(Podgorica, 15 July 2013) – The arrest of citizens, who only wanted to express their opinions and to offer resistance to the demagogy of the government with a performance, is a continuation of the brutal violation of human rights by the police. It’s clear that such behaviour has become routine practice under the new police director, Slavko Stojanovic, and the quasi-European agenda of Milo Djukanovic’s government.
This is already the second time that the police, headed by Stojanovic, arrests citizens who are organizing performances and actions of civic disobedience (representing a brutal violation of the right to free expression).
Such actions demonstrate that the regime is made nervous by methods of non-violent resistance, since they undermine its authority. Its authority, however, has been further undermined by the electoral manipulation revealed in the “Recording” scandal. There is less and less money in the organized crime that has destroyed the economy through privatizations, and there is a decreasing number of citizens who see any perspective with an irresponsible and corrupt government. They are aware that with their votes they are selling the future of their children.
For a regime that cannot frighten its citizens and whose democratic legitimacy is questioned, and for a regime which has less and less money available to purchase social peace (while the costs of corruption are increasingly offloaded onto citizens), all that remains for the restoration of order is naked force. For this reasons the new police director has taken to arresting all those who dare to resist corruption and crime.
MANS supports all forms of non-violent civic resistance known in the modern world and that have as an aim to highlight key problems in our society. We will continue to fight for the rights and freedoms of all citizens in Montenegro.
Our legal representative, Veselin Radulovic, will offer legal assistance to young people who were arrested by the police three days ago for daring to act as citizens and to fight for their right to say what they want about the government, a right that is guaranteed by the Constitution and all international human rights conventions.
