Bigamy in Montenegro has not been eradicated, as evidenced not only by the recent case from Plav, but also by numerous others from the present and the recent past, says Vasilije Mujo Spasojević, the author of the book "Bigamy in Montenegro" for Radio Free Europe (RSE), commenting on the case of a minor from Plav .
Namely, a married man from UM, the father of two children, who raped a thirteen-year-old girl and brought her home as a second wife, the police suspect of the criminal offense of extramarital union with a minor. This was confirmed by Minister of the Interior Sergej Sekulović at the session of the Parliamentary Committee for Gender Equality on November 22.
"The girl was called to the Plav Security Department in the presence of the grandmother and an employee of the Plav Center for Social Work. She announced that she got married, that she wanted to live with him and if someone forcibly took her away from him, she would use force to kill herself," explained Sekulović.
The Ombudsman is also investigating the case
In addition to the police, the case of a minor victim of bigamy from Plav, in the east of Montenegro, is also being investigated by the Ombudsman's office.
"The Office of the Protector of Human Rights and Freedoms of Montenegro, based on the complaint of the girl's father, who does not live in Montenegro, opened a case and the investigation is ongoing," said the Office for RSE.
Bigamy is marriage with two women (bigamy, bigamy), i.e. getting into a new marriage before the first one is legally divorced.
According to the Criminal Code of Montenegro, anyone who enters into a marriage, even though he was already married, will be punished with a fine or imprisonment for up to two years. The same punishment applies to the one who enters into a marriage with a person whom he knows is married.
Up to five wives in Roma marriages
Although it is widely believed that bigamy is practiced mainly in the Roma population, the executive director of the non-governmental organization Center for Roma Initiatives, Fana Delija, says that this phenomenon is not so common.
However, he told RSE that there are such cases in Montenegro, citing the example from Nikšić, where four siblings have multiple wives.
"Some of them have two, some three, and some check and four wives. We also have a family in the north where a member of the Roma population has three or four wives, and a few days ago we received information that there is a family in Berane (a town in the north of Montenegro) where a man has five wives," said Delija.
She believes that these women were not forcibly brought into bigamy, but voluntarily, and that they are not minors.
"They usually know that these men are already married. "Some depend on male members, some may have already been married somewhere and were left on the street, some were rejected by their families and thus agreed to this type of marriage," Delija concluded.
Why is silence about bigamy?
Ljiljana Raičević, a long-time activist for women's rights whose Safe Women's House provided shelter to thousands of women who were victims of domestic violence, tells RSE that there are more problems with bigamy with minors than the public's perception.
"Specifically, we had a couple of cases in Andrijevica, Bijela Polje, villages in Berane," says Raičević.
The problem, she adds, is that the cases are not reported because the victims do not trust the institutions, but also because of the fear of condemnation.
Numerous examples
Vasilije Mujo Spasojević, author of 20 books on Montenegrin traditions and customs, tells Radio Free Europe that in the past bigamy was more present among the Orthodox than among the Muslim population:
"With the Orthodox, the main motive for a man to have two wives was the extension of the family line. Their legal wives, because they had no children, or had only female children, "begged" mostly younger women for their husbands in order to give birth to a male child.
Spasojević describes one of the cases from the north of Montenegro:
"One of the more vivid examples that I mentioned in the book is from Polje Kolasin, a village near Kolasin, where the wife brought another wife, whom he did not accept for a long time, but in the end she did and she gave birth to his heir".
He says that he collected the material for the book about bigamy from hundreds of testimonies and descriptions of the oldest Montenegrins, from the far north to the Montenegrin coast.
According to his research, in the past bigamy was present in all parts of Montenegro, except in Boka Kotorska and the Durmitor area in the municipality of Žabljak, in the north.
"The occurrence of a man having two or three wives was common in the north of the country, in Gusinje, Plav and that border area where the majority of the Muslim population lives. This can be explained by the fact that those men's religion allowed them to have more than one wife.
However, Podgorica and the central part of Montenegro, where the majority of the population is Orthodox, had more cases of bigamy due to the continuation of the family line, says Spasojević.
He adds that bigamy, although prohibited and punishable by law, has not been eradicated in Montenegrin society in the 21st century. Citations and example:
"An acquaintance of mine who is engaged in agriculture and sells on the market in Podgorica (name known to the editorial staff) has two wives. He lives with one and occasionally visits the other. He is not the only case that I know of," concluded Spasojević.
In the reports on the work of the Montenegrin courts, RSE did not come across a final verdict for the criminal offense of bigamy.
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