southeastern europe

On 31 January the BBC News website focused on a fresco in the Church of the Resurrection in Podgorica that depicted hell. Within a vivid red inferno and in the company of biblical figures that have been condemned to burn in hell, one can see figures bearing a resemblance to an ageless Josip Broz Tito (or Michael Caine cast to impersonate him), Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and, behind them barely discernible, Lenin and Stalin. The anonymous artist assumed that propagating and 'implementing' communism was a deadly sin but carefully steered away from any similar judgments as far as the opportunistic nationalism that traumatized the societies of former Yugoslavia are concerned. So no Milosevic, Bulatovic, Karadzic or Mladic are discernible in the political hell featured in the walls of the Church of the Resurrection, perhaps while the verdicts on their genocide indictments are pending ...     A church in Montenegro has sparked controversy by displaying a fresco depic...

The parliament of Serbia strongly condemns the crime committed against the Bosnian Muslim population of Srebrenica in July 1995, as determined by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling ... (and offers its) condolences and an apology to the families of the victims because not everything possible was done to prevent the tragedy. Last night the Serbian Narodna skupština, after intense debate, passed a landmark resolution expressing regret and condemning the 1995 Srebrenica massacre and offering "their condolences and an apology to the families of the victims because not everything possible was done to prevent the tragedy." Proposed by the ruling coalition of pro-Western President Boris Tadic, the resolution was adopted by 127 of the 173 parliamentarians present in the room, after 13 hours of debate, this constitutes a sea change for Serbia, a country still deeply divided over the role of the Milošević regime in the bitter and bloody conflict and the popu...