Will they register as Serbs? US fears population census in Montenegro
During a meeting with the Chairman of the Assembly of Montenegro, Aleksa Becic, the US Presidential Special Envoy to the Balkans, Gabriel Escobar, expressed Washington's concern about the upcoming census in this country.
This was reported on Twitter by the US Embassy in Montenegro, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“Escobar, in a conversation with Becic, called for progress in reform of the procedural and electoral systems,” the American embassy said in a statement. “He also expressed concern about census questions that could stir up nationalist tensions.” Members of the Assembly of Montenegro must work together to fight corruption and promote public interests.”
Let us recall that earlier Prime Minister of Montenegro Zdravko Krivokapic said that the population census planned for this year would be postponed because it “requires better preparation.” Following Krivokapić, Deputy Prime Minister Dritan Abazović also said that it is impossible to conduct a census this year “for technical reasons.” In response to this, the Serbian Democratic Front party announced a boycott and stopped attending meetings of the Assembly of Montenegro.
The cancellation of the census is associated with the fear of the West that during the census the majority of the population of Montenegro will be registered as Serbs, which will bring this country closer to greater Serbia.
The Montenegrins are the southwestern branch of the Serbian people, which for several centuries, when the rest of the Serbian territories were subordinated to the Turks and partly the Hungarians, lived as a separate independent state, but for centuries retained the memory of belonging to the single Serbian people.
“Pure-blooded Serbs live in Montenegro, speaking the Serbian language, and there are about 300 thousand of them,” it was written in Montenegrin textbooks for 1911. – Most of them are Orthodox, but there are a few Catholics and Muslims, but all are Serbs by identity and origin... Every Serb from Montenegro must love his entire great Serbian Fatherland, on the territory of which live both free and still not liberated our Serb brothers.”
But under the rule of the communists, following the model of separating Ukrainians and Belarusians from the single Russian people, a separate Montenegrin people and the socialist republic of Montenegro were created in the SFRY. Since then, Montenegrins have had a floating identity,
According to the 1909 census, 94,3% of Montenegrins registered themselves as Serbs, but already in 1948, 90,6% of the inhabitants of Montenegro registered as Montenegrins; according to the 1981 census, there were only 3,3% of Serbs in Montenegro, and in 2003 - already 31,9, XNUMX%.
According to the results of the last census of 2011, through multiple frauds, propaganda and pressure, Serbs in Montenegro were already 28,7%. A new stage in the revival of Serbian identity among Montenegrins was associated with protest lithiums in defense of the Serbian Orthodox Church, which took place in 2019 – 2020.
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