This text is created somewhat against the will of the person who writes it, but, the editor asked. He thought that I was already a student in 2000, because he knows that I was arrested for my activities in the Kragujevac Otpor. No, I was a high school student and not of legal age. I don't often like to remember the period before the Fifth of October because, after everything that happened afterwards, I don't know if they were ideals or illusions. And it repeats itself, it happens again.
These days, a 15-year-old is still in custody, and some high school students are intimidated by the police by raiding the "Jovan Jovanović Zmaj" High School in Novi Sad. Why? Because they left school for XNUMX minutes on Fridays, three weeks in a row, together with their teachers, to pay tribute to those who died in the fall of the canopy.
Who calls the police to school?
Radivoje Stojković, director of the "Jovina" high school, called the police to the school. It unlocked a long-buried memory for me. It had to be the year 2000, it seems to me - spring. The whole of Serbia was cooking, and with it my Kragujevac, and especially my First Kragujevac High School. Professors went on strike, Otpor organized actions, but Kragujevac has a university, so students were still on the front line.
But we, the high school students, were not "dumb" either. We supported the professors on strike, and just to make something happen, we demanded, you might think, the abolition of the matriculation exam. But that is not important, what is important is that we were on the street and that professors were with us. That they supported us as we supported them and that we did not abuse each other.
And it is important that the principal of my school called the police one day. Because of us, high school students. However, no one came. Allegedly, the chief of police insulted him because what kind of school principal calls the police on students.
Let's be clear, the same chief had nothing against loading us with shovels into the trucks from time to time, the police sometimes intercepting us in front of the Otpor premises and searching our school bags...
But this was too much even for him, a party follower. Because when they arrested us at actions, they arrested members of the Resistance, this is something else. This is the arrest of a student. And we know who was the only one in Kragujevac to forcefully take the students out of the classroom, and that very gymnasium.
Sparkle in the eyes
I don't know who answered Radivoj Stojković's phone at the Novi Sad police on Monday. But I know it can't be someone with a backbone and a head. In contrast to those young people who are 17-18 years old and who stand in front of the school together with the teachers on Fridays. Those young people had to tell everyone that everything they do, they decided to do themselves. That no one abused or forced them.
When you are 17-18 years old, you may not be able to eloquently formulate what bothers you in the repressive system you live in, but also how you feel. And when you feel, then you act. Such is youth - action and enterprise, let's do something. And here they are again, they are on the street, doing something, and someone is trying to scare them and, even crazier, declare them abused, manipulated children.
I looked at their faces carefully, I recognized in their eyes that glow, hope and determination, which now that I'm 40 or so, I don't have anymore, and I shouldn't have, because that's the look young people should have. But that's why, please, don't underestimate them.
It is impossible to scare high school students, because they do not care about the consequences, although they are aware of them. Any attempt to pressure them will only result in more rebellion. Because they are not only young, they are at the beginning of youth. They are motivated by the feeling that the whole world is their playground, that life has yet to begin, that they have endless possibilities before them. And there is no stronger motivation or source of courage than that.
And one more thing: I know parents are worried. I also know that they are ashamed that their children are fighting the same battles as them, that they feel that they have left them to finish their unfinished business. But I also know that they are proud.
