Photo: AP Photo/Armin DurgutThe son of the signatory of these lines was exposed to extreme peer violence ten years ago. The reaction of the police was acceptable and within the scope of authority. The reactions of the school psychologist and the psychologist at the Health Center were unacceptable, as was the profound lack of interest of pedagogues and social workers. From the reactions of those people, it was completely clear how untrained they were for their job. In these ten years, the situation has not improved, but has worsened by 800 percent
In this tsunami of gruesome news and catastrophic reactions of the authorities, we should not forget that only a day after the horror in "Ribnikar", and before of horrors in the vicinity of Mladenovac, happened several incidents which have direct connections with "Ribnikar". In one school, a girl injured a student and a teacher with a knife, in another school a boy, following the example of the child killer from "Ribnikar", came with a list of those he would like to kill, one guy imitated the process of killing on social networks, the fourth , after a minute of silence dedicated to the murdered children, took out a plastic gun in the classroom. How to understand such reactions?
Postponing the answer may seem wise: let's wait for passions to calm down and analyze events with a cool head. In this case, however, it is nothing more than avoiding and delaying what needs to be said: these reactions are desperate calls for help.
The horror in "Ribnikar" "encouraged" these children to get out of the cocoon of fear they live in and ask for help in the way they know how. Because, obviously, they could not do otherwise. Maybe these children don't even know they need help, maybe they are just a symptom of the broken society they live in, but they need help. Immediately. Now. Like the whole a seriously ill society.
The son of the signatory of these lines was exposed to extreme peer violence ten years ago. The reaction of the police was acceptable and within the scope of authority. The reactions of the school psychologist and the psychologist at the Health Center were unacceptable, as was the deep lack of interest of pedagogues and social workers. From the reactions of those people, it was completely clear how untrained they were for their job. (One of the psychological interpretations was that my son was guilty of being beaten and mauled by a pack of little thugs.)
In these ten years, the situation has not improved, but has worsened by 800 percent. My son was beaten by his peers who carried grasshoppers, boxers, and penknives in their bags. We have progressed to firearms, and the little thugs, well trained in their homes, have moved on to teachers and professors as well. Actually, they didn't cross. The teacher, along with the class teacher, were then injured by those who beat my son to death: they cut her face with a paper. The injury itself was most likely caused unintentionally. But they - which is unacceptable - waved the papers in front of her face, in her face, on purpose. The reaction of the director or any authority was (you guessed it) absent.
Who did the little thugs see that from? How and where did they learn it? Where did they get such a model of behavior? As interesting as it was, how did they know that two of them were holding my son's hands, and the third one, in a crouched position, was punching him in the stomach and face? The others, of course, lined up in a circle, jubilant.
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Is it normal that the president of the country competes with the tabloids in obscure sensationalism, and that the mayor of Belgrade, the prime minister and her ministers did not see fit to light a candle at the scene of the tragedy in 48 hours?
How Branko Ružić used an unprecedented tragedy to collect cheap points and burn the piety towards the victims on the pyre of daily politics
While the people of Belgrade with tears in their eyes lit candles near Ribnikar, the President of the Republic said that the children of "wealthy" parents who "have everything in abundance" go to that school.
Now let's take a deep breath, pay our respects to the dead and show mercy for the murderer. There is time for the question "why".
