By: Nebojša Redžić
The same people who rejoiced and celebrated when the “twin towers” were razed to the ground in 2001 in a terrorist attack by Islamists, would now like to portray Montenegrin patriots as terrorists in the game of imagining armed opponents.
True, they are wholeheartedly assisted by the Special Police Team led by Milivoje Katnić, who is arresting, as well as Katnić's people from the SDT, who qualify the peaceful civil protest as terrorism. But how much Katnić retaliated from “early works” when he raided Cavtat in the aggression against Dubrovnik in 1991, or from 1999 when he arrested Montenegrins as a military judge, is a different story.
When it comes to terrorists, the context of the time in which they operate is almost irrelevant to their activity. Because terrorists are always terrorists, whether it's the massacre at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, the Al Qaeda operation in New York, or the group of criminals who stopped liberals at the “Slijepač” bridge in 1992 to take the idea of an independent Montenegro to Bijelo Polje.
Indeed, it would be interesting to ask the actors of today's political majority who were exponents of that policy in 1992, such as Pedrag Bulatović or Miodrag Lekić, if the action of their supporters near Bijelo Polje could be compared to a peaceful protest in Cetinje.
As a reminder, in November 1992, under the full organization and control of the then State Security (DB), a large group of criminals from Bijelo Polje, with long barrels, more precisely then the most modern automatic weapons, prevented the leaders and supporters of the Liberal Alliance from reaching the north of Montenegro.
The then head of the police operation, which was the logistics for the Bijelo Polje terrorists, Milić Radovanić, whose nephew is today one of the URA officials, was severely offended when I asked him a journalistic question: when will he disperse the terrorists and clear the road to Bijelo Polje. “They are not terrorists,” he told me at the time.
Predrag Bulatović and Miodrag Lekić did not announce themselves when a new barricade was set up for liberals in Mojkovac three days later, just like the following year when lawyer Đorđije Ulićević explained to Slavko Perović that 2,000 armed, angry Serbs were waiting for him in Golubovci and that he should better return to where he came from.
And there is nothing worse than double standards when justice is done.
All the occupiers attacked the Cetinje monastery
Well, everything that is happening to Cetinje and the people of Cetinje after Belvedere and September 5 this year, does not differ much from those periods in the history of Montenegro when the occupiers attacked the soul of this city – the Cetinje Monastery.
In 1784, Mahmut Pasha Bushatlija, during a campaign against Montenegro, captured Cetinje, burned the monastery, and destroyed the city. Although he was then defeated at Martinići, he came to Kruse and lost his head there. The then Cetinje remembered him for his shameful acts.
In 1923, Serbian Major Kecmanović burned the Zvicer family, two women and five children. He was rewarded by the Serbian authorities for that crime. The Serbian occupier left Montenegro with burned houses, killed, imprisoned and expelled Montenegrins. There is also a black stain left in vain attempts to present Serbs as “brothers” and “the closest”..
In 1941, the Italian governor of occupied Montenegro, Pircio Biroli, was introduced to the Cetinje Monastery by the Serbian priest Joanikije Lipovac. Terror and crimes covered Cetinje. Every voice of resistance and reason was punished in the imprisoned city. Gojko Kruška and Musa Hodžić sang “Oj svijetla majska zoro…” (Montenegrin anthem) on the gallows. And that passed, although the shameful deeds of the occupiers remained.
The Cetinje Monastery was embarrassed too by the late Metropolitan of the Church of Serbia, Risto Radović, when he brought criminals and paramilitaries led by Arkan, when Montenegrins were shot from the walls on St. Peter's Day in 1992. He did the same countless times later, while ruling from that Montenegrin shrine, by gathering criminal scum from the region ready to defend the kidnapped to the last breath. The monastery was defended from Montenegrins in 2007 by DPS police chief Veselin Veljović, who, under the pretext that the monastery was “full of armed criminals”, prevented about a thousand Montenegrins, led by Bishop Mihailo, from kissing St. Peter's shrine.
The constant humiliation of the Cetinje Monastery reached its culmination on September 5, 2021, when 1,800 armed policemen occupied the city and suffocated it with tear gas, for the enthronement of priest Joanikije, the namesake of the same man who instead of Biroli, this time had the support of the chief Serbian governor for Montenegro, Zdravko Krivokapić.
Today's occupier encourages the police with a reward and buys their conscience and shame. He lets them know that they will always be well paid for terror, he raises betrayal to the pedestal of virtue.
The terror in Cetinje has been going on for more than a month, while everyone is silent – from the non-governmental sector to the embassies in Podgorica. They arrest an entire city that is the heart of a country they do not want and a symbol of resistance they did not expect.
In the elections, the “Serbian world” will be defeated
Belvedere barricades hurt Vučić's henchmen in Montenegro more and more every day. How to explain to the boss that this “handful of extremists”, as they are represented in Belgrade, were not able to overcome and secure another orgy of the “Serbian world” in the heart of Montenegro?
There are few excuses, because angry Vučić increasingly doubts their commitment. Not just because of Belvedere and the failed act of enthronement.
Because, when you serve, you are never good enough, my lord. He perceives your every helplessness as an act of betrayal and disloyalty, and he punishes every independence by denying support. If these are not good enough, Vučić will bring a kindergarten to power or clone 12 Dritans. Because no one serves so well as one who wants to be “a bigger Catholic than the Pope.”
That is why Cetinje needs to be dealt with a more decisive blow than the one from September 5. Make terrorists out of people whose only weapon on the Belvedere was a megaphone. From patriots – a bunch of “milogorci” who defend the master's capital. In the natural aspiration to show teeth with the occupation methods of the authorities – to find material for people to declare themselves extremists.
The fact that some strange coincidence of circumstances last year made the government in Montenegro win over a bunch of servants of the neighboring state and executors of the great-power, assimilationist policy, does not mean that they should be allowed the right to the supreme truth. The fact that they speak from an official place should not be a reason to agree to their qualifications of Montenegrin patriotism.
The right to assembly is one of the universal values of civilization. The right to a different opinion is one of the essences of democracy. The right of the occupied to defend himself from the occupier is a natural human right.
Montenegrins of all the three religions this time, just like on the eve of 2006, will not win the freedom with a gun or a Kalashnikov. While the history repeats, they rely only on European values according to which power is won in elections. In the past elections, in which the majority which sees Montenegro as a modern state of Euro-Atlantic values, won collectively, a fraud called URA caused the pots to be confused in the perception of Montenegro from the outside.
The next elections, no matter how much the current government runs away from them and no matter how much the DPS is not ready for them, will offer different options. It will certainly no longer be on the table for Montenegro to voluntarily enter the jaws of the “Serbian world”.