Church Accuses Montenegro of Abusing Talks on Disputed Law
Serbian Orthodox Church and government expert teams during negotiations. Photo: Government of Montenegro
The Serbian Orthodox Church has accused the Montenegrin government of trying to abuse the dialogue over the contested Freedom of religion Law for election purposes; parliamentary elections are due on August 30.
On July 21, Government and Church teams failed to agree on changes to the law, which the Serbian Church deems discriminatory. After negotiations folded on Tuesday, the Episcopal Council of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro said it still couldn’t accept the government proposal for it to re-register.
“We see the government request to the [Church] to register in Montenegro as an ultimatum. This request was inappropriate because, as a Church institution, we have existed in Montenegro for a full eight centuries,” the Episcopal Council stated in a press release.
“We can’t register as some new religious community. The government call for dialogue obviously served for political marketing, and we don’t want to be part of it,” it added.
On March 1, government and Church teams started negotiations about the law, but the dialogue was postponed due to the coronavirus epidemic.
Negotiations resumed on July 20, but the two sides still couldn’t agree on law changes. On Wednesday, Deputy Prime Minister Zoran Pazin said the government wanted to reach a compromise with the Church, despite the political pressure it was putting on the authorities.
“We are still open for dialogue, but at this moment, we don’t see the meaning of continuing talks. The government’s offer was explicitly rejected by the Church authorities,” Pazin told a press conference.
According to him, the government offered some changes to the law, which would be adopted in parliament by the end of July. The government had, for example, offered faith groups the chance to prove property ownership before the courts, not with the Real Estate Directorate, as the law now says. It also offered the Church full use of all its sacral objects, which could be registered as state property. The government still wanted the Church to register, however.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Dusko Markovic said the government wanted to end the disagreements and rebuild trust between the state and the Church.
“Despite the Church protests against the law, talks were conducted patiently within the delegations of the state and the Church,” he said.
Since parliament passed the law on December 27, tens of thousands of Serbian Orthodox priests, believers, and supporters have been protesting twice-weekly across the country, demanding its withdrawal. The Church – whose relations with the government are poor – claims the law would allow the state to rob it of its property.
Opposition pro-Russian and pro-Serbian political movements that generally support the Serbian Church are also regular participants in the rallies and marches.
The disputed law calls for the creation of a register of all religious buildings and sites that authorities say were owned by the independent kingdom of Montenegro before it became part of the Serb-dominated Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1918, later renamed Yugoslavia.
