Teofil Pancic: The Past Has Not Passed in Serbia

Teofil Pancic (Beta/Dragan Gojic)

Columnist and writer Teofil Pancic has said there is "silence regarding the past" in Serbian media, because "the past hasn't passed," but rather those who participated in the war propaganda of the Milosevic regime in the 1990s are still in top positions in numerous media outlets.

Serbia's society is not facing the past, because facing the past always entails facing accountability, too, Pancic said late on Feb. 13, at a forum held in the premises of the Independent Journalists' Association of Vojvodina.

He mentioned the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia as an example of not facing the past and responsibility, in terms of how Serbian media still report on it today, "as if it came out of nowhere, i.e. as if wars had not been going on for a decade before that and as if Serbia had had nothing to do with those wars." Pancic said that a mix of nationalism, tribalism and organized religion was at work in Serbia.

Historian Milivoj Beslin said that the NATO bombing example illustrated what happens when history is stripped of context, because then space is created for counterfeiting history. He added that he was afraid of "fascism with briefcases and bowties" of Vuk Jeremic's People's Party, and noted that such fascism was far more dangerous than the fascism of Bosko Obradovic's Dveri Movement.

Journalist Dinko Gruhonjic said the among the "handful" of professional media in Serbia there was "too little solidarity," while the social alternative boiled down to "an obsession with Vucic."