AP, Cetinje
Riot police used tear gas against protesters who fired gunshots in the air and hurled bottles and stones early Sunday in Montenegro before and during an inauguration of the new head of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the country.
Police and media reports said at least seven police officers and several protesters were injured in the clashes, while at least 14 people were detained.
Sunday’s ceremony held in Cetinje, a former capital of the small Balkan nation, has angered opponents of the Serbian church in Montenegro, which declared independence from neighboring Serbia in 2006.
On Saturday, hundreds of protesters confronted police in Cetinje around a monastery where the inauguration of Metropolitan Joanikije took place after he and the Serbian Patriarch Porfirie arrived with a helicopter, the state RTCG reported.
The TV station showed footage of the priests being led into the monastery by heavily armed riot police holding bulletproof vests over their bodies to protect them.
The demonstrators also set up road barriers with trash containers, tires and large rocks in an attempt to prevent church and state dignitaries from coming to the inauguration. Chanting “This is Not Serbia!” and “This is Montenegro!,” many of the protesters spent the night at the barriers amid reports that police were sending reinforcements to break through the blockade. The protesters, some firing handguns into the air, set fire to car tires at one of the blockades, trying to prevent police from breaking through.
Montenegrins remain deeply divided over their country’s ties with neighboring Serbia and the Serbian Orthodox Church, which is the nation’s dominant religious institution. Around 30% of Montenegro’s 620,000 people consider themselves Serb. Metropolitan Joanikije said after the ceremony that “the divisions have been artificially created and we have done all in our power to help remove them, but that will take a lot of time.”
The situation flared up in Cetinje early Sunday after a relatively calm night that followed Saturday’s clashes and a parallel gathering in the capital, Podgorica, where thousands of people greeted Serbian Patriarch Porfirije and Metropolitan Joanikije before the inauguration.
