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Veran Matić’s gesture as Serbian President’s envoy on the Day of Remembrance in Croatia, when he knelt to lay a wreath to the Croatian victims, caused a storm in the national public.
The stormy reactions of the national public were due to the fact that Veran Matić, as special envoy of the President of Serbia, paid tribute to the Croatian and Serbian victims of the war in Vukovar and later participated in the commemoration of the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Patriotic War and the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Vukovar.
Photo: BETAPHOTO / HINAWhile part of the public continues with the nationalist rhetoric condemning Matic’s act of bowing to the victims, advocates for reconciliation between nations point out that such a gesture would have to come from a much higher place, even from the president personally.
For the first time this year, the envoy of the President of Serbia, Veran Matić, was in the Column of Remembrance, as well as the Deputy Prime Minister of the Government of Croatia from among the ranks of the Serbian minority, Boris Milošević.
Last year, Matic wanted to pay tribute to the victims in Vukovar as an envoy from Serbia, but the mayor of Vukovar, Ivan Penava, declared him persona non grata, which is why Matic participated in the column as a common citizen.
Veran Matić spoke out on criticism for the act of worship in front of the monument in Ovčara, emphasizing that it was his personal will, but that he received the support of the President of Serbia for this gesture.
– It is my personal act, and after all, I received the support of the president for that act. He needed to do more than the usual crown-laying protocol, to emphasize the importance of this year’s commemoration, to take a kind of step forward that would be the basis for further steps forward, Matic told H1 television.
Sonja Biserko, president of the Helsinki Human Rights Committee in Serbia, points out for Danas that the departure and the gesture of Veran Matic are not enough for reconciliation because the current government has not advanced in that direction, but is working systematically to relativize the crimes.
– His act is to relativize and equate the victim and the aggressor, and that is the wrong message. Regardless of the fact that all the victims are important, they cannot be equated here, mainly due to the nature of the war, and a large part of it is contained in Vukovar. Belgrade is already far from reconciliation and the whole narrative about the war of the 1990s and the recent past has gone in the wrong direction, Biserko emphasizes.
He adds that such relativization is just a continuation of the policy followed by the current government in targeting the Serbian victims, and believes that if President Vučić wants to change that rhetoric, he should make his own statement and bow down to the victims.
– It is about time that one of our high ranking statesmen went there, President Vučić could have gone personally and not sent Veran Matić, as representative of the media or NGO, it is not clear what his role was there in general. Since 2012, during the current government, the issue has moved towards a complete relativization and the focus is on the Serbian victims. So far, Belgrade has not taken any step forward in the right to normalize relations with Croatia, Biserko concludes.
Former Serbian President Boris Tadic, who once apologized to the Serbian and Croatian people for crimes committed on behalf of Serbia, told Danas that such a gesture was an attempt by Vucic to flatter Western partners while retaining the support of the electorate. nationalist in orientation.
– After eight years of absolute power and absolute deception in all fields of politics, it is clear that Vučić, as a once voiced war instigator, is always useful to wear the fake uniform of a peacemaker from time to time. For this, he always has at his disposal some of the former representatives of civil society, and the current apologists and sinecurists of the Vučić regime. Thus, we come to tragicomic situations in which Veran Matić, as Vučić’s personal envoy, kneels in Vukovar, probably imitating Willy Brant in the Warsaw ghetto, and then presents it as his personal gesture, for which he subsequently received support. from Vučić himself, Tadić notes.
He concludes that both Matic, who sees himself in the historical mission, and Vucic, who can say that it was done on his behalf, but also Western politicians can justify their support for Vucic’s autocracy, benefit from that situation. The only thing that is lost is Serbian society, estimates Tadic.
– Vučić will continue his war games with weapons and patriotic self-praise, which can lead us all to the ruin of new conflicts in the Balkans overnight. And so each of them will be satisfied in some way in their own way and according to their separate interests, while we will all be further and further away from the civilized world as a society, warns Tadić.
President Vučić’s office did not respond to Danas’ questions why the president did not personally come to pay tribute to the victims or at least send one of the highest representatives of the Serbian authorities.
Croatian peacekeepers appreciate Matic’s symbolic gesture
Eugen Jakovčić, from the Zagreb Documenta – Center for the Treatment of the Past, points out to Danas that in a situation “in which the peacekeeping forces are no longer valued in this area and when the facts about war crimes no one is interested anymore, Veran’s Vukovar gift to Ovčara victims is important and beneficial. ” an act to be supported. “
– This act is all the more important because it comes from the personal envoy of the President of Serbia, because, as some members of the peacekeepers say, reconciliation is sometimes a dirty business. His kneeling over Ovčara drew a lot of attention and support from the Croatian public, even among those who these days question Vukovar’s gifts to the victims from the representatives of the Croatian Serbs Milorad Pupovac and Boris Milošević. This support from the public only speaks to the importance of symbolic gestures, just as this year’s Women in Black booth was important, notes Jakovčić.
As he adds, “our societies are crying out for such movements, especially since Veran Matić has been very actively supporting the new reconciliation policy that Milorad Pupovac and Andrej Plenković have been trying to implement for several months.”
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