Ending impunity was one of the main challenges.

 

In 2021, MapMF documented 12 alerts for Montenegro with 16 attacked persons or entities related to the media. Following a trend across Europe, a vast majority of these attacks (11) were perpetrated by private individuals. Male and female professionals were equally affected. Political as well as nationalist polarisa‐ tion are blatant in Montenegro through a number of alerts. In the case of a reporting team from the public broadcaster Radio-television (RTV), a right-wing nationalist group intimidated and insulted the journalists near the coastal town of Budva. For several weeks, the nationalist group had organised numerous protests over changes to the Law on Citizenship, which would grant Montenegrin citizenship to Russian and Serbian citizens living in the country. The attacked journalists had been caught up in one of their blockades. During another political event in the city of Niksic, on the night of local elections, Vijesti journalist Jelena Jovanović was attacked by an aggressive man who threw a car’s windscreen wiper towards her, hitting her on the head. Next to these attacks taking place in public places, Antena M editor-inchief Darko Sukovic and columnist Dragan Bursać faced death threats on‐line by a Facebook user under the profile Marko Aprcović. Bursać, a well-known Bosnian journalist based in Banja Luka, was ‘warned’ not to go to Montenegro, where he also publishes articles, as he would receive “a bullet in the head and a salute”. 

Public spaces, especially during political rallies, continue to be a difficult environ Jment for Montenegrin journalists: nine cases were reported after individual journalists or teams tried to cover stories in the field. In four cases, media workers were attacked during demonstrations.he first incident of the year took place during a ‘patriotic rally’ in March. Journalist Sead Sadiković working for Vijesti Television suffered injuries after being attacked by a group of people carrying Montenegrin flags. The Trade Union Media in Montenegro (SMCG) said that the attack was ”a direct consequence of the longheated political and national passions in Montenegro.” Two suspects were immedi‐ ately arrested, which the MFRR network welcomed given that ending impunity was one of the main challenges raised after the press freedom mission to Montenegroin 2020. It must be ensured that police and prosecutors investigate all threats and bring perpetrators to justice. Five attacks were related to protests against the enthronement of a Serbian Orthodox Church cleric as the nation's religious leader, which took place in the city of Cetinje on 5 September. The enthronement of Joanikije II at a monastery in Cetinje stirred divisions within Montenegro over ties with neighbouring Serbia, also between the country’s Prime Minister and President. Though Montenegro left its union with Serbia in 2006, its church remained under the Serbian church. The protests turned very violent, with demonstrators who opposed the enthronement. 41 acting hostilely towards media workers. They reportedly threw stones at a N1TV crew, another N1 journalist was heavily obstructed in her work, and a Vijesti TV crew was insulted and hindered from live reporting. In the last case, Prime Minister Zdravko Krivokapic visited the media outlet and condemned the incident. 

Apart from attacks during these protests, one major case of intimidation related to the enthronement was initiated by Dejan Vukšic, the director of Montenegro’s National Security Agency (ANB). Vukšic had filed a criminal complaint, alleging that journalist Nenad Zečević had illegally published secret information about the security sector. The complaint stemmed from a report published on 30 September, entitled “The ANB would like to hide the names of people of security interest who were in the Monastery''. It contained the ANB’s conclusions about whether there had been armed individuals inside the Cetinje Monastery on 05 September, when violent protests broke out between demonstrators and police. The allegation was denied by the journalist and his newspaper Pobjeda, who called this com‐ plaint an attempt to pressure journalists to stop reporting about ANB’s operations