(Podgorica, 14 May 2013) – We’re calling on the public to follow tomorrow’s hearings of two misdemeanour cases before the Misdemeanours Court in Podgorica. The first hearing will be held at 8am before Judge Branka Radonjic, who will hear closing arguments in the police’s case against Vanja Calovic for kissing a cop during a performance last year. At 3:30pm before Judge Nevenka Kovacevic the case against Dejan Milovac will be heard, also at the police’s request, for having stuck on the outside of Montenegro’s Constitutional Court a sign reading “Constitutional Court of the First Family.”
I would like to use this opportunity to remind you that both judges are government functionaries and that they are appointed by the government. According to the policies of the European Court for Human Rights, one of the basic criteria for determining the independence of an institution from the executive is the manner in which appointments occur.
In concrete cases, the executive has used the police to initiate proceedings against MANS activists, while the executive will also judge these cases through its appointed judges. That is, the executive is essential the party to the dispute initiating the proceedings and the court that will judge MANS activists (for using the right to freedom of speech and peaceful assembly, which are guaranteed by the Constitution and the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms).
During the last hearing in the case against Calovic, the judge refused any evidence presented by the defence, while accepting all evidence submitted by the police. Thus the judge / government functionary, the only acceptable witnesses were police officers and other government officials. This judge / government functionary, allowed the police to bring forward a range of potential complaints, without knowing whether the police officer in question was “prevented” from protecting the Government, traffic or the gathering that was attended by Calovic. If it turns out that the officer was prevented from protecting the Government, this would be a unique case in which the government is the initiator of the charges, the judge and the protected party.
The President of the court / a government official refused the request of the defence to respect a public hearing, with the justification that the court lacks the space to allow such a request.
Similarly, the case against Milovac wasn’t stopped even though the submitter of the complaint hadn’t shown up twice (which should have resulted in the suspension of the case according to the law). Instead the police was given eight and a half months to find and submit the key piece of evidence – the sign reading “Constitutional Court of the First Family.”
These proceedings, as well as many others that the executive authority has initiated through the police and processed through its appointed judges, represent an open attempt of intimidating those who criticize the executive authority and who critique the Constitutional Court (whose composition, and decisions, also speak to the fact that judges in the court are selected largely on the basis of their party loyalty). For this reason we shouldn’t be surprised when the court claims that it lacks “space,” since the implementation of illegal decisions is always easier to do in secrecy than before the public.
Nevertheless, in these proceedings we will highlight all the illegalities in the police’s work and the institutions responsible for processing misdemeanours, seeing as they contradict the positions and practices of the European Court for Human Rights. For this reason we call on you to monitor these trials in order to prevent practice of “handing down justice” in secrecy, accompanied with the brutal violation of human rights and basic freedoms on the basis of the principle – The Government Accuses, the Government Judges!
