SUITABLE AND UNSUITABLE VICTIMS: Rehabilitation of Nikola Kalabić and other stories

"There are two reasons why we are here. The first because of the murdered and exiled, the second to remember. For years in Serbia, there seemed to be no witnesses to crimes against Serbs. With that, we ourselves threw a stone at the saddest column in our history. During that time of oblivion, Serbia was falling apart", said Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić at a protest rally held on the occasion of the High Court's decision in Valjevo to rehabilitate Chetnik Duke Nikola Kalabić.

Patriarch Porfirije was also present at the meeting, appalled by the fact that a notorious war criminal and famous butcher was declared innocent.

"We do not forget the victims and destruction in the crystalline night in Vranić, the villages of Šumadija, the terrible terror and those killed in houses and apartments, all the way to Kopljar and the villages around Kosmaj. All these are pebbles in the mosaic of suffering and crucifixion", the patriarch pointed out.

He added that "we must also gather at the place of martyrdom of the holy martyr Ljubomir Pantić, as well as at every place where our innocent brothers and sisters died, but also at all places where innocent people died, regardless of their nationality and how they pray to God".

The protest rally is, of course, fictitious, but the quoted words are not invented. The first quote was spoken by Aleksandar Vučić, word for word, but at the commemoration of the Day of Remembrance for the victims of the "Storm" (“Oluja”) in Novi Sad. The patriarch's words come from the same meeting, only the toponyms have been changed, and instead of Vukašin Jasenovacki, I inserted the name of the baby who was slaughtered in Vranić by Kalabić's Chetniks in the mass slaughter that took place on the night between December 20 and 21, 1943.

Forgetful president

When the victims of Chetnik crimes are on the agenda, suddenly Vučić's lament that there are no witnesses to crimes against Serbs is no longer valid, nor is the call to oppose the time of oblivion. The patriarch's principle that we must not forget any victim does not apply to them, nor does the call to gather at the places where innocent people died apply to them. The two highest representatives of the spiritual and worldly authorities divide the victims into two types: suitable and unsuitable. Similar are those that can be used for political purposes, for the sake of maintaining the dominant ideological narrative about Serbs who always suffer from evil neighbours, there is no end to the piety of our virtuous leaders to ruin.

In the overwhelming outpouring of grief over the tragic fate of Serbian life in neighbouring countries, Vučić regularly forgets to mention his role in that tragedy. For him, history begins with the "Storm", and everything that happened in the previous years is covered with a veil of oblivion. The president does not remember how the Serbian Radical Party, whose functionary he was at the time, incited the Serbs to rebel and establish their own parastatal. Vučić forgot about the massive crimes committed by Serbian forces in Croatia, and his memory regularly fails him there.

He does not even remember his own speech that he gave on March 20, 1995, in Glina, when he said that the city was Serbian and that Krajina would never be a part of Croatia. The president forgot how he pushed unfortunate people into ruin, while he built his political career on their suffering, and got government positions, an apartment, money and other honours. Such is the effect of Vučić's politics: those who listened to him became refugees, and he got the entire country to play with at his own discretion.

Unsuitable victims

On the other hand, unworthy victims are those who died at the hands of the church and political pets, whose ideological story is continued by both unofficial branches of government. Since both glorify the Chetniks and have been working on revising history for decades, for them Chetnik crimes simply do not exist, and even less do the people killed by the Quislings exist. This is not only the merit of the progressive elite, the rehabilitation of the Chetnik movement and the falsification of the past were also worked hard during the time of the Democratic Party, Vučić's stormtroopers only continued to build on the foundation laid by their predecessors. The rehabilitation of Draža Mihailović was started under the democrats, and completed under the progressives, in which one can see a beautiful continuity of the policy of destruction and self-destruction to which our good politicians are endlessly loyal.

Unlike the apparently democratic state, the church is a much more traditional institution, there are no elections, changes, or different orientations, but unity in Christ, Draža and kama reign all the time. Priests regularly hold memorial services for the deceased, which Amfilohije Radović called "the leader of the third Serbian uprising", and in the Belgrade church of St. Jovan Vladimir on Voždovac you can see Draža's image painted on a fresco. The Church has not yet canonized him, but slowly, not everything can be done at once, and that will come in time. That is why Milorad Vukojičić Maca, a priest and leader of the Chetnik Black Troika, known for the massacres in Pljevlja, was peacefully declared a priest-martyr, and there he is, flaunting himself in the church calendar.

Nikola Kalabić will probably not be declared a saint, not because his Mountain Guard terrorized peasants and slaughtered civilians throughout Šumadija and other Serbian regions, but because the duke committed a mortal sin - he betrayed his leader Draža Mihailović to the partisans. Nikola Kalabić's rehabilitation was successful only the second time, he was rehabilitated the first time in 2017, but the Court of Appeal overturned this decision the following year. The process was restarted, so Kalabić was rehabilitated.

Butchering career of Nikola Kalabić

After his rehabilitation, the false autocracy lamentation over Serbian victims could really stop, because Kalabić is a symbol of terror in Serbia. The crimes of his Chetniks have been carefully documented, and the black legend about the villain Kalabić still lives on in the villages that suffered the terror. Kalabić's corps also took part in the mentioned massacre in Vranić, 67 villagers were killed, mostly women and children, and they did not spare even babies in cradles. In the book "Punishment and Crime" by the historian Milan Radanović, you can find a lot of information about the crimes of the Kalabić Mountain Guard.

"On the night of December 25, 1943, Chetniks under the command of Nikola Kalabić slaughtered a large number of civilians in the village of Kopljare, near Arandjelovac. Of the 22 killed, 19 were of the Roma nationality", Radanović writes.

Kalabić bragged about his crime to his commander, so in a dispatch dated December 29, 1943, he reported to Draža Mihailović: "In Kopljari, 24 active communists were caught sleeping and slaughtered, 20 of whom were Gypsies, who admitted that they were so-called 'jarugaši', during the day they do their work at home and at night they are in action. I slaughtered everything".

Those killed were not even communists or partisans, Kalabić simply made it up, even by Chetnik fratricidal standards, they were innocent people. Even some of Kalabić's colleagues were aware that they were dealing with a serious maniac and villain. One of his officers wrote to Draža Mihailović about what Kalabić was doing in the mining area:

"Of the total number of people they slaughtered, 50% were innocent victims. I know they report that they were slaughtered as guilty. When the people hear that Chetniks are coming to the village, they are more afraid than when Germans, Bulgarians, Arnauts and any other religion come. Because when they come, if someone needs to be chased or killed, they chase or kill, but when Chetniks come, they beat in a manner that after three days the person in question must die. I will give you just one case, and there are many such cases. Kalabić personally beat three men and one girl in the village of Ljubičevac, who died four days later. They weren't actually guilty of anything. I know they will report to you that they are actually guilty."

The rhythm of Chetnik crimes

Kalabić's Chetniks also took part in the mass slaughter in Drugovac on April 29, 1944, when they slaughtered 24 villagers, shot 41, set four on fire and beat three to death. They set fire to 120 houses in the village and robbed 200. When they were not carrying out such large-scale operations, they were satisfied with smaller massacres. The rhythm of the crimes Radanović states is chilling: "On December 31, 1942, and January 1, 1943, the Chetniks of Nikola Kalabić slaughtered nine people from several villages around Valjevo in the villages of Dračić and Ravnje. The same group is responsible for the slaughter of nine people in several Valjevo villages between March 17 and April 8. On March 20, Kalabić's Chetniks slaughtered five residents of the surrounding villages in Makovište near Kosjerić. In the village of Stapar near Osečina, Kalabić's Chetniks on the night of 7-8 of April slaughtered five men from the Spasojević family".

And so in order, from village to village, from one slaughter to another, wherever he went, Kalabić left behind a trail of blood.

A truly wonderful man, slandered in the justice of God for being a war criminal, luckily there are still honourable judges in Serbia ready to correct the injustice and declare Kalabić innocent, even if it costs them their careers. Thanks to such judges, politicians, intellectuals, media workers, clergy and other influential people who declare evil to be good, Chetnik victims in Serbia have the same status as victims committed by Serbian forces during the aggression against neighbouring countries - they simply do not exist.

Moral nobodies and intellectual wretches alike are living their lives over the Bosniak victims of the genocide in Srebrenica and over the Serb victims who fell at the hands of Kalabić's butchers. Serbia is ruled by bandits, criminal minds who have occupied all key positions in politics, the judiciary, the media, the church, and cultural institutions. They grabbed power and wealth by climbing the pyramid of human corpses, and now they decide our fate from the top. Although they present themselves as great patriots and nationalists, when it comes to the dead, they cultivate a special kind of internationalism. For them, every victim is good, regardless of nationality, Bosniak, Croatian, Albanian, Serbian - only if they can use it to maintain their position of power.

(zurnal.info)