What got into those little people in high school and stopped their lives for two days to serve as a woman's back, so that she wouldn't lie without anyone day and night in front of Ćaciland? A fire of compassion and solidarity was ignited in the high school students. Because Diana Hrka is just the age to be the mother of each of them. And the mother is never left alone
Contorted faces in ecstasy, whether under false or true euphoria, and one song from the old radical warmongering arsenal in 1992. Diana Hrki, to a woman who lost her son in a canopy collapse, Chaciland was, to the point, letting go The mother went to look for her son. Tales of Little Knindža. To the woman who, due to the injustice of the system, did not eat for two days at that moment and who sleeps on improvised boards at five degrees outside in front of Assembly of Serbia.
The young girls from Pionirski Park laughed and hugged the ladies who knew every word of the song, and they would especially squeal at the part of the song that says that the mother is "not afraid of mines" as she goes to look for her son on the battlefield. Perhaps alluding to the fact that they are ready to be those landmines that will prevent Diana Hrka's fight. The whole of Serbia watched this scene of mockery and mockery of Stefan Hrka's mother's pain. A high school graduate from a Belgrade high school also watched it: "No matter how people think politically, it was so inhumane, so inhuman, that we all collectively started to cry," she told "Vreme". "We came to the school and exchanged videos from Pionirski Park, which show people who are fully aware of what they are doing. They did not underestimate the suffering of the mother of the deceased young man, they somehow distorted that suffering. They mocked her."
THIS MOTHER HAS A BACK
Her school was blocked for months during a strike by teachers who were fighting for their own i student rights, and the students wholeheartedly supported them. Still, she felt it was a teacher's struggle. She herself needed to start her own fight this time: "It turned out that a lot of us felt the same way, that we have to 'be behind' that woman. That's what happens when you hug someone, but also protect them from others," adds this high school graduate. It turns out that her colleagues from 30 other high schools and high schools around the world think the same Of Serbia. That's why the high school students, as soon as they saw what happened to Diana Hrka, decided that everything could stop for two days in their busy teenage lives. They gathered in the parts of Belgrade where their school was and then they came to Dijana in an organized manner. As, just a few days before, they went to Novi Sad to pay their last respects to the victims and remember her son at the place where he was killed. the awning was blown away. And everyone who spent those days on the field with Diana Hrka could feel the fire of sacrifice of high school students. They approached her a bit awkwardly, some would feel ashamed, they didn't know what to say, they would lower their heads and just shrug their shoulders. Their eyes were full of tears. Among them there were also talkative ones who might have prepared a few words, so they quietly told her from the side: "We are all with you, we are here, hold on."
"We didn't just want to appear united, this is a feeling we couldn't give up," he says high school student other high schools. Like his colleague, they don't want to speak by name because they follow the students and their way - that it is not important for any one person in the struggle individually, but what they make together as a decision and how they act together is important. "I was standing in that place where everything happened on the anniversary of the canopy. Like everyone else, I realized that Diana's son could easily have been me," he recounts. "When she started hunger strike, right after the commemoration, I realized another thing - she is the same age as my mom."
This high school student is saying this while his mom is standing next to him listening to these words. He pauses a bit, it is difficult for him to continue, then he adds: "I was horrified because I imagined my own mother lying alone in front of the Assembly, starving, and some people laugh at her. I just freaked out when I thought they might do something to her." Then he returns to the principle conclusion and says in a slightly stronger and more confident voice that he thinks that "the most important thing was to show that Diana Hrko has someone to defend her, both physically and in all other ways".
As the veterans came to the aid of the students and sent a message regime and his beaters - that the children are not alone on the streets, now the system has turned around, young people have come to the defense of the elderly. All high school students with whom "Vreme" spoke say that they felt the need to protect Diana Hrka with their bodies, and mostly with mass, to just be there, by her side. To send a message to the hooded people in Ćaciland - that this mother 'has a back'.
photo: Milena Vlajić / Fonet...
WHO MAY GO ALONE THROUGH ĆACILEND AT NIGHT
Not negligible is another circumstance that pulled these children out of the pews on the transition to adult life. That is the behavior of the police.
All the graduates in turn say that the evening before they agreed to go and protect Diana Hrka, they watched the police shake their heads at the hooliganism of black hoods from Pionirski Park. How local officials of the regime and criminals associated with crime are seen every day in Ćaciland for a decade behind us and they turn a blind eye to their crimes. "We don't think we can fight with those people," says the high school student. "But if someone were to hit my mom, I would like to at least be there and try to protect her. Even if I fail, at least I would feel better that I did something."
His colleague adds that on one of those evenings, when the eagle flew from Ćaciland, she and her friend were passing not far from Pionirski Park. "We were passing under the Assembly, and the police had already closed that entire part," she explains. "Although in a normal country we should feel safer because of the policemen, my friend and I started running. Afterwards we commented that we felt an increased danger when we saw the policemen. Because we know how much they beat us months ago, and how much, even more, they ignored the violence of others against us."
That the high school students had a good sense that the mother of the dead young man was a target and that she really needed protection is also shown by the cannon attack on the tent where she was sleeping, five days after the high school support.
MATURING THE HARD WAY
High school students in particular were shaken by the fact that, after the decision to stop school for two days, some commented that they just didn't want to go to school. "I do not agree at all with the point of view that high school students can't wait to not go to school," he says Ana Dimitrijevic from the Forum of Belgrade High Schools for "Vreme". "It wasn't their goal to stop classes so they wouldn't answer or show homework. It's the end of the quarter, everything that was supposed to be graded has already been graded." She herself teaches at a high school and works with them every day. He says that little is known in the public that, since school blockades and student protests, high school graduates have constant meetings. That they communicate with each other, between classes, but also that they connect very well with others to the schools, and also those in other cities of Serbia. "We meet our students with their parents at protests all the time, so this choice of theirs did not surprise me at all. A guy only a few years older than them died, and his mother is sitting somewhere outside on hunger strike. They feel it," says Ana Dimitrijević. "These children have social networks and follow them much better and more actively than we do. They read them much better and more naturally. They all see what is happening in Ćaciland and where it leads. They are neither socially blind nor deaf, no matter how much people think they are. They are children in some things because they have no life experience, but they know how to think."
Little is said about the fact that in today's political system, under the current regime in the country, these young people are preparing to enter active social struggle. Because those who spent the last school year as graduates this fall have already become students and will have the opportunity to vote at plenums, to express their opinion and to continue that struggle. They say that for the past few months, they have been meeting with students from other schools and from other cities every week to learn about what is happening in their schools. Especially since the regime declared war on unfit principals and teaching staff, but also on the high school students themselves who tried to protect them. Many high school students now take this preparation for entering student life very seriously and do not run away from their responsibilities. They already have each other's backs, physically, but also emotionally.
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