Why Nebojša Mandić reaction to Montenegro’s Island of Shame tells a story of how a region has been sold out – and how everyday resistance to commercialism has created Yugoslavia’s greatest comics festival.

Nebojša Mandić turns his back to the island we’re just passing towards the end of our great katamaran trip through the Bay of Kotor in Montenegro.

After all that’s happened there in recent years he can’t bear to look at it. No one can blame him.

That Island of Shame is Mamula Island, right off the coast off Herceg Novi, the country’s northernmost town. A fortress had been built there once, blocking the entrance to the Bay of Kotor.

In WW II, the Italians turned the fortress island into a concentration camp. They interned and tortured hundreds of local antifascist resistance fighters there, and held many Monenegrins hostage, executed many.

Nebojša’s granduncle was one of them. „He was the brother of my grandfather“, he tells me. Many locals here have relatives that suffered the same fate. Many did not survive.

3.800 Dollars for a Night in a Former Concentration Camp

A few years ago, the government of Montenegro sold the site of the former concentration camp to an international corporation, which wanted to build a luxury ressort there. When it was opened, a night there cost up to 3.800 Dollars. Prices haven’t dropped since.

All the survivors of the horros of the Italian concentration camp and their families got, was a small memorial plaque unveiled in 2022.

The documentary Mamula All Inclusive by director Aleksandra Reljić from Novi Sad dives into the history of the island, the sale, and gives voice to one of the last survivors by the time it was filmed over several years.

(Read more about this remarkable film here.)

How a Region Is Being Sold Out

Montenegro’s Island of Shame is a particularly cynical example of how all successor states of Yugoslavia have sold out historically important sites or natural landmarks ever since capitalist restauration and the bloody break up of the country in the early 1990’s.

It is far from alone. Another example are the ultimately foiled plans to sell Beograd’s bombed out Ministry of Defense and Generalštab building to Jared Kushner. Donald Trum’s son in law and real estate developper planned to build a luxury hotel there. The plans were abandoned after massive protests.

Also think of Beograd’s Sava Mala neighborhood. Dozens of protected historical buildings were levelled for the real estate development project Beograd na Vodi by an Arab consortium. Serbia’s government even sacrificed its capital’s main train station for the project.

Think of the current project to erect a 100 meter plus high luxury hotel atop of Banja Luka’s protected Hotel Palas. It is pursued by the corporation of Serbian born entrepreneur Phillip Zepter. Zepter has close ties to the regimes of Serbia and of Republika Srpska in Bosnia.

The sellout extends beyond former Yugoslavia. A real estate project by Jared Kushner – again – endangers ecologically unique islands and coastlines in Albania. They have sparked the so called Flamingo Revolution. Large parts of Albania’s population protest the sellout of their country.

Sometimes the protests succeed.

In most cases, what’s ultimately left is passive resistance such as Nebojša shows on this boat ride.

How Defiance Creates Something Beautiful

His extends beyond just turning his back.

„You know, they have offered us money several times“, he tells me. „I won’t take it.“

Nebojša is head organizer of Hercegnovski Strip Festival. This is former Yugoslavia’s greatest comices festivals.

Each year in early September, around 150 comics artists from all over the world and fans from many parts of Europe, as well as publishers and agents gather in Nebojša’s home town Herceg Novi to celebrate art and culture.

They show their art, discuss recent developments in the vast world of comics, draw sketches for fans, have exhibitions with their art, mingle freely and essentially recuperate from the stressful world of being a comics artist and of drain the world of commercialized comicons often are on them.

Hercegnovski Strip Festival, or HSF for short, is one of the very few explicitely non commercial alternatives and escapes.

All events are free, including commissioning sketches from the artists in public drawing sessions, exhibitions and concerts – and this boat ride through the Bay of Kotor. It is the HSF’s annual highlight.

Nebojša and the others from the organization team do not earn a cent for their activities. They do it out their love for comics and art, and out of what one can call a Yugoslav tradition of solidarity, resistance and searching for alternatives.

HSF is entirely financed through sponsors.

Nebojša and the others could use every cent they get. The budget pays for only a handful of paid workers. This occasionally leads to logistical challenges. They are remarkably few, but sometimes they show.

Even so, there are people Nebojša doesn’t want as sponsors. On the owners of Mamula Island he doubles down. „They won’t sponsor HSF, not for a million dollars“. And not in a million years, as this reporters adds in his mind.

It is this spirit that makes this festival so unique. A marble in the desert hyper commercialization has created.

If I had worn a hat at that moment, I would have drawn it to Nebojša.

All I can do is take a photo of his and his moment of defiance. That’s Yugoslav inat.

I am proud to have been here again this year. I am proud to call Nebojša my friend.

Read more about Herceg Novski Strip Festival in the archive of Balkan Stories.

In the next days I will publish a number of photo reportages from this years 20th edition of HSF here.

How to Support My Work

If you like this piece and want to support my work on this blog, please consider liking and sharing it on social media, or leaving a comment. All of this helps this blog to get more attention. You can also support me with a donation on Buy Me A Coffee.