SUCCESS:
February 12, 2024: After years of struggle, supported by World BEYOND War and others, the Save Sinjajevina campaign has met with the Prime Minister of Montenegro and gained his promise that there will be no military training ground built at Sinjajevina. This was to have been a massive and destructive project for the benefit of NATO and the U.S. military. It now seems clear that it will not happen.
This is a campaign to protect a beautiful inhabited mountain in Montenegro from being turned into a military base. The people of Montenegro, led by the Save Sinjajevina campaign, have done everything people can do to prevent atrocities in so-called democracies. They’ve won over public opinion. They’ve elected officials promising to protect their mountains. They’ve lobbied, organized public protests, and made themselves into human shields. They show no signs of planning to give up, much less to believe the UK’s official position that this mountain destruction is environmentalism, while NATO is threatening to use Sinjajevina for war training in May 2023! The people resisting this, and having already achieved heroic victories, need — now more than ever — financial and other support to transport supplies, to train and organize unarmed nonviolent resisters, and to visit Brussels and Washington to try to save their mountains.
It is used by more than 500 families of farmers and nearly 3,000 people. Many of its pastures are governed communally by eight different Montenegrin tribes, and the Sinjajevina plateau is part of the Tara Canyon Biosphere Reserve at the same time as it is bordered by two UNESCO World Heritage sites.
Now the environment and the livelihoods of those traditional communities are in imminent danger: the Montenegrin government, supported by important NATO allies, established a military training ground in the very heart of these community lands, despite thousands of signatures against it and without any environmental, health, or socio-economic impact assessments. Severely threatening Sinjajevina’s unique ecosystems and local communities, the government has also halted a planned regional park for the protection and promotion of nature and culture, the majority of whose project design cost of almost 300,000 Euros was paid by the EU, and which was included in Montenegro’s official spatial plan until 2020.
Montenegro wants to be part of the European Union and the EU Commissioner for Neighbourhood and Enlargement is leading those conversations. The Commissioner must urge the Montenegrin government to meet European standards, close the military training ground, and create a protected area in Sinjajevina, as preconditions to join the EU.
Below on this page are:
- a petition that it is important to keep gathering signatures on.
- a form for making a donation to support this effort.
- a collection of reports on what has happened thus far.
- a play list of videos from the campaign.
- a gallery of images from the campaign.
Please print this image as a sign, and send us a photo of you holding it up!
SIGN PETITION
Text of petition:
Stand with the local communities of Sinjajevina and the ecosystems they preserve and:
• Ensure the removal of the military training ground in Sinjajevina in a legally binding manner.
• Create a protected area in Sinjajevina co-designed and co-governed by local communities