Glas javnosti - Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia

126 serbia 2009 : iii legal system
an identical suit, calling for rehabilitating Draža Mihailović and restoring
his civil rights.
Ivana Ramić, spokeswoman for the District Court, said that all these
cases had been joined and that Vojislav Mihailović had been summoned
to appear at the District Court on 9 April to inspect the materials made
available by the Military Archives in the form of discs containing several
thousand pages of court fi les and/or documents and evidence. The rehabilitation
request includes a request to reverse the judgment of 15 July
1946 whereby Draža Mihailović was sentenced to death and to restore his
civil rights. 139
In December 2009, Dragiša Vasić, a chief ideologue of the Ravna Gora
Movement and a close ally of Dragoslav Mihailović, was rehabilitated aft er
65 years at the request of his daughter Tanja Vasić-Janićijević. Historians
and sociologist have been warning against such rehabilitations because
rather than serving scientifi c truth they alter historical facts and cater for
the wishes of a segment of the political elites in Serbia. They point out
that rehabilitations are necessary because completely innocent people
also lost their lives during the Second World War. The historian Branka
Prpa warned that “nevertheless, rehabilitations such as those of Vasić and
Cvetković make it possible for collaborators to ‘squeeze through the back
door’ along with innocent victims”. She puts most blame for such attitudes
to the past on a segment of the political elites bent on rewriting history:
“This is an unspeakable mixing of the issues, a pulling the wool over
people’s eyes, a looking away and a diverting attention from recent history
– from that which occurred some 10 years ago to that which occurred
almost 70 years ago. So, we are faced with an unspeakable manipulation
with catastrophic consequences not only for a people’s culture of remembrance,
but also with catastrophic consequences for a science. What good
is historiography to us, if they [politicians] know better than we do?” asked
Prpa. 140
Serbian society is still divided on the issue of Chetniks and Partisans.
The impression is that those with right-wing leanings are more numerous
139 “Sud uskoro o rehabilitaciji Draže Mihailovića”, Tanjug, 23 March 2009.
140 “Rehabilitacije – udovoljavanje poltičkoj eliti”, Radio Free Europe, 12 December 2009.