On the occasion of the failure to pass the proposal of the Law on Veterans and Disability Protection (ZOBIZ) and, as it was said at the press conference, "hiding from the public the work on amendments to the law by an anonymous 'expert' group", the director of the Association of War Veterans of Montenegro since 1990, Radan Nikolić , announced the protests. The first protest gathering will be until November 15 at the latest, in front of the building where the Ministry of Social Welfare, Family Care and Demography is located, said Nikolić at the conference he held in front of the monument to the fighters of the Nikšić-Savnica group who died in the war of the XNUMXs on the territory of the former of Yugoslavia.
The authorities, according to Nikolić, are ignoring the Association, which warned in the conclusions of the recently held extraordinary Assembly that if the Prime Minister, Milojko Spajić, and the relevant minister, Damir Gutić, do not receive them for an interview by the end of this week, that the members of the Association, as well as other users, will veterans and disability protection, be forced to organize protests.
He recalled the passing of the Law, on their initiative, in May of last year, about the fact that it was a dead letter and that at the end of last year it was put back into parliamentary procedure.
"The day before the session of the Assembly, December 29.12.2023, XNUMX, on the agenda of which was the Draft Law, it was 'massacred' by the amendments of the representatives of the ruling majority and the Bosniak Party (BS). On the day of the session, there was a protest rally organized by the Action for Human Rights (HRA) of Tee Gorjanc Prelevic and the Bosniak Party. On that occasion, Gorjanc Prelevic stated that the European Parliament criticized that law as selective, which did not correspond to the truth, and BS MP Damir Gutić called the proposed law discriminatory because, as he said, the amendments to the said law, except for the victims of Murin, should include all other victims - the deportation of Bosniaks from Herceg Novi, Štrpci and Bukovica," said Nikolić.
On the same day, according to his words, the proposal of the Law was withdrawn from the procedure, and the Assembly adopted the conclusions that the Government should prepare a new proposal by March 1, and if this does not happen by June 1, that all parliamentary groups will do so.
"Nothing came of it, and since then our veterans' organization has been denied information about the drafting of that law and the formation of the announced working groups for its preparation. On the day of the withdrawal of the ZOBIZ Proposal from the parliamentary procedure, the President of the Assembly Andrija Mandić told me that, in front of the Association of Veterans, I would be a member of the working group on the drafting of a new bill, which also came to nothing," said Nikolić.
In a statement in June of this year, Action for Human Rights and its NGO collaborators, according to the Association's director, asked the Minister of Labor and Social Welfare, Naida Nišić, why the late drafting of the Bill which, as they stated, "should regulate the status and compensation family members of all Montenegrin citizens who died as civilian victims of the wars of the 2023s, noting that BS offered its proposal for changes to the law to the Parliament in December 2024, and HRA to the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare in January XNUMX. According to Nikolić, this clearly indicates that the drafting of amendments to the law was taken over by the line minister Naida Nišić, later minister Damir Gutić, and Tea Gorjanc Prelević, while the composition of the expert group for the drafting of amendments to the ZOBIZ, as well as the reasons for the delay in its preparation, as he pointed out, became a state secret.
As he said, the Association of Veterans addressed Minister Gutić several times, and the relevant Ministry announced in mid-October that their expert group is working on amendments to the ZOBIZ with the aim of improving the rights of users and civilian victims of war, which are introduced into the law, and whose the solutions "are still not definitively defined", and that "the aim is to create a legal basis for the regulation of all issues" treated by that law.
"Three days later, the guest of RTCG's morning program was Darka Dzabasan from, as she was introduced, the Ministry of Social Welfare, who is known to the public from the list of privileged officials of the former government for obtaining apartments and favorable housing loans. With the statement that the existing incomes of the beneficiaries of veteran and disability protection are not negligible, and that the increase of those incomes through the increase of the basis for calculation and recalculation will also not be negligible, Dzabasan announced that the work of the expert group is nearing the end and that the procedure for passing the law will be completed by the end year", said Nikolić.
What is hinted at, according to him, and what would be "violence and betrayal" for the Association of veterans and beneficiaries of veterans' and disability protection, is that the expert group, outside of dealing with the Institute of Civilian Victims of War, engages in amendments to the ZOBIZ Proposal voted by the Assembly last year, and refer to the new basis for calculating beneficiaries' incomes, increased percentages for increased beneficiaries' incomes, as well as new rights from the Draft Law, such as priority in employment and solving housing needs.
"Whether, in this regard, we will be joined by members of the Government and other MPs, members of the group of MPs who made and voted on the amendments - and last year, their parties - is the question now. A question that I am afraid to say, and which is imposed by the record-long silence of the top of the current government on this topic and the secret formation of the so-called expert groups whose work on amending the law will be decisive for the existence of beneficiaries of veteran and disability protection exposed to prolonged discrimination by their own state. A group whose members are ministers Nišić and Gutić, Tea Gorjanc Prelević, her activist for the processing of families of missing persons Darka Džabasan and anonymous members of the expert group, privatized the work on amendments to ZOBIZ and, for the sake of profiteering, inserted into it, through the Institute of Civilian Victims of War missing persons and their families, which does not belong to ZOBIZ. ZOBIZ is being usurped, alienated from current users and attacking their rights and existence. We must offer maximum organized resistance to that," said Nikolić.
He expressed the hope that the President of the Assembly Andrija Mandić will hear them and the talks with the Prime Minister about "forcing the families of fallen soldiers, military invalids and civilian war invalids to seek their rights on the street", for which, according to him, Minister Damir is primarily responsible Gutić.
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