Milorad Popović: Open letter to the ambassadors of the Quinta’s countries

Your Excellencies,

Today, Montenegro is in an unstoppable social, political and economic disorder, that was created by Moscow and Belgrade. The strategic goal of this destruction is to use various propaganda and repressive methods to create a permanent change in the national character, civic profiling and pro-Western orientation of Montenegrin society. The strategy of taking over Montenegro was conceived by the ideologies and operatives of the "Russian-Serbian world" in a complex way, using all instruments- typical of oriental-type imperialism - in a wide political-propaganda-repressive spectrum, regime institutions, the Church of Serbia, and certain paramilitary and mafia organizations.

Any imperialism and hegemonies is primarily based on manipulations, lies and violence that will cause fear and paranoia among political opponents, critical intellectuals, and free media. It should be understood in that context the performance of Dritan Abazović - Serbian Ramzan Kadyrov - who, at the session of the Parliament of Montenegro on August 19, 2022, in the manner of mafia bosses, Iranian mullahs or agitators of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, took out my photo from a folder and showed it to the members of the Parliament in a direct telecast! This bizarre gesture was primarily intended to frighten me and a group of opposition intellectuals, but also to tell their allies from the paramilitary and mafia structures that they can deal with critics and opponents of the regime in short order.

Because the headquarters that put Abazović into power know that intense fear of Greater Serbian and Pan-Slavist extremists and their collaborators from the criminal milieu has been going on in Montenegro since at least the attempted coup d'état in 2016. Precisely because of this and such fear of the former Montenegrin government - as well as the opportunism of the Western Allies - from the GRU (Russian Main Intelligence Directorate), the BIA (National Intelligence Agency of Serbia), and certain illegal organizations that were under their control in Serbia and Montenegro, extremism was not curtailed after the discovery of the conspiracy on the twenty-fourth of October 2016, rather, it has been strengthened additionally, which could be seen at the time of the so-called litia- the protests of the Church of Serbia at the beginning of 2020.

How much fear paralyzes or keeps passive a large part of pro-Western public opinion and political structures in Montenegro confirms the fact that at the session of the Assembly on confidence of the Abazović’s Government, the opposition MPs, as well as human rights activists and anti-regime media, very shyly, often in Aesopian language, spoke about probably the most obscure scandal in the countries of parliamentary democracy since the time of Escobar's Colombia. Namely, the published telephone conversations, that were in the possession of Europol, explicitly show the cooperation of Prime Minister Abazović, certain government officials, parts of the Church and paramilitary-criminal organizations, in the political - if necessary, physical - elimination of pro-Western politicians, policemen, judges, prosecutors ...

Among other things, those conversations have revealed part of the dark background that brought the Great Serbian coalition to power in 2020. Criminal groups in cooperation with the Church of Serbia planned to buy weapons to organize a new coup on election day in 2020, if the pro-Western option wins again. Even more frightening are the revelations about the possession of an encrypted phone of Dritan Abazović, then Deputy Prime Minister and also the coordinator of all security services, whose sole purpose was to secretly communicate with illegal criminal groups.

Empirically observed, the combination of hybrid regimes, their repressive apparatus and propagandist media with illegal structures of a paramilitary-criminal character are a greater threat to the security of citizens, including opposition activists, than was the case in rigid fascist-communist dictatorships; in the stable Soviet-type dictatorships of the 1980s, there was greater security for citizens, including opposition workers, than was the case at the same time in Colombia, or today in Ramzan Kadyrov's Chechnya. That’s why the citizens of Montenegro, who do not support the puppet anti-Western regime, after the operation of the helicopter enthronement of Metropolitan Ioaniki and the joint action of Serbian agents, Montenegrin security services and paramilitary extremists on September 4 and 5, 2021, horrified understood that the centers of power in Montenegro are in illegal or parallel institutions and are not in the institutions prescribed by the Constitution and the Law. They are especially surprised and frightened these days after the discovery of the so-called the Sky affair, which unequivocally confirms that they have more reason to fear of potential death squads linked to the Church of Serbia and Abazović's regime than of the repressive apparatus of an undemocratic, but incompetent and ineffective government.

Nevertheless, a big step for the eventual normalization of social and political conditions in Montenegro is the fact that were made public the intercepted conversations about the communication of criminal structures with high government officials and their involvement in the personnel policy of the police, judiciary and prosecutor's office. Because, the next democratic government will have enough elements to initiate the procedure to establish the facts about the existence of a criminal organization composed of Dritan Abazović, parts of the repressive apparatus of the Government, part of the priests of the Church of Serbia, paramilitary extremists and criminals.

Your Excellencies,

The main characteristic of authoritarian and imperial regimes is that they conduct a permanent campaign in an atmosphere of emergency, and that is why they are often a step or two ahead of competing and opposing states, that are based on democratic procedures and public opinion. Even after the failed coup d'état in 2016, many EU and NATO political actors did not realize that in Montenegro there is primarily a pre-political struggle with obvious geopolitical consequences and that the former government, personified by Milo Đukanović, did not lose the 2020 elections due to its anomalies that escalated during her long govern than because of her best achievements. Secular, civil, multicultural commitments, membership in NATO and a leading position among candidates in the EU. Therefore, it is a false claim - yesterday, today, tomorrow - that pro-Western independentists are disavowed by their propensity for corruption and crime, because any government supported by Moscow and Belgrade will be corrupt and criminal. Therefore, the key question, which is causally connected with all other issues of democratization and modernization of Montenegro, is whether the small Adriatic republic will be a pendant of the "Russian-Serbian world" or part of the Western democratic world.

Today, Montenegro is a weak, internally divided, morally, ideologically and economically devastated country. The part of Montenegro that advocates for a phantom state-civilization "from the Adriatic to Japan", with the help of Belgrade and Moscow, won the state university, media public service, almost all cultural and educational institutions, most portals and televisions, key economic resources. .. The other part of Montenegro, which is desperately fighting for bare survival, through integration into the Western political and civilizational circle, so far mostly had the principle support of NATO and the EU.

In truth, this and such support from the West has so far prevented the Great Serbian Unionists from promptly launching a new annexation of Montenegro to Serbia, and ousting, liquidating or expelling numerous civil and pro-Western activists from the country. But, on the other hand, the rhetorically often unclear or ambiguous public addressing of the representatives of the EU and the USA for the Western Balkans, in some way encourage public and covert Greater Serbian nationalists to continue mercilessly discrimination against the non-Serb population, especially national Montenegrins, speakers of the Montenegrin language and supporters of the Montenegrin Orthodox Church. The lack of clear determinations by the Western partners regarding the obvious attacks of Great Serbian imperialism on the civil, national and state existence of Montenegro, as well as the absence of concrete political, material, media, and expert support for their allies, pro-Western independentists - to the extent that Montenegrin Great Serbs receive help from Belgrade and Moscow - encourages the anti-democratic and anti-Western structures to continue the destruction of the social, national and state substance of our country.

Your Excellencies,

Elementary human rights - individual and collective - on which Western democracy is based, are threatened in Montenegro. The very occasion of the Open Letter - the fatwa that Dritan Abazović pronounced in the Parliament of Montenegro by showing my photo in front of the television cameras - is of second-class importance compared to thousands of citizens of Montenegro, who are discriminated because of their national or political affiliation. Because most of them do not have the opportunity, like public employees, to communicate in what way they are deprived of basic human rights, the right to work, professional progress and affirmation, expression of cultural and national characteristics. Violations of human rights are especially massive and organized in places where the local government is held by the Greater Serbian coalition, such as Nikšić, Beran, Herceg Novi, Budva, where national Montenegrins are second-class citizens.

The degree of humiliation of Montenegrins and citizens of other nationalities who do not support Serbian klerofascism has become unbearable today. And only clear and decisive support from the West can prevent a new escalation of violence and chaos with unforeseeable consequences. Because the basic assumption for the normalization of the situation in Montenegro, the restoration of a certain stability and predictability, is the remission of the deadly malignancy of Great Serbian nationalism, which does not recognize the Montenegrin nation, the multicultural being of Montenegro and the state of Montenegro itself, so that the cancerous tissue does not destroy the healthy cells and the whole social organism. Because Greater Serbian nationalism does not agree to any compromise, except when it feels a stronger force against it: it always demands everything, waits for a favorable moment for aggression and has never given up its demands to subjugate Montenegro.

To conclude, the ignoring, relativization, tactical compromises of certain Western politicians with Greater Serbian nationalism, that started four wars since 1991, are not eminently a consequence of old doctrinal misconceptions from the beginning of the 20th century and misunderstanding of the varieties of local heritage of the Balkan world, but also of a specific spiritual and  mental habitus of local nationalists, who know the political system and practice of Western societies better than Europe knows them. Eastern-type nationalism is ideologically shallow, but resourceful, passionate and persistent. They are often seductive and aware that their rhetoric penetrates into the deepest emotional and irrational spheres of human nature, especially in the Balkan nations, with a belated process of cultural and political modernization. They assume faith in reason, but they are fundamentally faithless - sometimes superstitious - and despise reason. They skillfully use the heterogeneity and contradictions within the Western societies and states themselves, and adapt very quickly to new circumstances. They are also ready overnight to make an alliance with yesterday's enemies. This is evidenced by the creation of the new Belgrade-Tirana axis, in which the Great Serbian strategists lured onto thin ice Edi Rama, the Prime Minister of Albania, with a new seductive bloody fairy tale with the idyllic name Open Balkans. The hidden agenda of the Open Balkans is the ethnic demarcation of Serbs and Albanians, and changing the existing state borders of Montenegro and North Macedonia.

And in this context, the victory of pro-Western political structures in Montenegro is not only important for the overall social prosperity of Montenegro, the survival of the Montenegrin nation and multicultural harmony, but it is also an equally important indicator of the West's vitality and ability to deal with small and large challenges in the future, which authoritarian ideologies and aggressive Eurasian regimes will impose on it.

With respect,

Milorad Popović

President of the Montenegrin Association of Independent Writers (CDNK)

Chief editor of Ars magazine