Call to Lynch: The War of Words Threatening Montenegro’s Delicate Balance

Jovanovic was sentenced in late April in the first instance to a year in prison for inciting ethnic hatred; Nilevic has been charged with the same.

On opposing sides of an ideological divide, Jovanovic and Nilevic are part of an alarming war of words playing out on social media in Montenegro, a war that took off in 2019 but has intensified since an earthquake election last year.

The August 2020 vote ended three decades of uninterrupted rule by Djukanovic's Democratic Party of Socialists, DPS, and brought to power an uneasy three-way alliance dominated by a pro-Serbian bloc.

Montenegro is a multi-ethnic state that is unusual in that no one community makes up over half of its 630,000 people. About 45 per cent identify as Montenegrins, about 29 per cent as Serbs, some 11 per cent as Bosniaks or Muslims and five per cent as Albanians.

Those who consider themselves Serbs finally have a slice of power, while those who identify as Montenegrins sense a threat to the sovereignty restored by referendum 15 years ago. Their battle is playing out online, whipped up by politicians who have become willing participants. There are growing fears it may move offline.

"Everything that has been happening on the Internet for the last year or so can easily move into the streets," Deputy Prime Minister Dritan Abazovic, an ethnic Albanian and the government's security services coordinator, told BIRN. "Those who manipulate the narrative use the sincere feelings of the people to push them into the fire,"

Political earthquake

The basic divide is between those branded 'Litijaši' and those called 'Komitas'.

The former comes from the word 'liturgy' and refers to those who came out in protest against the government over a...