In Montenegro, there is still no justice for the prisoners from Goli Otok: It seems that there is no political will even in the new government

Montenegro remains the only country in the region that has not provided rehabilitation or compensation to former political prisoners from Goli Otok. Even the latest initiative in this direction, submitted almost a year ago by President Jakov Milatović, has not met with any response in the Parliament, and it seems that the new government does not have the political will to go down that path either.

Montenegro enters another year without a law that would correct one of the greatest injustices of the past. We are the only country in the region that has not rehabilitated or compensated the victims of Goli Otok.

"It is a devastating fact that Montenegro, which in the former Yugoslavia had the largest number of political prisoners in Goli Otok, Sveti Grgur and other prisons relative to its population, has still not adopted a single legally binding act for their rehabilitation and compensation. As time passes, more and more victims of serious human rights violations die without rehabilitation and without any material satisfaction, and their families continue to bear the consequences of this injustice," Amra Bajrović from the non-governmental organization (NGO) Human Rights Action (HRA) told Television Vijesti.

Of the estimated total of just over 16 prisoners, as many as 21 percent were from Montenegro. Yet Montenegro has done by far the least to provide the Goloto victims with the justice they deserve.

"Countries in the region - Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia - have passed laws that rehabilitated political prisoners and provided certain forms of compensation. This clearly shows that a solution is possible, but that in Montenegro the absence of such a law is solely a consequence of a lack of political will," said Bajrović.

The Law on the Rehabilitation and Compensation of Golotočki Prisoners was not adopted during the government of the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS), nor after the changes in 2020. The initiative of the President of the Republic, Jakov Milatović, submitted almost a year ago, also remained without discussion in the Parliament. Television Vijesti did not receive a response from his Cabinet as to whether it will be sent for procedure again.

"The absence of a legislative framework for the rehabilitation and compensation of these victims not only represents a legal and moral failure of the state, but also a serious deviation from basic human rights and international standards of justice," Milatović stated in the Initiative for the Adoption of a Law on the Rehabilitation and Compensation of Political Prisoners of Goli Otok, submitted almost a year ago.

Although the Parliament of Montenegro condemned the terror against convicts on Goli Otok and other infamous camps and prisons back in 1992 and announced that they would be provided with moral and legal satisfaction, that promise was never fulfilled. More than three decades later, the Declaration on the Condemnation of Human Rights Violations and Abuse of Power remains a dead letter.