A group of non-governmental organizations said that the current and every subsequent government should stop trying to intimidate and insult the NGO sector.
"In recent days, we have been witnessing continuous negative statements by representatives of the Government in relation to non-governmental organizations, which until now have been called 'obscure', 'those campaigning for one political option', 'a beating or a weak beating by the centers of power in various periods', 'unbenevolent' and "political organizations of certain structures". Instead of responding to numerous initiatives of the civil sector, initiating the adoption of new and requested and necessary changes to existing laws, policies, and practices, they decided to respond to criticism with inappropriate comments, insulting some of Montenegrin society, without providing evidence for their insulting and above-mentioned claims," states the statement signed by Juventas, the Center for Monitoring and Research, Queer Montenegro, the Association of Parents, Spektra, Stana, SOS Nikšić, the Association of the Disabled of Montenegro, the Center for Roma initiatives, Link and the Center for Women's Rights.
"At the moment, Montenegro is struggling with numerous problems such as: poverty, emigration of the population, peer violence, political employment, violence in partner relationships, femicide, increasing number of suicides, corruption, forest devastation, air and river pollution, lack of transparency in governance, out-of-date voter list, political pressures on citizens, discrimination, poor quality of education, collapse of the quality of the health system, stagnation in European integration, crime. non-governmental organizations, criticizing the failures of this and previous governments," the announcement added.
From the NGO sector, they called on Prime Minister Dritan Abazović and Minister of Finance Aleksandar Damjanović to "think about their attitude towards government critics": "And to answer us whether they can call their attitude towards non-governmental organizations benevolent, or 'obscure', 'political', given within the framework of a 'campaign for one political option', or perhaps symbolically speaking 'a beating or a weak beating of the centers of power', i.e. 'malicious'.
"We certainly would not call the attitude of the Government towards non-governmental organizations 'irrelevant', and we believe that this and every subsequent Government should give up further attempts to intimidate, discredit or insult non-governmental organizations and the non-governmental sector and dedicate themselves to solving the problems that we continuously point out," he concludes. in the announcement.
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