Mass indifference

Formally speaking, the causes that led to "Ribnikar", Dubona, Mali Orašje and the fall of the canopy at the Railway Station in Novi Sad are different, while the essence is the same - the lives of innocent people were violently ended, due to various forms of corruption and carelessness of political and social institutions and society as a whole and the systemically produced culture of violence that has become a way of life.

The initial shock of May 3 and 4, 2023, was replaced by sadness, anesthetized by several months of mass protests after which we decided to forget the memory, the memory that should have conveyed, warned and changed us. Exclamations such as "nothing is, will not and cannot be the same" remained only phrases without content, use value and explanation in practice. It became even worse because preconditions were created for the same or similar events to repeat.

BLOOMY REALITY

During the previous two years, everything was more or less wrong, so we met the second anniversary of the mass murders with no prospects and full awareness that much (if not everything) in the current approach must be urgently redefined.

The attitude of the system and society towards the parents and families of those killed and wounded has been inhumane and inadequate from the beginning. At first we pathetically pitied them, then we were afraid of them, after a while we approached them, gave them declarative support, and soon we started to get angry with them and condemn them. We were angry because their demands towards the system and society meant that each of us should look into ourselves and change. It turns out that it hurts more to change ourselves than to share in other people's pain, which is limited and situational in nature.

The state apparatus and the people who make it up did what they usually do, they arrogantly ignored problems and reality, often barbarically mocking the pain that paralyzed the entire society. With the onset of mass protests, they began damage control that exposed their unscrupulousness and inhumanity. In addition to the already standard methods of labeling, public lynching and persecution of all critics of the regime, in order to passivate the great dissatisfaction and concern of the public, a series of populist measures were offered that disguised rather than changed the gloomy reality.

Lowering the limit of criminal responsibility, despite the fact that all criminological and other studies in the social sciences, as well as judicial practice, clearly say that this is not a solution to the problem of violence and crime rates, increasing the number of school police officers without training, a licensing system and clear powers, the introduction and, a few months later, the abolition of the moratorium on the issuance of licenses to keep and carry short firearms, drug tests in primary and secondary schools, the formation of the Council for the Prevention of Peer Violence, the control of violent content in the media and on the Internet were just some of the measures which never came to life, and even if they had, they would not have fundamentally changed anything, nor were they intended to change.

Demands to answer those who publicly showed the list of children to be killed, who later received terrible threats, to answer those who enabled the Blažići to harass the locals and stockpile weapons with impunity for years, to increase the number of psychologists and pedagogues in schools, to stop hate speech and the promotion and normalization of violence in public space by the media and the highest authorities were ignored. The question of the fate of the juvenile killer remained unanswered. That topic has never been opened even among the professional public.

ABSENCE OF REACTION AS REACTION

The absence of a system reaction resulted in the spillover of violence from public space into everyday life, while incidents in schools continued, including those in "Ribnikar" (many of which the public never found out about), and parents of murdered children began to receive threats. There were good reasons why the regime felt threatened. Instead of solving problems, they opted for their own and well-known mechanisms: creating divisions, relativizing, simulating and producing oblivion.

At the very mention of the memorialization of the execution site, the Council of Parents from "Ribnikar" reacted aggressively, without a trace of sensitivity or empathy. Between facing, remembering, processing trauma, supporting the parents of killed and wounded children and "defending" the school yard and the walls of the gymnasium, they chose the latter.

In order to legitimize the discourse "the system did not fail", "analysts" explained day and night on all televisions followed by tabloids that the murders on May 3 and 4 were the result of an international terrorist conspiracy to weaken the strong, heavenly Serbia, with the ultimate goal of overthrowing its president. Parents and citizens called for everything to stop, and the regime entered the election campaign with the slogan "Serbia must not stop".

A milder version of relativization followed the line of condemnation of Western values ​​that "corrupted and instructed murderers." A classic populist and inversion approach - it is not about us but about the imaginary other who is evil.

With the initiation of criminal proceedings, the focus of the public and families was redirected to the trials. Although it was necessary to take place, they did not and cannot bring the necessary justice, especially not in the case of "Ribnikar", because no one will be held accountable for the murders, nor have the trials reconstructed the circumstances that led to the murders. It is good that the trial took place, but they are by their nature limited and represent only a part of the general puzzle and what we need.

After the protests of the parents of the murdered children, appeals, requests, letters and emergencies, in March of last year the Government formed a Working Group for the establishment of a memorial center, which is followed by a multidisciplinary team composed of experts from different fields chosen by the parents. In this way, on the one hand, the parents got some kind of emotional satisfaction and some kind of institutional framework to create a memory for their children, channel their own pain and try to help society to become better, while society breathed a sigh of relief, relieved itself of responsibility carried by the thought that what we all have to finish, will now be finished by wounded parents and a few experts, and the government got a cover for the public and proof that it is "benevolent".

PAIN AND CATHARTHSIS

Paradoxically, only with the formation of these two bodies did the way to simulations and oblivion open up. Great and justified suspicion was and is being created by members of the Working Group delegated by function. There was a minister who personally spread conspiracy theories about May 3rd and 4th, a city official who embezzled millions of euros intended for children, a man from the Ministry of Education who turns a blind eye to the fact that schools turn a blind eye to documented cases of violence by the educational inspectorate... With people who relativize, do not react to violence, with those who created, make and maintain a system that has swallowed society and the state, it is not possible to recover and repair society. They are part of the problem, not the solution.

With the great commitment and hard work of the Multidisciplinary Team and parents, the first anniversary of the mass murders was marked in an appropriate and dignified manner. It was painful and cathartic - it seemed like we were on the right track. Despite numerous incidents, the Week of Remembrance and Community passed in a good spirit.

That we are far from enough was shown by the time from last May to May this year, throwing out all our mistakes, wanderings and stumbling before us - May 3 and 4 were mentioned very sporadically, mostly in service information from hearings and announcements of events that families, with the help of a few people, designed in memory of their children. The work of the Multidisciplinary Team and the Working Group remained off the radar of the public.

Instead of a dialogue on every topic, we got the octrous and paternalistic decisions that are so characteristic of our society and culture. In simpler terms, "Ribnikar", Dubona and Malo Orasje have ceased to be a topic, except for families and those who are connected to them in various ways.

NECESSARY STEPS

We marked the second anniversary of the mass murders modestly and performatively. What's worse, it was probably the best and the most that was possible in the current context and in this country.

After all, we could see what kind of relationship the government has with the days it itself declared as the Days of Remembrance for the Victims of Mass Murders last Saturday when, as part of the nationalist, populist and kitsch manifestation Belgrade Family Days, citizens were invited to laugh, dance at concerts, enjoy themselves with majorettes, and children to practice shooting accuracy, all on the day when a child in the center of Belgrade killed children and a guard at a school. They showed how heartless they are by setting up stages and stands on Tasmajdan, right next to the stage where May 3 was celebrated. It was a slap in the face to parents and the entire public and an outpouring of their sociopathology. The attitude of the wider community towards parents on May 3 and 4 can also be read in the fact, that is, the expectation that parents will be the bearers of the process of memorialization and confrontation, which is unfair, abnormal, hypocritical and illogical - society must support them, not the other way around.

Of course, Serbia and Belgrade need a memorial. It is also clear that the memorial cannot exist without the participation and support of the state. However, we have lost sight of the fact that the process of arriving at the existence of that physical space is more important than the memorial. That process largely defines the purpose and content of institutional memory, that is, it preserves the memory and all the values ​​that we have reached during the mentioned process. We are given a memorial center if we have not previously unfolded the entire layers of what led us to talk about the memorial center. Social and psychological processes have their own order and laws. One cannot skip ten steps and live in the belief that we are on the right track. This will take us into an even larger space of predefined problems.

This year's 3rd and 4th of May were a big warning and a signal that we have failed. We obviously made a lot of mistakes, it's time to realize those mistakes and change our approach. We owe that to ourselves, and above all to Maria, Ana, Sofia, Bojana, Andrija, Adriana, Emma, ​​Katarina, Angelina, Dragan, Milan, Kristina, Dalibor, Petar, Nemanja, Lazar, Marko, Aleksandar and Nikola.

The author is a representative of the Association for a Sustainable Future - Koraci