this and other onsite actions, YIHR activists tend to post photos on social media that have been taken at sites of mass atrocities, in which they hold a banner showing their generational slogan, ‘Too young to remember, determined never to forget’. As discussed in Chapter 3, they first used this slogan in 2015 at a commemoration of crimes committed in Tuzla, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, an action they joined alongside participants from both Serbia and Bosnia. This, too, had the stamp of regional commemorative solidarity. Moreover, the #NisuNašiHeroji (#NotOurHeroes) campaign, analysed in Chapter 4 and likewise launched by YIHR activists, is essentially regional as well in its generational claim against the glorification of war crimes and war criminals, and their return to public life. *** In this chapter, I have analysed memory activism and mnemonic claims from below in their regional variation by approaching the post-Yugoslav space as a region of memory and a region of memory activism. Other regions of memory, in various post-conflict societies, can also be examined through this framework. By doing so, and thus bringing together a wealth of initiatives, claims, and actions from below, future potential networks of commemorative solidarity action may offer a platform for cooperation to a broader and possibly more diverse range of actors. In that spirit, it is no wonder that the illustrations of Sarajevo based artist Midhat Kapetanović are gaining such popularity on social media. His drawings often bring together images of the Pobednik (the symbol of the city of Belgrade), Vučko (the symbol of

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Figure 12 Drawing by Midhat Kapetanović of Vučko, Zagi, and the Pobednik (left to right), posted on Instagram on 11 July 2020

the city of Sarajevo), and Zagi (the symbol of the city of Zagreb) as they jointly struggle with shared challenges such as air pollution or flooding. On 11 July 2020, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide, he drew them hand-in-hand overlooking the graveyard at the Potočari Memorial Center (see Figure 12), thereby claiming and positioning this memory, and engagement with it, as regional.

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Kuljić, Todor. 2009. ‘Remembering Crimes: Proposal and Reactions’. In Between Authoritarianism and Democracy: Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Volume III: Serbia at the Political Crossroads, edited by Dragica Vujadinović and Vladimir Goati, pp. 197-212. Belgrade: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung and Center for Democratic Transition. Kurir. 2019. ‘To je tenk iz vukovara, samo fali hrvatska zastava’, 27 August. https:// www.kurir.rs/sport/fudbal/3310615/to-je-tenk-iz-vukovara-samo-fali-hrvatskazastava-hrvatski-domobran-tvrdi-to-je-tenk-koji-sam-u-ratu-zarobio-samo-sanozem (accessed 30 August 2021). Maričić, Slobodan. 2019. ‘Tenk ispred Zvezdinog stadiona: Zašto je postavljen i šta će biti sa njim’. BBC. 27 August. https://www.bbc.com/serbian/lat/srbija-49482510 (accessed 30 August 2021). Milekic, Sven. 2017. ‘Post-Yugoslav “Common Language” Declaration Challenges Nationalism’. Balkan Insight, 30 March. https://balkaninsight.com/2017/03/30/postyugoslav-common-language-declaration-challenges-nationalism-03-29-2017/ (accessed 30 August 2021). Nießer, Jacqueline. 2017. ‘Which Commemorative Models Help? A Case Study from Post-Yugoslavia’. In Replicating Atonement: Foreign Models in the Commemoration of Atrocities, edited by Gabowitsch Mischa, pp. 131-161. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Ognijenović, Gorana, and Jasna Jozelić. 2020. ‘Nationhood and the Politicization of History in School Textbooks’. In Nationhood and Politicization of History in School Textbooks: Identity, the Curriculum and Educational Media, edited by Gorana Ognijenović and Jasna Jozelić, pp. 9-16. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Palmberger, Monika. 2008. ‘Nostalgia Matters: Nostalgia for Yugoslavia as Potential Vision for a Better Future’. Sociologija 50 (4): 355-369. Pavasović Trošt, Tamara. 2018. ‘Ruptures and Continuities in Nationhood Narratives: Reconstructing the Nation through History Textbooks in Serbia and Croatia’. Nations and Nationalism 24 (3): 716-740. Pavlaković, Vjeran. 2019. ‘Dignity for the Defeated: Recognizing the Other in Post-Yugoslav Commemorative Practices’. In New Critical Spaces in Transitional Justice: Gender, Art, and Memory, edited by Arnaud Kurze and Christopher K. Lamond, pp. 223-249. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Pavlaković, Vjeran. 2020. ‘Memory Politics in the Former Yugoslavia’. Rocznik Instytutu Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej 18: 9-32. Petrović, Tanja. 2015. ‘Longing for Lost Agency’. LeftEast, 17 August. https://lefteast. org/longing-for-lost-agency-tanja-petrovic/ (accessed 30 August 2021). Popović, Milica. 2017. ‘Yugonostalgia: The Meta-National Narratives of the Last Pioneers’. In Nostalgia on the Move, edited by Mirjana Slavković and Marija Đorgović, pp. 42-50. Belgrade: The Museum of Yugoslavia.

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Purdeková, Andrea. 2020. ‘Itinerant Nationalisms and Fracturing Narratives: Incorporating Regional Dimensions of Memory into Peacebuilding’. Memory Studies 13 (6): 1183-1199. Radović, Srdjan. 2008. ‘From Center to Periphery and Vice Versa: The Politics of Toponyms in the Transitional Capital’. Glasnik Etnografskog instituta 56 (2): 53-74. Radović, Srdjan. 2013. Grad kao tekst. Belgrade: Biblioteka XX vek. Richmond, Oliver P. 2006. ‘The Problem of Peace: Understanding the “Liberal Peace”’. Conflict Security and Development 6 (3): 291-314. Rigney, Ann. 2018. ‘Remembering Hope: Transnational Activism beyond the Traumatic’. Memory Studies 11 (3): 368-380. Rothberg, Michael. 2014. ‘Locating Transnational Memory’. European Review 22 (4): 652-656. Shaw, Jo and Igor Štiks, eds. 2013. Citizenship after Yugoslavia. London: Routledge. Slapšak, Svetlana. 2017. ‘Okolina jezika’. Peščanik, 19 July. https://pescanik.net/ okolina-jezika/ (accessed 30 August 2021). Solioz, Christophe, and Paul Stubbs. 2012. ‘Regionalisms in Southeast Europe and Beyond’. In Towards Open Regionalism in South East Europe, edited by Paul Stubbs and Christophe Solioz, pp. 15-48. Baden-Baden: Nomos. Spasić, Ivana. 2012. ‘Jugoslavija kao mesto normalnog života: sećanja običnih ljudi u Srbiji’. Sociologija 54 (4): 577-594. Stojanović, Dubravka. 2009. ‘Slow Burning: History Textbooks in Serbia 1993-2008’. In ‘Transition’ and the Politics of History Education in Southeast Europe, edited by Augusta Dimou, pp. 141-158. Gottingen: V&R Unipress. Stojanović, Dubravka. 2016. ‘The Crossed Swords of Memory: The Image of Communist Yugoslavia in the Textbooks of its Successor States’. European Politics and Society 18 (1): 10-22. Stojanovic, Milica. 2020. ‘Belgrade to Scrap Street Names Recalling Old Yugoslavia’. Balkan Insight, 27 July. https://balkaninsight.com/2020/07/27/belgrade-to-scrapstreet-names-recalling-old-yugoslavia/ (accessed 30 August 2021). Stubbs, Paul. 2007. ‘Civil Society or Ubleha? Reflections on Flexible Concepts, Meta-NGOs and New Social Energy in the Post-Yugoslav Space’. In 20 Pieces of Encouragement for Awakening and Change: Peacebuilding in the Region of the Former Yugoslavia, edited by Helena Rill, Tamara Šmidling, and Ana Bitoljanu, pp. 215-228. Belgrade: Centre for Nonviolent Action. Štiks, Igor. 2015a. ‘“New Left” in the Post-Yugoslav Space: Issues, Sites and Forms’. Socialism and Democracy 29 (3): 135-146. Štiks, Igor. 2015b. Nations and Citizens in Yugoslavia and the Post-Yugoslav States: One Hundred Years of Citizenship. London: Bloomsbury. Štiks, Igor. 2020. ‘Activist Aesthetics in the Post-Socialist Balkans: Resistance, Rebellion, Emancipation’. Third Text 34 (4-5): 461-479.

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Štiks, Igor, and Srečko Horvat. 2015. ‘Radical Politics in the Desert of Transition’. In Welcome to the Desert of Post-Socialism, edited by Srečko Horvat and Igor Štiks, pp. 1-17. London: Verso. Štiks, Igor, and Krunoslav Stojaković. 2021. The New Balkan Left: Struggles, Successes, Failures. Belgrade: Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Southeast Europe. Šuica, Marko, Ana Radaković, and Slobodan Rudić. 2020. ‘Where and How do Pupils in Serbia Learn about the 1990s Yugoslav Wars?’. In Nationhood and Politicization of History in School Textbooks: Identity, the Curriculum and Educational Media, edited by Gorana Ognijenović and Jasna Jozelić, pp. 127-154. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Švob-Đokić, Nada. 2012. ‘Cultural Networks and Imagined Regionalism’. In Towards Open Regionalism in South East Europe, edited by Paul Stubbs and Christophe Solioz, pp. 117-132. Baden-Baden: Nomos. Taleski, Dane. 2017. ‘A View from Academia: Challenges and Perspectives for Regional Cooperation’. In ‘Political Trends & Dynamics in Southeast Europe: Regional Cooperation in the Western Balkans’, briefing. Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. Touquet, Heleen and Peter Vermeersch. 2015. ‘Changing Frames of Reconciliation: The Politics of Peace-Building in the Former Yugoslavia’. East European Politics and Societies 30 (1): 55-73. Trevisani, Silvia. 2019. ‘The Women’s Court: A Feminist Approach to Justice in the Post-Yugoslav Space’. Women’s Studies International Forum 77: 1-7. Vasiljević, Jelena. 2019. ‘Social Engagement and Personal Activism: Some Research Reflections and Fieldnotes from Conversations with Activists in Two Belgrade Protest Initiatives’. In Engaging ( for) Social Change. Towards New Forms of Collective Action, edited by Marjan Ivković and Srđan Prodanović, pp. 304-317. Belgrade: Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory. Vasiljević, Jelena. 2020. ‘Environmental Activism in the Balkans: From Direct Action to Political Subjectivity’. BiEPAG Blog, 16 September. https://biepag.eu/ environmental-activism-in-the-balkans-from-direct-action-to-political-subj ectivity/?fbclid=IwAR0Yf77akKSUN-SAcudvjxbUa9p0GFUToGsr_ZOigvNBFapHCUqfiljYgkw (accessed 30 August 2021). Vasiljević, Jelena. 2021. ‘Solidarity Reasoning and Citizenship Agendas: From Socialist Yugoslavia to Neoliberal Serbia’. East European Politics and Societies 35 (2): 271-292. Velikonja, Mitja. 2008. Titostalgia: A Study of Nostalgia for Josip Broz. Ljubljana: Peace Institute. Velikonja, Mitja. 2015. ‘Mapping Nostalgia for Tito: From Commemoration to Activism’. In Welcome to the Desert of Post-Socialism, edited by Srečko Horvat and Igor Štiks, pp. 173-195. London: Verso. Volčič, Zala. 2007. ‘Yugo-Nostalgia: Cultural Memory and Media in the Former Yugoslavia’. Critical Studies in Media Communication 24 (1): 21-38.

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Youth Initiative for Human Rights. 2019. ‘Operation Storm Anniversary Jointly Marked by the Initiatives in Serbia and Croatia’. Press release, 5 August. https:// www.yihr.rs/en/operation-storm-anniversary-jointly-marked-by-the-initiativesin-serbia-and-croatia/ (accessed 30 August 2021). Zajović, Staša, ed. 2015. Women’s Court: About the Process. Belgrade: Women in Black and Center for Women’s Studies.



Epilogue Unwanted Pasts in an Unresolved Present

This study has traced the emergence of memory activism in the aftermath of conflict and war. In its various forms, in the streets or on digital platforms, memory activism has been explored here as a framework for analysing the actions and claims of various actors, from below. My analysis first positioned memory activism as a strand of civic activism against denial and silence, which I consider to be at the heart of peace activism. The practices of memory activists in Serbia, as they disseminate alternative knowledge through acts of alternative commemoration, onsite and online, offer a case study. Within the context of memory politics in Serbia, the labour of these activists with unwanted memories of the wars of the 1990s exemplifies the ways local actors can claim agency in public memoryscapes, through their mnemonic actions. Memory activists in Serbia undertake these actions in the face of official denial, tainted with the rhetoric of victimization. But they are determined not to accept official narratives or leave unwanted memories in the past, and are thus enabled to confront a lack of knowledge, as well as apathy, fatigue, and the desire to simply move on, through alternative commemorations. A generational lens was an important frame for this analysis, and it was the first generation of memory activists in Serbia that insisted on creating space for anti-nationalist, and later, de-ethnicized interpretations of the recent past, by forming an alternative commemorative calendar. I maintain that when commemorative actions bring the memory of victims of war crimes into Belgrade, protesters are taking a stance against not only denial of the past, but also the current social malfunction in Serbia that distinguishes memories and relativizes pain according to ethno-national belonging. Viewing these actions through the generational lens allowed me to observe the continuity and change in the praxis of activists, including the transition of the first generation from anti-war activism to memory activism, and evolutions in the mnemonic claims introduced by the second generation. It is among this second generation of memory activists that a turn towards memory of activism has begun to emerge in recent years. This deserves

Fridman, Orli, Memory Activism and Digital Practices after Conflict: Unwanted Memories. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2022 doi: 10.5117/9789463723466_epilogue

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further empirical study, particularly as part of the memory-activism nexus. As a framework, memory of activism will facilitate the critical examination of the legacies of nonviolent struggles, so that future research may extend well beyond the cultural memories of war, war crimes, and atrocities, and instead place an emphasis on hope, agency, and civic actions and demands from below. Both memory activism and memory of activism are now apparent across the post-Yugoslav space; approaching that space as a ‘region of memory activism’ clarifies the multi-scalarity of activism generally and of memory activism specifically. While the work of labouring with memory certainly has its local and national nuances, by forming networks for commemorative solidarity among actors in societies emerging from conflict, memory activism as discussed here has the capacity to go far beyond the local. Like memory itself, memory activism, too, can be ‘on the move’, and can travel across borders in transnational forms. As I traced memory activism through the positive turn in memory studies and the local turn in peace and conflict studies, I also came across narratives of disappointment in the many conversations I had with long-time activists. These were often related to their sense that their efforts to expose unwanted memories of the wars of the 1990s have been ineffective or insufficient. For some, the fact that the official narrative of the state remains one of denial is especially frustrating. As former executive director of the Humanitarian Law Center Sandra Orlović put it, ‘I would love to remove from my head the accounts and stories I heard when collecting data for the Kosovo Memory Book, but I simply cannot’, adding that ‘it would have been sensible [to expect] that by now we would already have an official day of commemoration for the victims of the Kosovo war … [that] everything would now be revealed, and nothing would be in the dark anymore’ (interview by author, April 2020). But these accounts and facts, these unwanted memories, remain as alternative knowledge, and their commemorations as alternative rituals to those sponsored by the state. Given this, Belgrade-based author Saša Ilić has offered an especially grim reading of memory politics in Serbia today. According to him, ‘the process of facing up to the war time past in Serbia was defeated on March 12, 2003’, when Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić was assassinated ‘by people connected to the 1990s regime’ (Stojanovic 2021). Still, despite these sentiments, as I argue throughout this book, memory activists have persisted; and memory of activism has emerged as another form of proactive engagement by young activists with the legacies of the past. These generate platforms for action from below and make counter-memory and alternative forms of remembrance part of the discourse, even if only on its margins.

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In generating civic engagement and empathy in the form of commemorative solidarity, the potential to mobilize ideas of agency rather than of mere victimhood has become a vital one. The actors and actions discussed in this book reflect an awareness of the memory-activism nexus, which places hope in active citizens and action from below, as well as of the role of memory work in human agency, resistance, and resilience. The appearance of memory of activism within memory activism, in the aftermath of the wars of the 1990s, has also allowed activists to engage positively with local ‘wanted memories’ and make them more visible. These include memories of acts of resistance to the war, for example, as opposed to the acts of violence that characterize many ‘unwanted memories’. By sharing these ‘wanted memories’, the younger generation of activists in Serbia has re-opened and re-oriented the question of who is a war ‘hero’ and who is a war criminal. Positive images from the past also offer for the potential of a memory politics beyond ethnicity – meaning that memory of activism, as a form of action itself, is another platform for remembrance that may be valuable to this younger generation as they become informed and engaged with these legacies. Other forms of critical engagement with the legacies of the wars of the 1990s have also emerged in recent years. For instance, a generation of young artists from Serbia have challenged hegemonic narratives of the past, producing works relevant to the inquiries of this book. In Chapter 3, I discussed Ognjen Glavonić’s representation of the 1990s in his films Dubina dva and Teret, yet the more recent work of two other artists is worth mentioning here as well – that of Vladimir Miladinović and Jelena Jaćimović. In 2020, Miladinović’s works The Notebook and Counter-Archive both showed in Belgrade, where the artist was born in 1981. The Notebook, which opened in June 2020 at the Eugster Gallery, was based on the war diary of Ratko Mladić – presented as evidence at his trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).192 Miladinović recreated the entire diary as adapted for use by the court, page by page. For the artist, the work raised a number of questions, including: ‘What is the role of artistic imagination in the processes of dealing with the traumatic past?’ and ‘What are the limits of archives and archival material that has already served its purpose in the court?’.193 In Counter-Archives, Miladinović again 192 The diary was found in 2010 during a search conducted by the ICTY investigation team. A fake wall, missed in previous searches, was found in one of the houses where Mladić was hiding in Belgrade, and a large number of his personal diaries kept during the war were found, along with audio and video cassettes, photographs, and documents testifying to his wartime actions. 193 See the webpage for the exhibit, at: https://www.eugster-belgrade.com/exhibitions/ the-notebook/?tab=2.

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chose to engage with contested issues from the 1990s, and with evidence presented at the ICTY. The exhibit, which opened in November 2020 at the Endžio Gallery, confronted the legacy of the mass graves discovered in Batajnica, in ink-on-paper works ‘based on documents from [the ICTY] archive about the bodies of Kosovo Albanians that were found’ there, as well as from ‘a Serbian police investigation into the finding of a refrigerator truck full of victims’ bodies in the Danube River’ (Stojanovic 2020a).194 An exhibit organizer noted that the source documents used by Miladinović ‘have been withdrawn from memory or are actively excluded from the dominant narrative of the wartime past’ (Stojanovic 2020a). In other words, his artwork engages in alternative knowledge production of otherwise unwanted and silenced memories. In creating ArchiWar: Stories and Memories of the Srebrenica Genocide, Jelena Jaćimović also dug into the archives of the ICTY as an act of resistance to the dominant memory politics in Serbia. This series of illustrations reflects stories about massacres in Srebrenica – unearthed by the artist not only in the Tribunal’s archives but also in documents of the Humanitarian Law Center, and on the internet, in books, and in the media. The exhibit opened in September 2020 at the Center for Cultural Decontamination (CZKD). Jaćimović, who was born in 1992 and was a child when the events she depicted took place, was motivated by a sense of responsibility to do something about the fact that ‘these stories are not heard’, emphasizing that ‘[y]oung people in Serbia … rarely come into contact with views of the past outside their ethno-national circles’ (Stojanovic 2020b). According to the ArchiWar website, Jaćimović seeks to resist memory politics based on nationalism and militarism, and thus the denial of war crimes, in her work, and also to oppose the instrumentalization of Serb victims.195 Clearly, artists and activists who came of age after the 1990s still find themselves facing questions of responsibility from that decade marked by war, as they engage with memories unseen or hidden from public knowledge. The thread running through their works and actions is an awareness of and resistance to denial, a facing of what is otherwise invisible. Throughout this book, I have discussed these forms of memory activism that confront denial, which can also be found in other societies emerging from periods of war and conflict. In this context, analysed within the reality of unresolved presents, unwanted memories demand broader platforms for 194 An image of this truck has also been used symbolically by memory activists in Serbia; see Chapter 4. 195 See (in local language): https://www.archiwar.com/info.

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action; and the ‘region of memory activism’ becomes a frame for analysis of memory activism after conflict. Regions of memory activism stand against denial in its local and national variations, but also oppose the growing global manifestation of genocide triumphalism.196 Moreover, they collectively reject right-wing groups and actors that take inspiration from the hate and racism that led to the break-up of Yugoslavia and the wars of the 1990s.197 As a complementary form of action, digital memory activism grows ever more prevalent and effective. Hashtag memory activism specifically, which allows for the digital archiving of alternative knowledge about the past, continues to become more popular and develop further. There is also an uptick in projects that archive and disseminate knowledge in online platforms dedicated to breaking through the silence of denial, including several detailed in this book. For example, right after this book was completed, the Coalition for RECOM launched a new platform, the Glas žrtava (Voice of the victims) website.198 This is another space for the compilation of digital regional memory, as it makes the testimonies of thousands of war crimes victims accessible to the public. Placing an emphasis on memory politics, the Glas žrtava website also signifies the shift taken by many local actors, who are turning towards memory studies to frame their works and claims, as discussed throughout this text. The foundation for action set by the first generation of activists in Serbia, and developed by the second, will likely transform further as new actors and a next generation emerges. Yet the fate and role of memory activism in years to come remains unclear, given the tendency of neoliberal governmentality to manage and normalize the past, and as demands from below place more emphasis on issues beyond memory, related to social and economic justice, climate change, and environmental rights. While activism in Serbia has been described as slipping into bureaucratic cynicism (Athanasiou 2017), more globally, it is marked by innovation and change, leaving a number of questions open for investigation: Will the quest for critical knowledge 196 See the case of Austrian writer Peter Handke, the 2019 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, whose work and political activism over the last three decades has supported the Serb nationalist cause and the denial of war crimes, including the Srebrenica genocide (Hemon 2019; Halilović 2020). 197 The crimes committed in Srebrenica and other similar crimes committed by Serb paramilitary forces against Muslims during the 1990s have been widely adopted as an ideological touchpoint by far-right actors across the world and have provided inspiration for the two largest massacres by white supremacists in recent years, in Norway in 2011, and in New Zealand in 2019 (Halilović 2020; Ristic 2021). 198 See https://www.glaszrtava.org/

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about the past manage to transcend local divisions to allow networks of commemorative solidarity against denial to prevail? What place will commemorative solidarity have in an era of proliferating networks claiming race, gender, and economic justice? And what role will memory activism scholars play in ongoing discussions in the social sciences? This book demonstrates the significance of memory activism as a subfield within memory studies, and I maintain that it will continue to evolve, driven by actions from below, as a crucial strand of peace activism.

Bibliography In citations and references, authors’ names are spelled as they appear in the original publication. Athanasiou, Athena. 2017. Agonistic Mourning: Political Dissidence and the Women in Black. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Halilović, Hariz. 2020. ‘Srebrenica Genocide Has Changed Me and My Generation’. Peščanik. 22 July. https://pescanik.net/srebrenica-genocide-has-changed-meand-my-generation/ (accessed 30 August 2021). Hemon, Sasha. 2019. ‘The Bob Dylan of Genocide Apologists’. The New York Times, 15 October. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/15/opinion/peter-handke-nobelbosnia-genocide.html (accessed 30 August 2021). Ristic, Katarina. 2020. ‘From Norway to New Zealand: How A Serbian Internet Meme Inspired Radical Right Terrorists Worldwide’. ReCentGlobe Blog, 7 September. https://www.uni-leipzig.de/newsdetail/artikel/blog-from-norway-to-newzealand-how-a-serbian-internet-meme-inspired-radical-right-terrorists-wor (accessed 30 August 2021). Stojanovic, Milica. 2020a. ‘Serbian Artist’s Exhibition Explores Cover-Up of Kosovo Massacres’. Balkan Insight, 17 November. https://balkaninsight.com/2020/11/17/ serbian-artists-exhibition-explores-cover-up-of-kosovo-massacres/ (accessed 30 August 2021). Stojanovic, Milica. 2020b. ‘Serbian Artist’s Pictures Tell Stories of Srebrenica Victims and Survivors’. Balkan Insight, 29 September. https://balkaninsight. com/2020/09/29/serbian-artists-pictures-tell-stories-of-srebrenica-victimsand-survivors/ (accessed 30 August 2021). Stojanovic, Milica. 2021. ‘Taboo-Busting Literature has “Liberation Potential”, Says Serbian Author’. Balkan Insight, 18 January. https://balkaninsight.com/2021/01/18/ taboo-busting-literature-has-liberating-potential-says-serbian-author/ (accessed 30 August 2021).

Appendices Appendix 1 YIHR Transitional Justice Calendar

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Appendix 2 March 2010 YIHR Announcement of ‘Action to commemorate crimes committed in Kosovo in March and April 1999’

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Appendix 3 CPI Brochure: ‘Program of guided tours to places of “Suppressed memories”’

Program javnih vođenja „Potisnuta sećanja“

Spomenik „Zašto?“ u Tašmajdanskom parku 

 U nedelju 21. aprila Centar za primenjenu istoriju (CPI) će u Beogradu organizovati javni čas o kulturi sećanja u vezi sa NATO bombardovanjem. Čas se organizuje za studente i studentkinje prevashodno društvenih nauka. Čas počinje u 12 časova i trajaće sat i po. Studenti i studentkinje koji žele da prisustvuju javnom času treba da se prijave do 18. aprila slanjem mejla na [email protected], uz naznaku „Javni čas – NATO bombardovanje“. Prijavljeni će putem mejla dobiti dodatne logističke informacije. Javni čas vodi Jasmina Lazović, saradnica CPI.

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‹ŽŒ ‘˜‘‰ javnog časa je da se obiđu ‡‹ ‘† •’‘‡‹ƒ posvećeniŠ …‹˜‹Ž‹ƒ ‹ „‘”…‹ƒ •–”ƒ†ƒŽ‹ –‘‘  „‘„ƒ”†‘˜ƒŒƒǡ ƒ ‘Œ‹ •‡ ƒŽƒœ‡ — ‡’‘•”‡†‘Œ „Ž‹œ‹‹ …‡–”ƒ ‡‘‰”ƒ†ƒǤ Tokom programa će se razgovarati o porukama koje •’‘‡‹…‹prenose, kao i o narativu koji se oko njih stvara. Posebna pažnja biće posvećena mestu koji oni zauzimaju u kulturi sećanja u Srbiji na događaje sa ”ƒŒƒʹͲǤ˜‡ƒǤ  ̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴ ̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴̴  “Potisnuta sećanja” je stalni program javnih časova Centra za primenjenu ‹•–‘”‹Œ—ǡ‘‹•–‘”‹Œ‹†‡˜‡†‡•‡–‹Š‰‘†‹ƒǤ Žƒ˜‹…‹ŽŒ’”‘‰”ƒƒŒ‡†ƒ•‡Œƒ˜‘•–‹ približe istorijske činjenice i marginalizovan ƒ‹•–‘”‹Œ•ƒœ„‹˜ƒŒƒ‘Œƒ•— ključna za razumevanje društvenih procesa danas. Javnost u Srbiji izložena je vladajućem narativu koji, u cilju očuvanja politika koje se zasnivaju na ƒ…‹‘ƒŽ‹œ—ǡ”ƒ•‹œ—‹‹Ž‹–ƒ”‹œƒ…‹Œ‹ǡ‡‰‘˜‘”‡‘‘†‰‘˜‘”‘•–‹ǡ’‘‹”‡Œ— ‹ poštovanju žrtava, kao ključnim mehanizmima za izgradnju kulture mira u našim društvima. Iz tog razloga CPI tim, koristeći metodologiju “javne istorije” i “istorije izvan učionice”, otvara javni dijalog o temi sukoba iz ’90ih i raspadu

—‰‘•Žƒ˜‹Œ‡ǡ‹—’‘–”‡„ŽŒƒ˜ƒŒƒ˜‡’”‘•–‘”‡‘Œ‹ǡkao mesta sećanjaǡsvedoče o ‘˜‹œ„‹˜ƒŒ‹ƒǤ 

Program javnih vođenja "Potisnuta sećanja" o istoriji devedesetih godina podržala je Rekonstrukcija Ženski Fond.

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Appendix 4 Women’s Court Invitation to Hear Public Testimonies in Sarajevo, May 2015

Women’s Court – a Feminist Approach to Justice Sarajevo – 7-10 May 2015

Dear friends, associates and supporters, with all due respect for your contribution t our joint efforts towards achieving peace with justice, on this occasion we invite you to join us in the Women’s Court. The final event – public testimonies will be held in Sarajevo/Bosnia and Hercegovina from 7th to 10th May 2015. The process of organizing of the Women’s Court – a feminist approach to justice began in late 2010 and has been ongoing, and will also continue after the afore mentioned event. With the Women’s Court – a feminist approach to justice we create space for women’s testimonies on the experiences of injustice and violence they underwent during the wars and in peacetime. Above all, we wish to create space for all the unacknowledged, concealed and silenced crimes , and also to shed light on organized resistance. The regional initiative Women’s Court – a feminist approach to justice was launched by 7 feminist organizations from all the countries of the former Yugoslavia. In the course of a four-year period (2011-2015), we were engaged in intensive activities preparing the organization of the Women’s Court – a feminist approach to justice. These activities involved creating a women network of solidarity of witnesses, activists, therapists, experts and artists coming from all the successor states of the former Yugoslavia. The aim of these activities is to create a feminist model of peace, justice and accountability. With the Women’s Court – a feminist approach to justice we contemplate and and create new policies of knowledge, we reconsider the relations between theory and practice/experience , we build mutual solidarity and trust, alternative women-s history and collective historical memory. In solidarity, The Organizing Committee of the Initiative for the Women’s Court – a feminist approach to justice: The Movement of Mothers of the Srebrenica and Žepa enclaves, Sarajevo, Foundation CURE, Sarajevo, Women’s Forum, Bratunac, (Bosnia and Hercegovina), Center for Women Victims of War, Zagreb, Center for Women Studies, Zagreb, (Croatia), Slovenian Women’s Lobby, Ljubljana, (Slovenia), Center for Women’s peace Studies, Kotor, (Montenegro), Council for

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Gender Equality, Skopje, (Macedonia), Kosovo Women’s Network, Priština, (Kosovo), Women Studies Center, Belgrade, (Serbia),Women in Black, Belgrade, (Serbia).

Venue: Bosanski kulturni centar Branilaca Sarajeva 24, Sarajevo 71000, Bosna i Hercegovina Time: 7th – 10th May 2015 Please enlist ... Contact: Women in Black, Belgrade Tel: +381 11 262 32 25 E-mail: [email protected] Contact persons: Zinaida Marjanović +381 63 658 155 Miloš Urošević +381 65 810 1991

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Index acknowledgment 43, 78, 80, 111, 149, 164, 179, 186 activism anti-denial 21, 30-31 anti-militarist 72, 105, 151n141, 152 anti-nationalist 23, 71, 74, 88, 105, 152-153, 170, 179, 197 anti-war 15, 17, 23, 25-26, 28, 31-32, 42-45, 48, 56, 60, 63, 71-79, 81, 88-91, 104-106, 114, 121n118, 122, 126, 143-145, 150-152, 179, 197 civic 17-19, 22, 30-31, 43, 45, 62, 165, 186, 197-198 feminist 17, 71-72, 74, 75n58, 77-78, 80, 89, 105, 122, 152, 179-181 peace 15, 18-20, 30-31, 62, 107, 114, 163, 177, 181, 197, 202 street 26, 30, 32, 62-63, 72-73, 77-80, 82-83, 87, 89, 91n83, 101, 105-111, 113-114, 117, 132, 136-137, 181 agency 15-16, 20-22, 30-31, 66, 82, 149, 158, 160, 161-163, 169-170, 175, 190, 192, 197-199, 214-215, 222, 228 alternative calendar(s) 15-16, 18, 21, 25, 32, 55, 63, 71-72, 77-78, 80-81, 88-89, 102, 122, 137, 153, 165 alternative commemoration(s) 9, 16-17, 21-23, 30-31, 38, 52, 63-64, 73, 77, 79-80, 112, 122, 153, 163-164, 177, 181, 186, 197 alternative commemorative events 9, 15-16, 19, 21, 23-25, 27, 32, 38, 102-103, 111, 173, 175 alternative knowledge 15-16, 27, 30, 57, 77, 83, 101, 111, 113, 131-134, 136, 145, 177, 179, 182, 183n184, 197-198, 200-201 anti-fascist 49, 86n75, 122, 165-166, 174-175 anti-nationalism/nationalist 23, 45, 71, 74, 88-89, 105, 152-153, 164, 170, 197 Arendt, Hannah 65, 77-78, 92-93, 95, 212-213, 229 archive(s)/archiving 74, 133, 149-150, 153, 156, 181, 184, 199-201 Batajnica activism 32, 97, 99, 107-108, 110, 112, 119, 150 mass graves 32, 51n30, 97, 99, 106-108, 110, 112-113, 115-119, 122, 200 tour(s) 26, 32, 113-115, 120 Batajnica Memorial Initiative 116-119, 126, 210 Belgrade Circle 77, 86, 93, 143, 213 Biserko, Sonja 104 Bosnia and Herzegovina activism in/about 26, 72, 79, 81, 84, 91, 101102, 106, 139-140, 150, 152-153, 155-157, 187 commemoration of war victims 26, 81-82, 84, 88, 91, 101-102, 106, 152-153, 155-157, 176n167, 186n191, 187 Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina 82

perspectives on the war in 51, 37, 79, 116, 121 Potočari see Srebrenica-Potočari Memorial and Cemetery Prijedor 152-153, 155-157 refugees from 40n10, 48 regional cooperation 99n, 139, 153, 167n, 170n156, 171-172, 180, 182-183 Republika Sprska 56, 59, 61, 82n68 Srebrenica see Srebrenica war crimes in 50, 118n111, 121, 123, 136 war criminals in 97-98, 123, 139-140 calendar(s) alternative see alternative calendars civic 17, 30-31, 38, 57, 72, 80-82, 87-91, 102, 112, 186 post-Yugoslav 31, 37-38, 57n43 state 19, 47, 53, 56, 73 Yugoslav 50, 176 Center for Cultural Decontamination (CZKD) ​ 26, 63, 73, 85-86, 104, 143, 175, 200 Center for Women’s Studies 26, 74, 77-78, 180 Centre for Anti-war Action (CAA) 60, 79, 151 Centre for Public History/Centar za primenjenu istoriju (CPI) 26, 63, 99, 105, 113-115, 120-122, 152, 156, 205 citizenship 75, 89, 165-166, 175 civic action(s) 10-11, 17-18, 20, 22, 31, 43, 45, 62, 79, 186, 198 civic engagement 19-20, 26, 33, 45, 63, 77, 89, 152, 161, 162, 199 civic memories 17, 53, 90 civil society 26, 45, 52, 62-63, 73-74, 104, 113, 124, 142, 146, 156, 163, 168, 174, 178n172 collective memory 9-10, 23-24, 55, 63n51, 152 commemorations banned 133-134 online 27, 32, 103, 131-132, 134, 153, 186 state sponsored 47-48, 52-53, 57-59, 61, 110n99, 111, 113 commemorative activities/actions 19, 22-23, 71, 81n67, 82, 113, 177, 185, 197 claims 21, 38 events 15-16, 19, 21, 23-25, 27, 32, 38, 56, 58, 81n67, 82n68, 83, 88-90, 99, 102-103, 110n99, 111, 113, 137-138, 152, 166, 173, 175, 185-186 performances 23 platform 27, 89, 186 practices 15, 25-28, 54, 61, 63, 83, 102-103, 105-106, 114, 134, 156, 165-166, 174n164, 186 rituals 18, 21, 23, 32, 54-55, 57, 71-72, 87, 97, 99, 104, 113, 137 solidarity 21-23, 25-26, 30, 53, 78, 80, 91, 111, 161-165, 167, 173, 185-187, 198-199, 202

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compassion 21, 110-111, 149, 156, 186 counter-memory 16, 77, 132, 150, 165, 198 Croatia activism in/about 72, 139-140, 142-144, 150, 151n141, 176n168, 186-187 commemoration of war victims 185-187 expulsion of Serbs 57, 60 Operation Storm 57, 60-61, 140n30, 186-187 perspectives on the war in 28, 37, 48n28, 51, 57n43, 116 refugees from 40n10, 48 regional cooperation 26, 99n, 139, 170n156, 171-172, 180, 182-183 war crimes in 50, 124 war criminals in 97n84, 124, 139-140 DAH Theatre 73-74, 74n54, 78, 87, 103 Days of Sarajevo (Dani Sarajeva) 79 Declaration on the Common Language 165, 171-172, 174, 174n163 denial 21, 23, 25-26, 32, 44-46, 51, 62, 72, 80, 83, 88-90, 101, 105, 124, 132, 136, 140, 145, 149, 153, 163, 174, 197-198, 200-202 denial of genocide see genocide denial difficult past(s) 23-24, 28, 44, 97, 99 digital memory 32, 131, 152, 201 digital memory activism 32, 131, 152, 201 digital memory practices 103, 131 discourse(s) of commemoration 25, 57-58, 118, 166n151, 198 of denial 46 of human rights/justice 52, 186 of the normal/abnormal 39, 44 of the past 24, 31, 53, 55-56, 62, 117-118, 166n of victimization 48, 57-58, 145 of war and war crimes 48, 84, 117-118, 184 official 48, 53, 55, 83-84, 149, 175 Documentation Centre for the Wars of 1991-1999 ​ 73 Duhaček, Daša 78, 180-181 Đinđić, Zoran 42n12, 43, 45, 46n18, 48, 58-59, 75-76 emancipatory peace 22, 33, 162 empathy 9, 19, 22, 32, 52, 77, 80, 84, 110-111, 136, 149, 156, 186, 199 ethno-nationalism see nationalism fragmented commemoration/memory 24, 25, 83, 201 generational belonging 11, 25, 27-28, 30, 32, 38, 72, 102, 116, 119, 125, 139, 174, 181, 184 generational difference(s)/shifts 44, 52, 90-91, 101-102, 106, 137 generational lens 15-16, 25-26, 27-30, 41, 45, 71, 197

genocide denial 83, 103, 105, 152, 156 Glavonić, Ognjen 32, 99, 115-117 hashtag memory activism 11, 21, 131-134, 137, 140, 157, 201 hashtags 27, 32, 131-134, 140, 157 Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia ​63, 73, 82n69, 86n76, 104n93, 183n184 hope 19-21, 31, 40-41, 43, 64, 75, 164, 169n155, 198-199 Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) 26, 59, 63, 73, 83n70, 86n76, 104n92, 109, 150, 156, 178, 198, 200 in-between generation 28, 32, 64, 78-79, 82n69, 84, 99-100, 106, 114-115, 122, 185n188 International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) closure 139 convicts 122-124, 139-140, 199 evidence/facts established by 103, 108n97, 200 ‘ICTY celebrities’ 61n49, 123n121, 139 legacy/perceptions of 53n33, 139 knowledge of 51, 109, 115n104, 117, 150 proceedings/judgments 84, 153, 179n175, 199 Jaćimović, Jelena 199-200 Jasenovac Memorial 187, 56n40, 86n75 #JesteSeDesilo (#ItDidHappen) 145-147, 149 Kandić, Nataša 104, 144, 178 Karadžić, Radovan 43n13, 86-87, 98, 135 Ko je prvi počeo? 184 Kosovo activism in/about 32, 72, 97, 99-100, 102, 106-108, 111-119, 139-140, 142, 150, 204 Albanians 111-112, 117-118, 200 commemoration of war victims in 32, 62n, 81, 102, 106-108, 111-115, 118, 149n, 186, 190n190, 198, 204 refugees from 40n10, 48 regional cooperation 26, 99n, 139, 150, 167n, 178n172, 180 perspectives on the war in 28, 37, 42, 50n, 57, 59, 61, 100, 106-107, 111, 116-119 status 47n24, 57n41 Suva Reka see Suva Reka war crimes in 50, 97n84, 106-108, 110, 112-115, 117-119, 200 war criminals in 109n98, 139-140, 142 Kosovo Memory Book 117-118, 198 Kovačević-Vučo, Biljana 75 Krokodil 171, 184 Learning a History that is not yet History project (LHH) 182-183 liberal peace 20, 22

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Mašić, Dušan 134-137 memorial(s) 23, 47n25, 56n40, 58, 103, 106, 116, 118-120, 166, 187-188 memory administration of 19, 31, 38, 46, 54 laws 47, 49, 54, 56n38, 121 policy 19, 46 politics 18n, 19, 21, 30-32, 37, 44n15, 45-46, 48-51, 53, 57n41, 58, 60, 62, 73, 105, 132-133, 149, 161-162, 166, 174-176, 179, 182n180, 197-201 regimes 19, 46, 48-49 work 16, 19-20, 25-26, 30, 45, 62n, 63, 88, 97, 99, 121n117, 122, 131-132, 156, 199 memory activism agency in 16, 20-21, 30-31, 149, 161-163, 170, 175, 197-199 as protest 19, 49n29, 88, 97, 99, 122-124, 139, 142, 152, 197 continuity and change in 29, 32, 97, 99, 102, 104-105, 197 digital/online 26, 32, 126, 131-132, 134, 140, 152, 201 emerging from anti-war activism 71-72, 79, 91, 197 from below 11, 13, 16, 18, 20-22, 27, 31, 62, 64, 73-74, 76-77, 80, 107, 133, 161-165, 174, 177, 187, 197-199, 202 hashtag see hashtag memory activism innovations in 25, 32, 97, 99, 102-103, 125, 140, 147, 201 practices in 16, 21, 25, 31, 52, 113, 125, 132, 140, 166, 200 regional see region of memory activism through art 21, 82n69, 113, 117 transnational 113, 132, 134, 152, 162, 164, 167, 175, 198 memory-activism nexus 15-17, 20, 45, 198-199 memory of activism 16-17, 20, 25, 31-32, 38, 42, 64, 74, 89, 105, 114, 122, 126, 145, 150-152, 157, 181, 197-199 memory studies 9, 20-21, 28-29, 31-32, 165, 179, 184, 198, 201-202 Miladinović, Vladimir 199-200 Milenković, Miroslav 144 Milosavljević, Marko 13, 148-151, 187 Milošević, Slobodan Monument(s) 47n25, 98 overthrow 31, 41-42, 46n21, 50, 57, 61, 63, 75, 124 politics of 46n21, 47n25, 98 regime of 31, 38, 42, 43n14, 45, 48, 58-59, 75 trial of 46, 59, 84, 97-98 Mirëdita dobar dan! Festival 142, 175n165 Mitić, Anita 104, 123, 125, 176 Mlađenović, Lepa 78 Mladić, Ratko 85, 87, 91, 135, 139, 199 mnemonic actors 18-19, 63

claims 25, 27, 31, 38, 71-72, 80, 82, 97, 99, 102, 137, 139, 161-164, 169, 173-174, 180-181, 184, 187, 197 communities 23-24 editing 24, 50, 54 practice(s) 15-16, 18, 21, 25, 27, 32, 45, 63, 97, 99, 101, 106, 108, 131-134 regimes 21 rituals 23, 91 socialization 51, 58 struggles 134, 163 trends 58-59 monuments 19, 21, 23, 47n25, 48, 50, 58, 58n46, 86n75, 98, 117-118, 121-122, 162n147 Mothers of Srebrenica 85, 88, 91, 180 narrative(s) alternative 59, 108, 134 commemorative 23-25, 50, 53, 73, 106, 167, 186 contested 19, 24, 56, 118, 186 dominant/hegemonic 64, 90, 120, 146, 166, 177, 199-200 of denial 90, 101, 107, 136, 198 of solidarity 166 of victimization 22, 52, 61, 76, 146 revisionist 49-50 state-sponsored 49-50, 52, 54, 59, 61, 107-108, 186, 198 nationalism 40, 45, 48, 50, 53, 75n55, 77, 89, 105, 111, 120, 142-143, 145, 164, 172, 174, 176, 200 new Left 165, 170, 172n161 #NisuNašiHeroji (#NotOurHeroes) 27, 125, 139-140, 142, 187 Nosov, Andrej 85 Omarska 153n144, 186n191 Operation Storm 57, 60-62, 140n130, 186 oppositional knowledge 18 Orlović, Sandra 116, 118-119, 157, 198 Otpor 39, 42, 58n45 Ovčara 51, 124, 186n191, 187 Pavićević, Borka 104, 143 peace emancipatory see emancipatory peace liberal see liberal peace peace and conflict studies 10, 20, 22, 31, 198 peace formation 21-22, 24, 53, 107, 111, 143, 162, 167, 172, 186 politics of disappointment 31, 43, 64 RECOM 165, 177-181, 201 region of memory 77, 125, 134, 139, 157, 161-166, 174, 177, 181-182, 184-185, 187 region of memory activism 26, 31-32, 92, 99n87, 142, 163, 165-167, 171, 174, 177, 187, 198, 201

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Memory Ac tivism and Digital Pr ac tices af ter Conflic t

regional cooperation 162n148, 165, 167-169, 181, 185 Republic Square 15, 80, 86-87, 89, 102-105, 108-109 responsibility determination of 49 for war/war crimes 43, 50, 57, 59, 97n84, 107, 110n100, 120, 180 politics of 30, 48, 77, 89 questions of 46, 49, 52, 78, 83, 181, 200 through action 87, 98, 102, 110n100 revisionism 48-49, 61n49, 114, 165, 170, 174-176, 182, 184 Sarajevo siege of 79, 81, 112 Women’s Court see Women’s Court #sedamhiljada (#seventhousand) 103, 134-138 Serbia 5 October 2000 41, 43-45, 46n18, 71-72, 75-76 after Milošević 31, 41, 43-44, 50, 53, 57-59, 61, 63, 75, 98, 124 anti-regime demonstrations/protests 3739, 41-43, 55n36, 75n57, 171 anti-war activism/protests see activism, anti-war NATO bombing 28, 57-60, 81n66, 106, 100, 110, 113, 119-120 sanctions 37, 40 Serbian Orthodox Church 54, 58, 61, 73, 87n78 silence breaking 77, 108, 145 silenced past(s)/memories 16, 21, 25-27, 31, 63n51, 101, 106, 112, 117, 122, 133-134, 142, 144, 153, 200 social media 27, 32, 98, 103, 131-134, 136-137, 139, 145-147, 153, 156, 158, 169, 187 solidarity see commemorative solidarity Srebrenica commemoration of 15, 32, 71-72, 79-85, 87-91, 101-103, 105, 113, 135-137, 176n167, 185, 188, 200 contested narratives of 80, 82-84, 86 denial of 80, 82-84, 86, 88, 90, 201n196 resolution on 86, 105 Srebrenica-Potočari Memorial and Cemetery 26, 81-83, 87-88, 90-91, 102, 106, 136n128, 185, 186n191, 188 Suva Reka 101-102, 106-110, 113 Tešanović, Jasmina 91 transitional justice 31, 44, 83, 100, 102, 178-179, 183n184, 203 Trifunović, Vladimir 143-144 unwanted memory/memories 10-11, 15-17, 23, 25-27, 30-32, 37-39, 41, 47, 48, 52, 60-64, 71, 73, 76, 78, 80, 89, 91, 97, 99-101, 117, 121-122, 131-133, 163-165, 177, 182, 185, 197-200

victimhood 20, 30, 58, 61, 84, 199 victimization 9-10, 20, 22, 32, 48, 52-53, 59-60, 72, 76-77, 145-146, 163-164, 177, 185, 197 Vukovar 81, 109, 124, 185n191, 186-187 war crimes commemoration of 24, 45, 57, 118, 122, 136, 177, 186n190 denial of 50-51, 56, 81, 140, 200, 201n196 documentation of 72, 145, 148-149, 178, 201 engagement with 22-24, 125, 145, 148-150, 173-174, 178n172 glorification of 22-23, 32, 72, 80, 97, 99, 122, 187 legacies of 39, 44, 50, 61, 173, 198 knowledge of 51-52 perpetration of 48, 91, 140, 142 responsibility for 43-44, 48, 88n80, 140 trials 42n12, 109n98, 115n104, 118, 123n121, 140n130 victims 118, 140, 197, 201 war criminals glorification of 91n83, 97, 99, 123, 139, 142n131, 187 normalization of 99, 126, 142 rehabilitation of 61n49, 114, 123 trials of 146 wars of the 1990 commemoration(s) of 32, 61, 81, 177, 185 discourse(s) related to 48, 50, 56, 58, 62, 98, 101, 107, 184 engagement with 30, 37-38, 42, 46, 47n25, 73, 75, 80-81, 82n69, 90, 143, 164, 174, 179, 182, 199 experiences of 115, 122, 143 knowledge of 46, 51, 57, 62, 118, 121, 142, 177, 182, 184 legacies of 18, 29, 31, 52n31, 56, 61-62, 80, 116, 162, 166, 173, 176-177, 179, 184, 199 memories of 17, 25, 30-32, 37-38, 50, 62, 63n51, 71, 73, 90, 99-100, 105, 116, 121, 131-132, 134, 136, 139, 164-166, 177, 197-198 perspectives on 27, 73, 89, 121 #WhiteArmbandDay (#DanBijelihTraka) ​ 152-156 Women in Black 13, 15, 25-26, 32, 49n29, 60, 63, 71-74, 75n58, 76-83, 86-87, 89-92, 99, 102-106, 108, 110, 137, 140, 143, 151, 151n141, 180, 185 Women’s Court (Ženski sud) 92, 165, 177, 179-181, 207 World War II 49-50, 53, 56n40, 60, 114, 116, 122, 175-176, 176n167, 184, 187 Youth Initiative for Human Rights (YIHR) 26, 63, 84-85, 98-108, 111, 114, 122-123, 124n123,

Index

235

125, 136-137, 139-151, 173, 176, 178n170, 185, nostalgia/Yugonostalgia 162n148, 166n151 186n190, 187, 203 post-World War II 49, 116 Yugoslav Lawyers for Human Rights (YUCOM) ​ post-Yugoslav space/Yugosphere 114, 63, 73, 75, 151 162n148 Yugoslavia remembering Yugoslavia 174-175, 181 breakup/dissolution 16, 27, 32, 37, 49, 51, Socialist Federal Republic of see 52n32, 56, 71-74, 110n100, 114, 134, 142, Yugoslavia, former 145-146, 162, 174-175, 201 socialist period 28, 40, 48, 50, 53, 113, 175 Federal Republic of 47, 57 former 43, 52, 57, 74, 76-77, 79, 83, 86n75, Zajović, Staša 13, 74n54, 110, 143, 180 97-98, 139, 148, 157, 164, 166, 171, 178, 182, Ženski sud see Women’s Court 199 Živković, Vladimir 144 Kingdom of 53n34