Several citizens of Kolašin, Mojkovac, and Berane whose properties are located in the Biogradska Gora National Park (NP) zone blocked the Mojkovac-Kolašin main road for an hour, pointing out what they consider to be the discriminatory attitude of the state regarding unsolvable problems of private property.
Members of the informal association "Right to Ancestry and Private Property" said that they are against the bureaucratic, predatory, non-transparent, undemocratic, discriminatory and unconstitutional behavior of state bodies and institutions, carried out by the Ministry of Spatial Planning, Urbanism and State Property, the Ministry of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Development of the North, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Public Enterprise (PE) National Parks of Montenegro-Podgorica and the Biogradska Gora National Park from Kolašin.
"All this with the approval and tacit consent of the municipalities of Kolašin, Berane and Mojkovac and the trampling of our constitutional right to private property and the disposal of private property located in the Biogradska Gora National Park zone on the territories of the municipalities of Kolašin, Berane and Mojkovac. We are the owners, or in reality, non-owners of property - meadows, forests and buildings on Mount Bjelasica (localities: Bjelojevići Trnovača, Šljivlje, Krčevina, Laništa, Platna, Krnjače. Dolovi Lalevića, Šiška, Suvodo, Kurikuće, Reljina, Kofilovica, Ursulovačko jezero, Sevari, Pešića jezero Pešića Rupe, Ocka, Bjelasica...)", said Svetozar Bogavac from Mojkovac.
He added that the Ministry of Spatial Planning, Urbanism and State Property, the Ministry of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Development of the North, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Public Enterprise National Parks of Montenegro and the Biogradska Gora National Park have, through their actions and procedures, stolen their ancestral land and private property "which our ancestors, grandfathers, fathers and some of us created with great work, sweat and effort, often hungry and thirsty, brought to the brink of existence and brought to financial despair in order to leave it to their descendants, but in vain".
"With this kind of treatment of state bodies and institutions, we, the owners of private property, have no benefit from that property. We only have problems and obligations to pay taxes to municipalities, for individuals to report their property to the Agency for the Prevention of Corruption (ASK), etc., because they decide not to ask us anything about our property, as if it is not ours and as if we do not exist," said Bogavac.
They said at the protest that they feel like second-class citizens, discriminated against by the aforementioned state bodies, even though private property is guaranteed by the Constitution, and that in reality they do not have it, and they reminded that they own about 30 percent of the area that the National Parks claim is theirs.
"First of all, we don't know which institution to turn to regarding the jurisdiction for construction. They don't let us renovate old huts, they don't let us build within the dimensions allowed by the UT conditions," pointed out Rajko Vešović from Berane.
Citizens of three northern municipalities said they had sent a petition to Prime Minister Milojko Spajić, requesting a resolution to the status of private property within national parks, and among the 12 requests, the main ones are to be allowed to build on all plots and cut down wood for their own needs.
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