Rows of tents outside Montenegrin parliament/facebook.com/SlobodaTrazi.Me. Photos used with permission of author.As I write these lines from an overcrowded, ad hoc assembled press HQ facing the Parliament of Montenegro in Podgorica, I shudder to think of what success our risky and implausible endeavor will yield.
On 27 September, thousands of Montenegrin citizens, led by the main opposition group (the Democratic Front), gathered in front of their parliament to demand an end to the 26 year rule of Milo Djukanovic’s regime. The resignation of Djukanovic’s government would be followed, it was hoped, by the formation of a transitional, national unity government, whose mandate would be limited to organising the first free and fair elections in the country’s history.
Since then, the protesters have put up tents on a boulevard which has become known as ‘liberated territory’; across the barricades, a thousand policemen in full armor stand guard outside an empty parliament building, on top of which snipers are dispersed. Last Sunday, the Ministry of Interior attempted to disband the assembled crowd, but the protests’ leaders refused to leave the occupied ground until their demands were met.
