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Incidents took place last night in Montenegro, demonstrators erected barricades and blocked roads. 22 people were arrested, including 17 opposition deputies. At the center of the unrest: a new law on religious freedom which crystallizes the tensions between the Serbian Orthodox Church and the Montenegrin government.
The Serbian Orthodox Church stands up against a law passed last night in the Montenegrin parliament after a day of heated debates. She dreads paying the price by losing many of the hundreds of medieval churches and monasteries she owns across the country.
The text provides for the nationalization of land and property which the churches cannot prove that they belonged to them before December 1, 1918. It was on this date that Montenegro had lost its independence and had been integrated into the kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.
The Serbian Church in resistance
The bill was carried by the party of the president, Milo Djukanovic , the strong man of Montenegro since the beginning of the 1990s. This pro-European considers that the Serbian Orthodox Church, the most important in number of faithful in Montenegro, is hostile to the country's independence, and that it is generally too pro-Serb and pro-Russian.
Milo Djukanovic also displays strong support for the autocephalous Orthodox Church of Montenegro, which is not recognized by any of the canonical Orthodox churches.
Last night, members of the Democratic Front who support the Serbian Church, caused incidents in Parliament after the rejection of their amendments, by throwing a firecracker, plastic bottles and attacking furniture. Three leaders of the Democratic Front were then arrested. They are suspected of having " assaulted an official in the exercise of his functions ".
As for the Serbian Church, it called its faithful to create resistance committees.