Montenegrin PEN Center: Force against citizens who point out the devastation of cultural and state property

That Montenegro is becoming a country in which power and force, tear gas and pepper spray are directed at citizens who point out the devastation of cultural and state property, was demonstrated by tonight's protest in front of Villa Gorica, the Montenegrin PEN Center announced.

"And how non-violent the protest was is also largely indicated by the fact that most of those gathered were academics and cultural workers, many of them elderly, like academician Vukić Pulević, one of the founders of Montenegrin PEN, who is well into his ninth decade of life.

"The police have repeatedly used pepper spray as a means of coercion, often in direct contact with the protestors, causing them serious injuries and several of them having to seek medical help. One of them is the Dean of the Faculty of Montenegrin Language and Literature (FCJK) and member of the Montenegrin PEN Center, Prof. Dr. Aleksandar Radoman, a recognized fighter for human rights and freedoms, to whom the police, without any provocation, used excessive force," the organization said in a statement.

It is added that another member of the Montenegrin PEN Center and teaching associate at FCJK, Stefan Todorović, was also injured in what they said were unjustified attacks by police forces.

"The prominent Montenegrin educator, pedagogue and chronicler of Montenegrin education Radovan Damjanović was also injured by the direct misuse of pepper spray. The police responded to the citizens singing the Montenegrin anthem with pepper spray, and to the citizens' attempt to preserve Montenegrin state dignity - with excessive use of force. The Minister of Internal Affairs Danilo Šaranović, who has repeatedly shown that he experiences his function through the prism of power and violence, without taking into account fundamental human rights, nor law and justice, is directly responsible for the police's actions and the threat to the lives of Montenegrin citizens. He shares responsibility with the President of the Parliament of Montenegro, who abuses his institutional power to restrict fundamental rights and freedoms of public assembly and expression of one's own opinion, and according to whose obvious directives it has come to the point that the most important Montenegrin award, which has so far carried a name that is equated with anti-fascism and the stability of Montenegro, is being awarded to persons who continuously work against its existence, who spread interreligious and interethnic hatred in their speeches, chauvinism and fascism," said the Montenegrin PEN Center.

They assessed that there is no state governed by the rule of law if the most important positions in it are awarded to those who work against that state and who receive that award for non-existent books with proven falsified data.

"There is no rule of law if the police violently break up peaceful protests. There is no rule of law if force rules. The Montenegrin PEN Center supports all citizens who stood tonight in defense of the rule of law, in defense of dignity, and in defense of Montenegrin culture and anti-fascist history. We must stifle autocracy before it stifle us. The Montenegrin PEN Center will inform the international public about these atrocities," the statement concludes.