Montenegrin citizens are currently victims of violations of their constitutional rights, according to the Center for Civil Liberties (CEGAS), which submitted an initiative to evaluate the constitutionality of the norms of the Law on the Protection of the Population from Infectious Diseases.
The executive director of CEGAS, Boris Marić, at the round table where the key findings of the study "Freedom of assembly between the basic human right and politicization" were presented, said that in that organization they believe that the measures of the National Coordination Body (NCT) are part of the suspension of rights on freedom of assembly, unconstitutional and to have legal form in an order signed by the Minister of Health.
"We believe that a constitutional right cannot be abolished by a single order, a by-law. We believe that a state of emergency had to be introduced, that a decree with legal force had to be passed, that it had to be verified in the Parliament in order to obtain the necessary legality and legitimacy." , Maric said.
He assessed that at this moment all citizens are victims of violations of their constitutional rights, the PR Center reports.
"At this moment, with due respect for the need for epidemiological measures, we have a violation of the right to assembly, because we have an order that all outdoor and indoor gatherings are prohibited," said Marić.
As stated, he also questioned the role of local self-governments and their ability to question the freedom of assembly by municipal decision.
"They can only prohibit you by municipal decision, that is, make it impossible to set up the necessary furniture for you to express your position, exercise the right to freedom of assembly, and that means freedom of expression, organization, everything that is connected in the corpus of human rights," said Marić.
He said that finally, as a society, we must start to deal more seriously with human rights.
The lawyer and founder of CEGAS, Sergej Sekulović, presented the key findings of the study, as well as recommendations for further action.
"It is necessary to define the right to spontaneous assembly in a different way and align it with international standards, to delete the provisions on the prohibition of access by prescribing the distance to certain objects," Sekulović said.
According to him, it is necessary to review the basis for the restriction in relation to the Constitution, as well as to improve the content of the explanation of the decision prohibiting public assembly in accordance with international standards.
"It is also necessary to educate the authorities that participate in legal proceedings in which freedom of assembly is decided. Local regulations should be changed and harmonized with the Constitution and the law in the context of the right to freedom of assembly," Sekulović said.
He stated that the new Law on Freedom of Peaceful Assembly from 2016 contains an improvement in the context of legal protection and legal procedure compared to the previous law, as it includes direct submission of a lawsuit to the Administrative Court and short deadlines for decision-making.
"However, the practice is such that these lawsuits are a dead letter, so the question of a legal remedy can be legitimately raised because, in principle, the Administrative Court followed logic and considered the argumentation of the administrative authorities as completely relevant and ignored the demands of the other side," he said. is Sekulović.
He stated that the actions of the competent authorities, when it comes to NKT measures, were different, and that there were ups and downs.
"If, on the one hand, you have the fact that a large number of Montenegrin citizens who were found in a park with a friend ended up 72 hours in the prosecutor's detention, paying a fine of around one thousand EUR, to the fact that a gathering of 500, one thousand, five thousand, 20 thousand is being held people and that no one suffers any sanction. And that is the collapse of institutions," believes Sekulović.
He added that, objectively speaking, it is very difficult to start with restrictive measures in such situations.
Long-time civil activist and executive director of the Media Association of Southeast Europe (MAJE) Vuk Maraš pointed out that freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of expression are essentially inseparable.
"This is best verified by the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights, which treats freedom of assembly with special sensitivity and gives very clear guidelines in which direction to go when creating a national institutional framework for freedom of assembly in a way that, conditionally speaking, is in accordance with European standards," Maraš said.
He said that Montenegro has largely fought for the freedom of assembly, which, as he stated, is not the merit of the state and the municipalities, but of the citizens who for years have demonstrated their agreement with certain decisions of the Government in a civilized and peaceful way by going out into the streets.
He also pointed out that in the current practice there are many similar or identical events in which the institutions of the system had different interpretations.
"In this way, the institutions became accomplices in the approach to derogate the right to freedom of assembly, and accomplices in the fact that Montenegro does not comply with our Constitution and law, as well as with what is much more important, which is convention law and judgments of the human rights court, because that is the framework we should strive for", Maraš believes.
He also said that one of the biggest obstacles to the freedom of peaceful assembly is the lack of responsibility in institutions, primarily in the police.
"If we want to ensure freedom of assembly and the right to peaceful assembly, we citizens must have responsibility in the institution that is key to that, which is the police," said Maraš.
The round table was organized as part of the project "Freedom of Assembly between Local Self-Government and the Constitution of Montenegro", which is supported through the Program of Small Grants within the project Assemblies for Human Rights: "Freedom of Public Speech in Public Space", which is implemented by IA in partnership with HRA , with the support of the European Union.
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