Instead of withdrawing the shameful and illegal decision to award the July Thirteenth Award to individuals who deny Montenegro and its anti-fascist heritage, representatives of the current government today sent the police to citizens who expressed disagreement with such a policy of humiliation, the European Union announced.
"Instead of being ashamed of their own shame, they resort to pepper spray on their own citizens. Instead of responding to public concerns, they resort to repression. This is what a government that is afraid of the truth and its own people looks like," the political coalition said in a statement.
The European Union has strongly condemned, as they said, the brutal violence that the police carried out tonight against those gathered in Podgorica.
"Citizens were subjected to torture simply because they stood up for the honor and dignity of Montenegro. It is particularly worrying that behind such a policy are those who have repeatedly publicly denied Montenegrin identity - including one of this year's laureates, who claims that Montenegro is a 'communist fabrication'. And it is precisely such a person that the state - on Statehood Day - decided to award with the highest state award.
"Our position remains clear: the shameful decision should be overturned, and those responsible for violence against citizens must bear the consequences. Montenegro must not be a country that turns a blind eye to the fascistization of society. We will not remain silent while the foundations of a civic, anti-fascist and European Montenegro are being destroyed. We stand with the citizens - today, tomorrow and as long as necessary," the European Union concluded.
SDP Vice President and European Union representative Amina Cikotić said on the social network Iks that the police are treating citizens protesting in front of Vila Gorica brutally.
"They are defending fascism with pepper spray... Stop lawlessness and death to fascism," she wrote.
Montenegro is becoming a dictatorship day by day, where a different opinion is punished with physical force, wrote on the X network, the vice president of the Liberal Party and representative of the European Union, Amar Borančić.
On the same network, European Union councilor in the Capital City Assembly Miloš Mašković said that at the protest in front of Vila Gorica, the police used pepper spray on the crowd.
"Several citizens are disturbed, some have sought help due to eye irritation and suffocation," he said.
"Free Montenegro at the protest, a vampire ball at Villa Gorica. The tear gas and pepper spray they showered on us again is just another pathetic and miserable attempt by this Chetnik government to stifle anti-fascist Montenegro," wrote SDP president and one of the leaders of the European Alliance, Ivan Vujović.
Let them celebrate a little longer, he added.
"This servile, vassal and fascist policy will, as always, be defeated," Vujović concluded.
SDP Deputy President and European Union representative Petar Odžić said in a separate press release that it is painful to see what Montenegro has turned into.
The awarding of the Thirteenth of July Award is more like a commemoration of the Chetnik movement, or an amateur reconstruction of the Podgorica assembly, than a celebration of one of the brightest dates in Montenegrin history, he assessed.
"A gathering made up of guests who, thanks to their hatred of Montenegro, have been given the highest positions in the state, party soldiers of the DF and the bolder Democrats, eternal students of dubious faculties and fake diplomas. Winners who accept their awards under the cloak of tear gas, police repression in a state they do not recognize and whose symbols make people cringe, can only be losers! If we are smart enough, this is the last year that this great holiday will be celebrated in this way! Long live Montenegro, with the slogans of the famous July 13th Uprising: death to fascism and domestic traitors, freedom to the people," said Odžić.
While Montenegro marks Statehood Day, the day of the uprising against fascism, a day that symbolizes the fight for freedom, equality and civic dignity, the government has decided to turn that date into a mockery of everything it represents, said the president of the SD and one of the leaders of the European Union, Damir Šehović.
"Awarding the highest state recognition to a person who publicly denies Montenegrin history, identity and his own state, calling it a 'communist fabrication', is not just a scandal, it is an act of deep political and moral humiliation.
"It is an insult to the anti-fascist fighters, to the freedom-loving people of Montenegro, and to all those who founded this state on civic and European values. It is a direct attack on the very idea of Montenegro. That is why we are telling them: you have disgraced state recognition, humiliated Montenegro, resorted to a shameful police reaction and sent a dangerous message! Instead of dialogue, force. Instead of reason, repression," Šehović said in a press release.
He added that Montenegro is not, and will not be, a country that renounces anti-fascism, civic courage and civilizational values.
"There will be no country where awards are given to chauvinists and pepper spray is used against citizens. There will be no country where the history of freedom is erased and the truth is persecuted. There will be no country that remains silent while the pillars on which it was founded are demolished," said Šehović.
He emphasized that the European Union stands with those who stood tall tonight, without fear, without hatred.
"With those who have not forgotten that the fundamental values of Montenegro are: anti-fascism, multiethnic harmony, secularism and civic order. These are the values that make us part of Europe. Values that distinguish us from those who would return us to the darkness of denial, fear and humiliation."
"Those who are shaming Montenegro from within today are trying to destroy its values on the very day of Statehood, symbolically, perfidiously, systematically, hoping that we will remain silent. But we will not. We have memory. We have face. That is why today and every day: With free citizens. With a free Montenegro," concluded Šehović.
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