(Podgorica, 3 July 2013) – Today in an open letter, MANS called on the Minister of Internal Affairs Rasko Konjevic to immediately and without further delay establish who was responsible for the illegal actions of the Police Directorate when it arrested MANS activists. Failing to do so, Konjevic should assume personal responsibility for the brutal violation of our basic human rights.
The lack of a police reaction to MANS’ latest action before the parliament – in order to produce the Assembly’s decision and that of the Government to increase the VAT due to KAP’s mounting debts – demonstrates that the previous arrest was totally illegal and carried out in the hopes of frightening and discouraging us.
We believe that it is unacceptable for the Minister of Internal Affairs to have “kept his head in the sand” in this case and failing to confront an incident that has caught the attention of the international community and provoked worries and doubts int he democratic capacity of state institutions to respect and protest citizens from the violation of their fundamental rights.
This latest action by the police actually represents the continuation of an entire series of illegal activities that the Police Directorate has continuously been applying towards MANS employees. This includes the police ‘investigation’ regarding the posting of a video of Safet Kalic’s wedding online, to the illegal eavesdropping of our employees, as well as the charges brought against MANS for a performance before the Administrative Court and including those MANS activists most recently arrested. The police has demonstrated that it has no intention of stopping with their acts of harassment and repression against us.
The violation of our rights and the illegal actions of the police is confirmed by the conclusions of the Council for Citizens’ Control of the Police, which has confirmed this several times by warning the Police Directorate to refrain from such practices.
We believe that this abuse of police powers, in order to intimidate and “teach a lesson” to someone, must be confronted with the harshest condemnation by the Minister of Internal Affairs (given his never ending talk about Europe and European values).
Instead of this, the police has unofficially stated that through “an internal agreement at the senior levels of the police” it was decided to refrain from arresting MANS employees following the latest performance. We expect that the same “internal agreement” was the basis of the previous arrests, since it turned out that the law definitely couldn’t be the basis for such police actions.
For these reasons, MANS expects and once again calls on the Minister of Internal Affairs, Rasko Konjevic, to immediately react and establish who is responsible for this “internal agreement at senior levels of the police,” which has resulted in the arrest of our employees and the serious violation of our human rights.
