A contest to create a mural of former Yugoslav Army general Nebojsa Pavkovic, convicted of war crimes in Kosovo, has been condemned as part of a "state policy" of denying atrocities and glorifying the perpetrators.
Milica Stojanovic, December 20, 2024
Nebojsa Pavkovic at a press conference in Belgrade, June 2002. Photo: EPA/SASA STANKOVIC.
A competition to create a mural of Nebojsa Pavkovic, a former Yugoslav Army general serving a 22-year prison sentence for war crimes, is a “continuation” of the Serbian state’s policy of denying war crimes, Jovana Kolaric, from the Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Centre, which monitors war crimes trials, said on Friday.
“We don’t have the space to look at things like this as an individual incident anymore and we have nothing to be surprised about. It is a long-standing state policy of denying war crimes and glorifying those responsible for those crimes,” Kolaric told BIRN.
The Cultural Institute of Cuprija, a local public body in the town in central Serbia, announced the “competition for the creation of a mural of General Nebojsa Pavkovic” on December 10.
Pavkovic was born in the village of Senjski Rudnik, some 20 kilometres from Cuprija. He was the commander of the Yugoslav Army Third Battalion from December 1998 until early 2000, during the Kosovo War.
The Appeal Chambers of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY, in 2014 upheld the guilty verdict convicting Pavkovic and three more high-profile Yugoslav military and civilian officials of war crimes in Kosovo.
Besides Pavkovic, former Yugoslav deputy prime minister Nikola Sainovic, former Yugoslav Army general Vladimir Lazarevic and former Serbian police general Sreten Lukic were also sentenced.
According to the 2009 first-instance verdict, “there was a broad campaign of violence directed against the Kosovo Albanian civilian population conducted by forces under the control of the [Yugoslav] and Serbian authorities, during which there were incidents of killing, sexual assault, and the intentional destruction of mosques”.
The Cultural Institute of Cuprija did not respond to BIRN’s questions sent via email.
The competition text says that “murals, various forms of street art, and other artistic interpretations in the public space are today considered an integral part of a city’s contemporary cultural image”.
The institute said it will pay 330,000 dinars [some 2.821 euros] for the work.
The competition conditions say mural proposals “should correspond to the national significance, works and importance of General Pavkovic for contemporary national history”.
The call also says that “the future mural will be located in the immediate vicinity of the Square of Remembrance for the Victims of NATO Aggression” in the town – commemorating people killed in the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. The Western military alliance launched the campaign of air strikes in an attempt to halt war crimes in Kosovo.
The text is “shameful”, Kolaric said, adding that “it turns out that the image of a city, Cuprija specifically, should represent the image of a war criminal.
“Nebojsa Pavkovic was sentenced on the basis of individual criminal responsibility for deportation, forced transfer, murder and persecution as crimes against humanity and for violating the laws and customs of war to 22 years in prison and should be remembered as such,” she said.
Copyright BIRN 2015