Crime, grief and political gain

Will the January 1st crime in Cetinje - in which Aco Martinović killed thirteen fellow citizens, seriously wounded four and then succumbed to his injuries after trying to kill himself - remain just statistics, the inhuman conversion of names, extinguished encounters, unrealized perspectives into numbers? Thirteen dead souls. For those closest to you, it will always be a distinct void. The question is what will society do to make the memory have a face.

Unfortunately, in the social environment, and not even in the reactions that followed in the public discourse after this tragic beginning of the new year, there is almost no difference between this crime and the crime that The tragedy was repeated in an almost identical way, in the same place, randomly, bestially, terrible... Is there any message, warning, admonition in that harsh fact? Or everything ends in a terrible tide of unspeakable sadness that retreats hard and slowly, a silence that builds emptiness and feeds meaninglessness, so that we can then leave time to do its thing - to "free" us from the scars, darken our memory and amnesty us from the responsibilities that took place before almost two and a half years in Cetinje, when Vuk Borilović killed ten neighbors, including two boys, and injured six more people with a legal hunting weapon.

MEDIA

Electronic media registered in Montenegro showed a high degree of professionalism and responsibility when reporting on the tragedy. However, the Council of the Agency for Audiovisual Media Services said that it would react to the "irresponsible behavior of a part of the regional media", which used the tragedy in Cetinje to "repeat old narratives that undermine the cohesion of civil society in Montenegro, insisting on ethnic divisions and deepening social tension". In most cases, the local media blocked the possibility of commenting on news and statements regarding the event itself, thus preventing the escalation of inappropriate content.

The Ministry of Culture and Media promptly adopted guidelines and recommendations for the media regarding the manner in which they should report on the case of mass murder in Cetinje and other similar events. The document pointed out that "mass violence is most often not a reflection of the mental illness of the perpetrator - by presenting the perpetrators of violence as mentally ill persons, the media can influence the creation of a wrong image of the perpetrator, while at the same time unjustifiably stigmatizing people living with mental health disorders, and in the vast majority of cases they are not violent".

PAIN

Of course, such guidelines are completely in place, but the entire context of the event and the statements of the officials still give room for a key question - how could it happen that the deadly weapons were, in both cases, in the possession of persons who evidently had mental problems? Lazar Šćepanović, Acting Director of the Police Administration (UP), immediately after the crime, said that in November 2022, police officers confiscated illegal weapons from Martinović and then "recognized antisocial behavior and handed over that man from Cetinje to the Ministry of Health, but he was not hospitalized." , but that he was only prescribed therapy". It is logical that based on that statement, it can be concluded that someone did not do his job properly. During the next two years, the killer either regained possession of the weapon or the police did not find everything he had hidden with him at the time.

WEAPON

In Montenegro, more than one hundred thousand pieces of category B weapons are in legal possession (all firearms - short, long, semi-automatic, repeating, single-shot, double-shot, with rifled and smooth barrels) and they are owned by nearly 70000 people, among them and 363 legal. In addition, rough police estimates say that between 40 and 80 illegal weapons can be added to this number.

Statistically, almost every fourth resident of Montenegro could be in possession of a firearm. Accepting the possibility that statistics can lead us to wrong conclusions, what is not in dispute is that with so many firearms we have a high-risk environment in which the probability of conflicts with fatal outcomes is extremely high. And if we accept these rough estimates as correct, statistically every eighth resident of Montenegro could possess an illegal weapon.

According to the regular annual report of the police, a third of the weapons seized in 2023 were in illegal possession, and the Acting Director of the UP asserted that last year more than 1100 firearms were seized from citizens and that this was three times more than in the previous year. . The fact is that it is less than 1,5 percent of the estimated number of weapons in Montenegro.

At the press conference that followed the meeting of the National Security Council, Prime Minister Milojko Spajić announced increased controls and "draconian punishments" for the possession of illegal weapons if the owners do not voluntarily surrender them to the authorities within the next two months. He also announced the review of weapons permits, better control of people with mental illnesses, especially if the police register them in cases of criminal offenses of carrying weapons and violent behavior, then action to suppress illegal weapons, the abolition of private shooting sports organizations, the rapid recruitment of new police officers and possibly retired personnel.

The Government of Montenegro will form a special interdepartmental group that will deal with the prevention of all forms of violence. In the next 60 days, a draft of comprehensive changes to the Law on Weapons will be prepared, including raising the age limit for applying for weapons, shortening the period of validity of gun licenses, expanding the range of felonies and misdemeanors for the possession of weapons, establishing a review of stricter security and psychological checks of gun owners by January in 2026.

With full appreciation of all these reactions, the conclusion remains that it is at least two years late and that it is a question of forced timing, and the complete absence of talent to notice social phenomena and to systematically arrange them in time.

POLITIKA

Already in the first reactions of political actors to the Cetinje crime, it became obvious that it will be completely politically instrumentalized and will further raise political tensions. The former president of Montenegro, Milo Đukanović, in a post on the X network, stating that he sincerely sympathizes with the families of the victims of the senseless crime, said that this event in a terrifying way "confirms once again that the Montenegrin society is in conditions of deep crisis and threatened security of every citizen, every of a child. While the leaders of the MUP and the UP were holding the press, the killer was practically behind their backs continuing his bloody spree, and we were learning from the regional media what had happened and what was happening in Cetinje".

Among the first reactions was the assertion by the president of the Citizens' Movement URA, Dritan Abazović, that he knew how Aco Martinović was found and that at one point he "interfered with a group of policemen", alluding to the incompetence of the police.

On Sunday, there was a gathering in Cetinje, and later in Podgorica, at the initiative of the group "Kamo sjutra". That collective of Montenegrin students, as they claim, has no connection with any political party and organizes protests without any party influence. They announced their demands ahead of the protest, and the first demand is the resignation of the Minister of Internal Affairs, Danilo Šaranović, and the Deputy Prime Minister for Security and Defense, Aleksa Bečić. Other demands are the demilitarization of society, the confiscation and destruction of illegal and hidden weapons, the revision of all granted licenses for the possession of weapons through police checks of persons who own weapons, the establishment of community policing and a change in the approach of the police towards citizens, as well as the return of civic education as a compulsory subject. in primary and secondary schools. Along with these demands, they also join the demands made by Action for Human Rights and the Center for Women's Rights.

After the announcement of the protest and the delivery of the demands, there was a reaction from the representatives of the Democratic Montenegro, who claim that behind the demands for the resignation of Danilo Šaranović and Aleksa Bečić "is not" an informal group of students, but "Milo Đukanović personally, together with his criminal clans". In their opinion, it is not the voice of the people but "the voice of Bemax, Ac Mijajlović, Kavački, Škaljarski and other clans". As they claim, behind the protests "are people who have been destroying Montenegrin homes for more than three decades (...) tearing them apart along the red lines of religion and nation. They are the ones who produced the two most powerful criminal clans in the Balkans, behind which bloody traces were left all over Montenegro - 711 killed and 82 unsolved criminal acts of murder", says the statement of the Democratic MP and emphasizes that the demands for resignations have only one goal - "to return crime to where it belongs according to their rules: to the top of the institutions".

And so, unfortunately, we once again came to a situation where politics considers itself more important than life. Even when the occasion makes the reality even more tragic.