Human Rights Action condemns the latest threats to a journalist in Montenegro, directly related to the practice of profession, addressed to journalist of weekly Monitor, Milena Perović-Korać. The information that the threats were made by the President of the Municipal Assembly of Kolašin, about whom Perović-Korać wrote in the latest issue of Monitor, is particularly worrying. We expect that the analysis of call listings or other methods will promptly verify this information.

Human Rights Action expects that the State Prosecutor will qualify this action as an aggravated form of the criminal offense Jeopardizing safety[1] and promptly prosecute the perpetrator. If the State Prosecutor’s Office adds this case to the collection of covered up assaults on journalists and others for exercising the freedom of speech, it will confirm its complicity in the policy of impunity and supressing human rights.

This case also supports the need to introduce criminal offenses in the Criminal Code of Montenegro: Prevention of journalists in the performance of professional duties and Assault on journalists in performing professional duties (which includes threats). If this initiative of Human Rights Action is accepted, the journalists will be provided with the same level of legal protection enjoyed by state agents in the performance of professional duties. Frequent cases of threats against journalists, insults and denial of the right to report by persons who are representatives of citizens show that it would be useful to emphasize in the Criminal Code that the freedom of journalists to report on matters of public interest is a fundamental value for democracy. This would further “express the community’s condemnation of such acts” and contribute to “strengthening morale and developing social responsibility”, which are general and specific purposes of punishment provided by the Criminal Code.