Protest against Montenegrin’s writer Milorad Popovic death threat

Ljubljana, 25 August 2022

We are most strongly protesting against the death threat towards the Montenegrin writer Milorad Popović. The death threat was pronounced by the former Prime Minister of Montenegro, Dritan Abazović, at the sixth extraordinary session of the Assembly of Montenegro on August 19, 2022. He reinforced the threat with a shooting target with Popović's face drawn on it.

Milorad Mijo Popović is an accomplished writer, novelist, essayist and publisher, recipient of the Njegoš Award for the novel The Faceless Man (2017), former president of the Montenegrin PEN Center, an engaged intellectual who is critical of the partisans of Greater Serbia and Greater Russia due to his vigorous defence of an independent and democratic Montenegro. The current threat, pronounced from a high political position, is not the first that this critical and engaged writer and intellectual has experienced.

We call upon the United Nations, the European Union and the international public, International PEN, other writers' and artists' organisations as well as democratic media to do everything to protect Milorad Mijo Popović, one of the key figures for the existence and future of Montenegro.   

Boris A. Novak, vice-president of PEN International

Tanja Tuma, President of Slovene PEN

Interim president of the Writers for Peace committee

Members of the Board of the Slovene PEN