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Domestic Diaspora

Increasingly frequent and convincing announcements of the secession of Montenegro are opening the discussion of the situation of Montenegrin citizens in Serbia

by Batic BACEVIC

NIN, Belgrade, FR Yugoslavia, January 25, 2001

A thirty-three-years-old lawyer came 15 years ago from Niksic [Montenegro] to study law in Belgrade, where he stayed, got married, got a son and opened a law practice. He says that he follow s discussion about the future of the third Yugoslavia with much more attention than the very participants in the discussions. And while the Montenegrin leadership is generously offering to, besides the Montenegrin state, present the citizens of Serbia with their own state and liberate them from the dirty, hegemonistic attitude with respect to their Montenegrin brethren, he is trying to figure out in what sort of state he will end up by the end of the year. Or something more prosaic: will he be able to keep his job, will he be able to continue being politically active in a small party that, by a miracle of sorts, has ended up in power, whether any other rights will be denied to him. Similar questions, it seems, are facing many ordinary individuals. Listening to the historical debates dealing with broad issues, they wonder whether they exist at all.

Sad history indicates that the biggest river in the Balkans is the column of refugees and emigrants who found shelter from the Ottoman oppression in Montenegro and left Montenegro fleeing from hunger, blood revenge, and other misfortune to go to Serbia. They did all that in total ignorance that these were two totally different nations, burdened by many illusions poured into their minds by Njegos [greatest Montenegrin writer and prince] and other Serb hegemonists, all until, at the start of the new millennium, the truth was finally discovered. Before the truth, Montenegro became the only European country with more citizens living abroad than within the borders of the motherland.

Incessent Migrations

Historians claim that large migrations took place early in the twentieth century (many left to work in the American mines), under king Aleksandar Karadjordjevic (settlement in Metohija ["western Kosovo"]), but emigration continued through all periods and from all parts of Montenegro (many Muslims emigrated in the sixties to Turkey, Albanians emigrated to the USA). However, the largest movement of population from Montenegro always led to Serbia, but these "emigrants" never felt as such until they were informed that they would not have the right to vote in a referendum deciding the status of their motherland.

In Serbia, according to the census ten years ago, there were 140,024 Montenegrins, but no one knows for sure how many citizens of Montenegro live in Serbia, as it is likely that many Montenegrin nationals declared themselves as Serbs, Yugoslavs or Muslims after moving to Serbia. Members of the radical faction of Belgrade based supporters of Momir Bulatovic claim that there are between 800,000 and one million Montenegrin nationals in Serbia, but until now there have been no serious investigations about the most recent phenomenon in the distorted Balkan understanding of politics, history, and identity - the domestic diaspora.

The Federal Minister of Internal Affairs [Police], Zoran Zivkovic, says that there are no official estimates or statistics regarding the number of Montenegrin nationals living in Serbia, but he believes that there are "hundreds of thousands". The fact that a large number of Serbian residents could against their will suddenly end up in the status of stateless persons, or tourists who in their search for exotic locales somehow ended up in Serbia, motivated the opponents of the Montenegrin President, Milo Djukanovic, to politically activate the "domestic diaspora". It also forced the liberal democratic public to face a dilemma - how can one support a referendum if a large number of citizens of the state do not have the right to vote in it? Citizens who are convinced that the mutual links between the state and its citizens is the main pillar of every democratic society.

Ours or Theirs

In an interview given to Studio B Milo Djukanovic emphasized that the official Podgorica wants to "respect international standards regarding this issue". He asserted that the OSCE specified that those citizens of Montenegro who have lived in the state for at least two years should have the right to vote in a referendum. The Montenegrin Justice Minister, Dragan Soc, says that all citizens of Montenegro have the right to decide about its independence. "By receiving citizenship, a citizen receives all the rights and privileges towards his state. Consequently, we believe that all citizens should have the right to vote in this referendum. That principle is followed by most of democratic countries. We all know that all citizens of the USA vote for the American president, regardless of where they may live. Naturally, in some cases the principle of residence is also applied. In that case, the voting rights are reserved for people who are registered as residents. However, in this case we are talking about a crucial and historical vote."

However, the general discussion about democracy and legal norms has been overshadowed by a rather banal question. Will this favor "us of them"? On January 15, deputy president of the Socialist People's Party Predrag Bulatovic stated that "a forceful action aiming to register all the Montenegrin citizens living in Serbia has been started. Judging by the experiences from abroad and OSCE views, they will eventually have the right to vote in an independence referendum". On the other hand, other federal officials announced that they would file a suit with the Human Rights Court of the European Council, whose verdicts are final. "That is another one of a serious of activities organized by the Greater Serbian team against Montenegro and the planned referendum," reacted the president of the Montenegrin Matica in Belgrade, Branko Baletic. Baletic's views are shared by the director of the Center for Human Rights of the Montenegro University, Nebojsa Vucinic, who emphasized that "if the citizens of Montenegro who live in Belgrade and have tied their fate with Belgrade get the right to vote, that would place the citizens of Montenegro in an unequal position, and the international community would not tolerate that. On the other, hand that only revels the true intentions of the Greater Serbian circles to continue to treat Montenegro as a part of Serbia, which is impermissible." The quoted author of the theory that the desire of numerous citizens of Montenegro to decide about their own destiny, as they are not exactly excited by the prospects of becoming stateless persons is actually a mask for Greater Serbian circles teaches international law at the Podgorica University.

Strangers in the Night

Professor of international private law Gaso Knezevic believes that the existing laws do not offer a clear answer whether the citizens have the right to decide about the status of their state. "That question, as far as experts are concerned, still lacks a definite answer. It hasn't been legally regulated, and consequently we have so many wide-ranging interpretations."

The dispute regarding the participation in the best-prepared referendum in the recent history opens the issue of the status of Montenegrin citizens living in Serbia if the negotiations about the common state are ultimately unsuccessful. Namely, if the third Yugoslavia disappears and leaves behind many citizens on the wrong side of the border. According to the valid laws, the citizens of the third Yugoslavia have the citizenship of the Federation and one of the member states, which allow them to enjoy all the rights anywhere on the Federation territory. If the negotiations about the fate of the common state totally fail, citizens of FRY would be left only with their state citizenship. Professor Gaso Knezevic states that "it would be nice and humane if the authorities in Serbia gave the citizens of Montenegro an opportunity to acquire Serbian citizenship is they desire to do so," but he also emphasizes that the in the past people automatically ended up with the citizenship of the state they had at the time of the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. "Many Serbs from Croatia wanted to get Yugoslav citizenship but they were not allowed to do so because they automatically became Croatian citizens and until today they haven't been able to acquire Yugoslav citizenship."

According to Knezevic, foreign citizens do not have the right to vote; to participate in political activities; they cannot hold state offices or jobs in public services, such as judiciary, for example; their right to work becomes questionable, as well as the right to own property [all former Yugoslav states as a rule ban foreign nationals from owning real estate; Slovenia is the only exception as she was forced to adjust its legal norms to the European Union standards]. NIN's interlocutor notices that a break-up of the federation would be felt the most by the Serbian judiciary as many judges, prosecutors, and lawyers are Montenegrin nationals.

The Federal Police Minister agrees with the statement that in the case of a break-up of the federal state, Montenegrin citizens in Serbia, as well as Serbian citizens in Montenegro would become foreigners. "They would loose some very important rights. I believe that both Serbia and Montenegro would enact laws that would improve the situation of these persons, but at first they would be denied the rights they currently have," says Zivkovic.

The disappearance of the semi-defunct federal state could be felt by many owners of vacation homes on the Montenegrin coast, as well as the entrepreneurs who have over the last few years moved their business activities to the more liberal member of the federation. "I believe that that would be regulated by inter-state treaties and reciprocity. I haven't noticed the mood to question the property rights of the citizens of Serbia in Montenegro, and I doubt that any such mood exists in Serbia," says Soc.

Family Tree

The federal parliament adopted the citizenship law in 1996 and NIN's interlocutors announce that the Federal government will discuss at its next session a proposal for the new law, which is supposed to be adopted in February. The Minister of Internal Affairs says that the law will allow refugees to acquire dual citizenship and make it easier for foreigners to obtain Yugoslav citizenship (after three years of marriage with a Yugoslav citizen). In 1998, the Montenegrin Parliament adopted the law according to which citizenship is acquired by origin, birth on the territory of Montenegro, naturalization and based on international treaties. The adoption of the aforementioned law was welcomed as a big step towards independence. "The existence of citizenship in a state is like a family tree. That specifies whose children we are," was a poetic description of the enactment of the citizenship law by the President of the Constitutional Court of Montenegro, Blagota Mitric. It remains unclear what to do with family trees of split families.

The whole story regarding citizenship is rather hypothetical, as there are serious chances that the common state will survive separatist turbulence, but it reveals a serious issue related to the relations and identity of Serbs and Montenegrins. Wherever they went in the past, to American mines, Argentine farms, to fight against Che Gevara, or for Stalin, Montenegrins invested a lot of energy in the preservation of their tongue, moral codex and traditional divisions. Curiously enough, they only did not do that in Serbia.

Translated on April 19, 2001