News | Serbian Unity Congress

April 18, 2007 on 3:01 am | In News in English |

Text of report by Serbian newspaper Politika on 14 April

[Commentary by Milan Vujovic: “Nonexistent People”]

Immediately following Montenegro’s status referendum, Serbophobia in the local media had abated, so that Serbs and those that had voted for the preservation of the common state with Serbia hoped that they would live normally, like everybody else. However, they seem to have disappeared in the independent Montenegro. They are nowhere to be seen in the media, especially not in the so-called relaxed talk shows, where matters of day-to-day living are discussed by writers, professors, doctors, researchers, journalists, singers, actors, musicians, athletes, and others. It is as though here, nobody but pro-sovereignty authors ever writes prose or poetry, nor can anybody else act; nobody creates art except those that have “forever aspired after a sovereign Montenegro”; nor can anybody else wield a scalpel, make music, or kick a ball.

Where the 44.5 per cent of adult citizens of Montenegro, so-called unionists, have disappeared nobody knows.

Yet they voted for a common state with Serbia in the firm belief that this would be best for both Montenegro and their families. In fact, their only desire was to live in a rich and democratic country that would offer equal opportunities to all. As yet, nobody has even tried to show them that they were wrong. Perhaps that is why, for the moment, they are nonexistent people - both to the authorities in Montenegro and to those in Serbia as well. They are hoping that things will change once Serbia forms a new government.

Paradoxical as it may seem, for some time now foreigners have been the ones showing the greatest interest in Serbs in Montenegro. A local opposition leader has said that one of the questions that all guests, from lowly civil servants to senior officials from Brussels and other centres of power, regularly ask Montenegrin officials is: Where are your Serbs, remarking that they are treating Serbs in the same way that they insisted that they themselves were being treated by Serbia in the common state - ignoring them. The foreigners cannot stop wondering how it can happen that Serbs are not to be found holding any high office, from the education department to the police to the assembly, whereas Serbs make up one-third of the population according to the latest census.

The topic in the focus of discussions in Montenegro at the moment is the intention of the canonically unrecognized CPC [Montenegrin Orthodox Church] to seize by force the churches and monasteries of the Metropolitan See of Montenegro and the Littoral [of the Serbian Orthodox Church - SPC]. All doctrines of war say that, in order for an attack to be successful, the attacker should have three times more manpower than the defender. In Montenegro, however, there are three times more followers of the SPC than there are those of the so-called CPC, which is registered with the police station in Cetinje.

Source: Politika, Belgrade, in Serbian 14 Apr 07 p11

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