"Our kitchen for spreading hatred and lies is in this building above us, on this same RTS that still spreads lies and hatred today. My generation accepted those lies, it believed that we were doing the right thing and that we were right and the others were evil. And those others thought the same for themselves, and then the wheel of evil started which cannot be stopped and continues to this day for many", said Goran Samardžić, a war veteran, who was the same age as the students when he was in He also became a war invalid in Sarajevo
Yesterday was Friday, the one hundred and seventieth day since people died at the train station in Novi Sad, the fifth day of the RTS blockade. So much happened in it that it is impossible to count everything, but the same can be said for practically any other day in these frenetic five months. Nevertheless, on that day, on that terrace between Abardareva and Takovska streets, sometime before evening, something happened that far exceeds daily political events, parties and their interests, and even the student protests themselves, something whose consequences, I'm sure, we will only begin to feel in full in the time ahead.
It was a short speech by a military veteran to those gathered at the blockade in front of RTS.
On the day when…
It happened on the day when Serbia welcomed its seventy-nine super-heroes who crossed the Curse of their generation, and returned from Strasbourg, leaving a message that they want to make their country orderly and just, at least as much as the countries of Europe they passed through.
Next to them was another sad guy with a completely different agenda and task, but that pale shadow on the otherwise bright endeavor only added a contrast that made it possible to see everything even more clearly, just like painters add a drop of black to white paint to make the white stand out more.
On the day when some frantic people take the rector of Belgrade University into custody, still fighting a battle known only to them, a battle that was lost on March 15 in front of half a million witnesses, a battle for which they no longer have an opponent, because their opponents have already left the scene of such battles. They went to a completely different place, to a space where much deeper problems than those of the day-to-day politics are being solved, where such market and chicken battles no longer make any sense.
On the day when Christians paint eggs at home, nibble on some seeds and a piece of fish, all the same looking at that shoulder in the fridge ready for the oven.
On the day when FON students, hopefully only a part of them, send a disappointed love letter to the KGB - "you betrayed the trust of the Serbian people". They are disappointed that the Russian intelligence service abandoned them and publicly declared their love for the Serbian authorities with a bizarre report about the use of a sound cannon at the March 15 demonstration.
On the day when at the barricades in Kosutnjak, Takovska and Abardareva, citizens and students from all over the country use their bodies to prevent a new dose of poison and misinformation from coming out of the studios and buildings they surrounded.
In front of the snake cage
And on one such day, right there in front of RTS, on the hotbed of truth, honesty and humanity, where honor, patriotism and professionalism have not lived for a long time, there in the semi-darkness, on the stairs that connect Takovska and Taš, stood a group of veterans from the wars for the Yugoslav legacy. Those were the stairs, here's another coincidence, down which Čavke descended in the movie geto from '95 Ivan Markov and Mladen Matičević and in the voice of Miško Bilbije thought aloud about the role that RTS plays in breaking up our society and feeding all the worst in it.
"Whenever I pass by the TV, I always get the same feeling I had as a kid in front of a glass cage with snakes... I'm curious why (those) creatures have been poisoning us all these years... When I think that maybe they believed they were doing something good for their people, I remember that in 92, the police and snipers protected them from two hundred soms of Belgraders. The fact remains that the creatures did all that and are still doing it just for the sake of money."
To the left of the group of veterans, a banner with the inscription "The market is the world" was hung on the fence of the terrace. A little further down the fence and another: "I will rise trampled, crushed, oppressed, against steel armies with wooden swords!" Dedicated to the great Ljubomir Simović, who left us the previous day.
Goran Samardzic
And none of that was by accident. That place, that environment, those people from all over Belgrade and dozens of cities in Serbia, Belgrade bikers, plainclothes police, spies on duty, Ljuba Simović, a neighborhood with children and pets, students and graduates, all of that somehow came together to make that moment possible when one of the veterans, Goran Samardžić, found the voice that Serbia has been searching for for more than thirty years. He greeted the crowd and said:
"I want us all to greet our dear guests from Novi Pazar with Salam alejkum. My name is Goran Samardžič. Together with our comrades, war veterans, we stood up to protect our children, our students. We all vowed before God that if necessary we would lay down our lives so that nothing would happen to these children. Of course, with our biker brothers and sisters. In addition to being a veteran, I am also a war invalid. I was wounded in May 92 in Sarajevo with an incomplete Twenty-year, which is the age of most of our children. Some generation went into Bosnia, with Turks, and we are to save the Holy Serbian countries. In April '91. The bloody Bosnian pot was set on fire. All The parties raced to whom the more would inflict him. Our expansion kitchen hatred and lies is found in this one to the building above us, on this same RTS that still spreads lies and hatred today. My generation accepted those lies, it believed that we were doing the right thing and that we were right and the others were evil. And those others thought the same for themselves and then the wheel of evil started which cannot be stopped and continues for many to this day. We accepted those lies, but our current generation did not and stood up to stop the evil. They are the ones who spread love and illuminate the future. That future is what we all want and it is the duty of us from our failed generations to stand up and follow them. I want to tell the parents of these children from Novi Pazar, not to worry and that your children and ours are gone, they are all our children. These children have raised many of us, including war veterans, in recent months. After many years, we feel honor, admiration, gratitude, we proudly bear the name of a veteran. And I would like to express my admiration and gratitude to the true heroes of today, our students, our children."
It was interrupted by applause and shouts of support, at the end of the speech there followed that short, wonderful silence, the silence that theater people hope for, from which enthusiastic applause and ovations broke out. I don't know. Maybe someone will say nice, but too little too late. Nevertheless, this is what Serbia finally found the strength for, as a really first, essential step towards organic reconciliation with all its people, with the peoples in its environment, on the way back to the normal world, on the way back to itself.
After the incidents in the Assembly of the City of Kraljevo, Vladan Slavković, councilor of the Local Front, and Ivan Matović from the Association of Indigenous Peoples were detained.
The High Court in Belgrade sentenced Ivan Stanišić to an eight-month suspended sentence for violent behavior at a public meeting in front of the Faculty of Dramatic Arts, held in memory of the victims of the accident at the train station in Novi Sad. The verdict was based on a plea agreement.
Marija Vasić, professor of sociology at the Jovin High School in Novi Sad, who went on a hunger and thirst strike after two months of detention, was transferred to the prison hospital. Her husband and her godmother talk to "Vreme" about Maria, their worries and what they are going through
The owner of the company "Eagle Hills", an investor in Belgrade on the water, stated that he made mistakes during the construction of that project. "We pay the state (Serbia) 200.000 euros a day, it is ridiculous to estimate that we pay six million euros a year," said Mohamed Alabar.
The members of the security of the Assembly of the City of Kraljevo brutally attacked the opposition councilors, which is apparently the first such case of reckoning with the dissidents of the regime
The regime's retaliation will be dire if the resistance falters. Now they want to imprison the people who talked about overthrowing the government because they were supposedly overthrowing the state. But the state was hijacked and overthrown by the regime a long time ago
The Ministry of Public Investment submitted a request for a building permit for the construction of a new building for the Belgrade Philharmonic. Given that it is known that the project is too expensive and that there is no money for it, it seems that this too is just another colorful lie
The knee-jerk Supreme Being trusts in the local elections in Kosjerić and Zaječar. It must not be forgotten that for 13 years he poured heavy poisons, especially in the province, and that detoxification is a long and painful process.
Extraordinary session of the High Prosecution Council
Prosecutors without protection from Vučić's pressures subscribeThe archive of the weekly Vreme includes all our digital editions, since the very beginning of our work. All issues can be downloaded in PDF format, by purchasing the digital edition, or you can read all available texts from the selected issue.
See all
