Protest regarding recent homicide of a 78-year-old Durija Pojatić

NGOs Women’s Rights Center, Women’s Safe House and SOS Hotline Niksic asked the supreme state prosecutor Ivaca Stanković and the minister of internal affairs Mevludin Nuhodžić to determine a personal responsibility of the professionals in order to stop the cases of family violence and violence against women resulting in death and which were previously reported to the police.

Cause for the protest was the homicide of a professor from Podgorica, one out of at least eight victims of family and partner violence, who were murdered in the period between 2015 and 2017. She is one of four women, that is known, who had previously reported violence from male family members and whose homicide could have been prevented had the institutions reacted in a timely manner. In the same period, three women survived a homicide attempt, five children witnessed first degree murders in family, and one father was murdered while protecting the lives of his daughter and grandchildren.

We want to change the negative practice of the police which refers to warning the perpetrators without filing the charges. We also requested from the Supreme state prosecution to check the personal responsibility of civil servants, because without that we can’t know who exactly failed in the system and whose responsibility it is.