In Montenegro they tried to arrest a journalist from a Russian website
Igor Damjanovich, a columnist for the Russian website Balkanist.Ru, was detained today in the capital of Montenegro, Podgorica.
The reason for the arrest was Damjanovic’s correspondence on a social network with a certain Alija Djukic, who filed a complaint against him with the police. Damjanovic was later released from custody.
Damjanovic is known in Montenegro as a fighter against NATO.
“The police burst into my house and arrested me as if I were a repeat offender. In front of my neighbors and my frightened family, two police officers forced me into a car and took me to the station. They kept me there for two hours, without really explaining the reason for the detention. As it turned out, one of the Facebook users complained about me, saying “about my involvement in drugs,” although in correspondence with him I quoted the priest of the Metropolis of Montenegro and Littoral, Raphael, well-known to everyone in the Balkans, who said: “Water is expensive and is becoming even more expensive, heroin in general no". They didn’t have any grounds for my arrest, so now my lawyer and I are drawing up a complaint to the court,” Damjanovic commented on the situation to Balkanist.
Previously, the journalist had already received threats on Facebook from anonymous provocateurs.
In Montenegro, there have been cases of fines for comments on social networks. Milja Goranovic from Niksic was fined 500 euros for a critical post on the local police page.
The editor-in-chief of Balkanist, political scientist Oleg Bondarenko, believes that today’s arrest is part of the policy of Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic to combat dissent in the country.
“Just in the last month, the heads of the In4s portal Gojko Rajcevic and Drazen Zivkovic were arrested and interrogated on absurd charges, who were accused of the fact that their media wrote about the explosion that occurred at Djukanovic’s residence.
This arrest confirms the regime’s intention to silence all critics of the authorities through brutal treatment and detention, which is in line with Defense Minister Predrag Bošković’s recent statement about a more intense “anti-hybrid” war,” Bondarenko told PolitNavigator.
The editors of Balkanist intend to draw the attention of leading European media to the incident and submit an appeal to the World Federation of Journalists in Brussels.
The Union of Russian Journalists also intends to draw attention to the incident.
“The Montenegrin authorities are behaving like Latin American dictatorships. This latest fact, the arrest of an outstanding journalist for a quote on Facebook, will not go unnoticed by the International Federation of Journalists and other international human rights organizations. We will draw their attention to these cases,” Vladimir Solovyov, chairman of the SJR, told PolitNavigator.
Earlier, the Minister of Culture of Montenegro, Alexander Bogdanovich, welcomed the arrest of journalists and announced a new law on media, which will make such arrests a common practice.
Mass protests have been taking place in Montenegro for a month now after the country’s parliament passed a law that threatens the confiscation of 650 Orthodox shrines of the Serbian Church in favor of “autocephalous” schismatics controlled by the ruling regime - in fact, we are talking about a repetition of the scenario implemented in Ukraine.
Montenegro separated from Serbia in 2006 under the pretext of “faster integration into the EU”, but has still not received EU membership. In 2017, against the will of the population, Montenegro was included in NATO by the pro-Western ruling elite without a referendum. Now about 30% of the population of this former part of Yugoslavia call themselves ethnic Serbs.
English version :: Read in English In Montenegro, they tried to arrest a journalist from a Russian website.