Any attack on the Montenegrin language means an attack on fundamental values, and the public service has an obligation to protect them

A group of public service journalists sent an open letter to the Council of Radio and Television of Montenegro (RTCG), expressing their full support to their colleague Žarko Božović, as well as to all RTCG employees who have been discriminated against on any basis.
We transmit their announcement in full:
"We express our protest against the pronounced ban on the use of the Yotov variant of the Montenegrin language in the Public Service program. We ask the Council of RTCG to sanction those who ordered this discriminatory decision, unprecedented in the history of our house.
Advocating for, as was said, the use of a "standardized language" imposes a narrower standard than the one prescribed by the Constitution of Montenegro and thus suppresses the category guaranteed by the Constitution and violates the constitutional and basic human right to write and speak the language of the people to which we belong.
We appreciate that, both as a public service and as a media company that bears the name of Montenegro in its name, we have a professional obligation to nurture and affirm the Montenegrin language in its wealth of consonance. We remind you that in that language the thousand-year history of the Montenegrin state, its culture and tradition have been preserved, genetically in the Montenegrin people... We therefore consider that any attack on the Montenegrin language, by its essence, means an attack on the fundamental values on which Montenegrin society has rested throughout the ages . And the Public Service of a country, by definition, has the obligation to protect and promote precisely those values. The manner in which the general director of RTCG tried to "solve" this dispute is particularly disappointing. Instead of showing competence and responsibility in the style of a good manager, Raonic leaned towards the arguments of force and not truth and the stereotype that any individuality and diversity, from that imposed by the manager, represents nothing less than an attack on the institution and the state.
Regarding the general director's assessment that colleague Žarko Božović is the only RTCG journalist who "claims that someone forbade him something" and Raonic's insinuation that there are no journalists inside the house who were pressured - we inform you that this is not true. A proceeding for mobbing is being conducted before the Basic Court in Podgorica, and several lawsuits have been filed due to dismissals and illegal dismissals after the arrival of Boris Raonic at the head of the Public Service. Also, we remind the Council that in a recent first-instance verdict, the Basic Court ruled that their decision on the election of the general director was illegal.
As a special form of pressure, Raonic continuously uses the institution of taking away job duties, changing employment contracts and assigning employees to lower-ranking and lower-paid jobs, regardless of the indisputable results achieved in the position they covered. The practice of silent shifts, without any explanation, threats of being declared technologically redundant, are carried out in a vindictive manner, as a punishment for the employees of this house who, unlike the former NGO activist, know that freedom of expression is guaranteed by the Constitution and international conventions.
In the end, decades of journalistic experience, professional and personal credibility oblige us to distance ourselves from programming failures and serious scandals, which, since the election of the new management, discredit the mission of the public service and ruin the reputation of the oldest Montenegrin electronic media. We remind the Council that leadership positions do not only bring privileges, but also entail responsibility."
Snežana Rakonjac
Tanja Šuković
Nataša Baranin
Srdjan Covic
Dragan Tomasevic
Vesna Terić
Vanja Šćekić
Jadranka Prelevic
Slavica Kruščić
Vesna Banović
Branko Vojicic
Jelena Bobičić Cović
Duška Stanić
Musa Đokaj
Budimir Raičević
Časlav Vujotić
Julijana Žugić
Sanja Cosovic
Milena Đurović Stanojević
Ana Kruščić
Goran Stanojević
M. J.