In the publicly available documentation, the revitalization project, as it is stated, of the Ribnica Fortress, excludes the existence of elements of the cultural and historical heritage of Muslims, primarily the mosque of Sultan Mehmed Fatih with a minaret, warned Bosniak Party (BS) MP Kenana Strujić - Harbić, regarding the case of the revitalization of the Depedogen site being implemented by the Capital City of Podgorica.
"Every tacit erasure of mosques and rewriting of historical facts, under the guise of regulation, in order to support myths that would serve various projects, represents a gross abuse of institutions, an arrogant violation of interfaith and interethnic relations and a very dangerous job to the detriment of European and civic, multiethnic, multifaith and multicultural Montenegro. Unfortunately, this is not an isolated case. Similar processes are taking place in Pljevlja, Bijelo Polje and other cities, where Islamic heritage is being ignored, suppressed or Christianized, as was done with the Clock Tower in Podgorica," she said, according to a statement released by BS to the media.
The Islamic Community of Montenegro, as stated, demands that this injustice be corrected, by introducing the correct terminological identification of this site, by including the Mehmed Fatih Mosque with the minaret in the conceptual design, and by enabling archaeological excavations on the site of the former mosque.
"Erasing parts of history during the revitalization of a site is not revitalization at all, but rather a falsification of the past with the intention of removing the Islamic - Bosniak and Ottoman component from it!
"In the end, anyone who tries to erase the indicators of the existence of a people by destroying their cultural and historical heritage would do the same to that people, if they could," Strujić-Harbić concluded.
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