Montenegrin Serbs Refuse to Accept Census Data

Unpleasantly surprised by the numbers released on Tuesday, members of Serbian organizations and pro-Serb political parties say they will not accept census results related to ethnicity, religion and mother tongue.

According to the Statistical Office, 45 per cent of Montenegro residents declared themselves to be Montenegrins, while only 29 per cent said they were Serbs.

And some 37 per cent of the country’s 625,266 inhabitants said they speak Montenegrin, while about 44 per cent speak Serbian.

Vuksan Simonovic from the opposition Socialist People’s Party, SNS, said it is clear that the Serbian language is still spoken by the majority of people in Montenegro.

Andrija Mandic, leader of the New Serbian Democracy, charged that the results are inaccurate because statistical manipulations of up to five or six per cent occurred in the towns of Herceg Novi, Niksic, Podgorica, Berane and Pljevlja.

“The data related to the Serbian people and language are four per cent lower [than they should be],” Mandic told the Serbian daily Politika.

Momcilo Vuksanovic, President of the Serbian National Council, said that the results “confirm the justification for the formation of the council fighting against the forced assimilation of ethnic Serbs into Montenegrins.”

According to the daily Politika, 25 opposition MPs have submitted a joint amendment to the constitution of Montenegro that will designate the Serbian language as “official.”

Montenegro declared its independence from Serbia in 2006. The following year, Montenegrin became the country’s official language.