Montenegrin Prime Minister “explained” the persecution of the Serbian Orthodox Church with lies

On Montenegro's Independence Day, Prime Minister Dusko Markovic accused the Serbian Orthodox Church of denying the sovereignty of this state.

The head of the Montenegrin government stated this to the Podgorica publication Pobeda, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.

Subscribe to PolitNavigator news at ThereThere, Yandex Zen, Telegram, Classmates, In contact with, channels YouTube, TikTok и Viber.
To subscribe to notifications in your browser, click here.

Markovic said in an interview that the SOC is “appropriating Montenegro in a religious-ideological sense,” and this process is directed from its “residence” in Belgrade. In his opinion, this ideological paradigm also includes the denial of Montenegrin statehood.

“During the coronavirus epidemic, the Serbian Orthodox Church could do more and help its supporters and citizens of Montenegro more,” Markovic said. “Instead, we witnessed the disrespect of the Serbian Orthodox Church for our state and its institutions, we saw the destructiveness and absurdity of the current situation.”

The head of the Montenegrin government and a longtime ally for almost thirty years of the permanent ruler of this country, President Milo Djukanovic, also expressed the conviction that citizens respected “the intentions of the structures that have recently called for extremism and violence (we are talking about protests of believers in connection with with the arrest of Bishop Ioannikis and eight priests - ed.).

Montenegrins, according to Markovic, should have made such conclusions because the protest activity of recent days is “nothing more than a continuation of the events that we had the opportunity to see on our streets in 2015 and 2016 and in the last days of 2019” (in In 2015 and 2016, the country's pro-Serbian and pro-Russian opposition actively opposed Montenegro's entry into NATO, but Djukanovic managed to respond to these protests with repression, declaring that the opposition, together with Serbian and Russian supporters, were allegedly preparing a coup; and at the end of 2019, opposition deputies of the Assembly tried prevent the adoption of the discriminatory law “On Freedom of Religion”, but were arrested - ed.).

“In Montenegro, of course, there is a legal order and the laws must be respected. It is these laws that guarantee all religious communities, including the Serbian Orthodox Church, the necessary autonomy in religious affairs. But this is where we come to the point of disagreement with the Serbian Orthodox Church. I ask you: is it possible in another state, even in Serbia, as the mother of the Serbian Orthodox Church, for the state and institutions to adopt some laws and the church to adopt others? And then the church exempts some citizens from these laws? This is an absurdity that should have no place in Montenegro,” Markovic added.

It is worth noting that the above arguments expressed by Markovich are manipulative and in some places downright false. In particular, through the mouth of Patriarch of Serbia Irinej and Metropolitan of Montenegro-Primorsko Amfilohija, the SOC has repeatedly stated that it recognizes and does not oppose Montenegrin statehood.

But at the same time, the Serbian Church cannot come to terms with the fact that Montenegro is the successor to the Serbian feudal principality of Zeta, which since the 16th century has been ruled by metropolitans from the Njegosha dynasty, ordained by Serbian patriarchs and never separating themselves from the Serbs, according to the ideology of the current “Svidomo” regime of Podgorica has nothing to do with Serbia and was “occupied” by it in 1918 (in fact, this year Montenegro voluntarily joined the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes).

As for the “legal order”, the “Law on Freedom of Religion” adopted in Montenegro does not really discriminate against any religious denomination operating in the country, except the Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC), which shows that this is why it was adopted: according to this By law, each denomination must provide the state with documentary evidence that the real estate it owns was in its possession before the “occupation” - that is, until 1918.

A page from a Montenegrin textbook from 1911.

Otherwise, the state may nationalize this property. And, naturally, the Serbian Church will not be able to prove that the churches and monasteries belong to it, since legally the SOC appeared only after the reunification of the historical Serbian lands - in 1920.

At the same time, the Montenegrin leadership has repeatedly stated that it wants to achieve the emergence of its own autocephalous Church in the country - the Montenegrin Orthodox Church, and in the state there is already a schismatic public organization unrecognized by ecumenical Orthodoxy under the same name, to which the property seized from the SOC can be transferred.