Dialogue with bats and bloody hoods

It was night, but there was no darkness over Belgrade. On January 27th, Autokomanda was shining, like the sun that suddenly appeared to warm and illuminate us all. The students spent the night on a twenty-four-hour blockade celebrating the desire for justice and freedom, celebrating the good in the people they managed to awaken. Light, therefore, dominated. But there are always dark people to remind us what to beware of.

While Autokomanda was shining, three dark people, Aleksandar Vučić, then Prime Minister Miloš Vučević and President of the Assembly Ana Brnabić, poured blackness from Andrić's wreath. But they invited all rectors, professors and "authorized student representatives" to a dialogue.

BREAK THEIR TEETH, SO LET'S TALK

We saw what their invitation to dialogue looks like the same night. While we all woke up on January 28th to check if the students at Autokomanda were okay, we were greeted with horrible news like a slap in the face: a group of people rushed out of the premises of the Serbian Progressive Party around 3 in the morning and attacked two groups of students. They chased them with a Chevrolet, then caught up with another group, in which there was one Ana.

Ana is a student at the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad. They hit her with sticks on the head and body. She was hit with a baton on both sides of her face. Her jaw was dislocated and she now has splints in her mouth, and reconstructive surgeries await her. But they don't know who they are hitting. The students said that their injuries will heal and they will move on. And they said that it is difficult to have a dialogue with a dislocated jaw.

Ana left the hospital and, still unhealed, came to the blockade of the three bridges in Novi Sad on February 1. She stood at the head of the column. Forgive the readers, but sometimes we, the journalists, are speechless. Well, that's why here is part of Brana Petrović's poem:

"I can combine the sea with flowers on her lips!
I can be a rain officer in her state!
I can imitate the Danube under her window,
or some other volcanoes,
I can swear
in everything I have,
and I don't have,
that the world exists because of Anna”.

SONJA, CHRISTINA, ANA

This is the third serious attack by progressive savage phalanxes on girls. We had the horrifying running down of the law student Sonja by a car, then the equally horrifying trampling of Kristina, the orderly from the Faculty of Agriculture, who was guarding us during the General Strike on Friday January 24th, and finally, the brutal beating of Anna. Sonja, Kristina, Ana... They are all on their feet. I can't do anything to them.

"Our injuries will heal", said their colleague, actually, Ana's colleague from the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad, this week as a guest on Television Nova S.

We wrote about earlier attacks on blockades in "Vremen" no. 1777 from January 22.

What has changed since then? Basically, nothing. The government again claimed to have fulfilled the demands, while it itself makes the third demand unfulfillable. That request reads: "Submission of a criminal complaint by the MUP to the competent public prosecutor's office in Belgrade against persons who physically attacked students and professors, who are known to the public according to media reports such as: Milija Koldžić, Aleksandar Jokić, Dušan Kostić, Milena Aleksić and Ivan Stanišić and others who are not known to the public".

The reason for the unfulfillment of the third request is hidden at the very end of its text: "and others that are not known to the public". Namely, the authorities, by sending thugs and "hoodlums" to blockades, constantly increase the number of those whose prosecution is sought. Although they are arrested, some immediately, some three weeks after attacking the students, the list is getting longer and longer. If they don't stop beating and trampling soon, the list of names of those whose prosecution is not sought will be shorter.

But this cowardly beating and trampling of girls has another angle: how come they attack girls the most brutally? The theories can be spun endlessly, but the most plausible one is that they do it in order to provoke the crowd to fight back, so that the tabloids write about the alleged rampage and violence of the demonstrators. But this mass is not a mob. These are people hungry for justice, those according to the law. This crowd knows: if they took justice into their own hands, they would spit on the demands of the students, who are only looking for justice. Just that.

DON'T TREAD ON MY PSYCHIATRIST, DON'T HIT MY CHILDREN.

If the progressives were normal, they would have stopped after the baton attack in Novi Sad, especially since Miloš Vučević claims that he resigned as prime minister because he has no control over the members of the Serbian Progressive Party who beat Anna. But, he is the president of SNS, it would be more logical if he resigned from that position if this is the real reason.

Just one day before the blockade of the bridges in Novi Sad, that is, on January 31, during a fifteen-minute silence for the 15 victims under the canopy, a barely legal driver crashed his car into the doctors of the Institute of Mental Health in Palmotićeva street in Belgrade. Two female doctors were knocked down, but luckily they are fine. It was surreal to watch the footage of the incident, the psychiatrists who surrounded the car and a small council that decided what to do with the driver and passenger because it is obvious that they are young, and it is very questionable whether they are of legal age. They were also arrested, yes, they are of legal age, although barely. There is no doubt that they caused the incident on purpose, because the driver went into reverse before crashing into the doctors. We would be happy to write humorously about the irony of someone running into a psychiatrist like a maniac, but there is no place for jokes when female students are being broken in the jaws and female doctors are being trampled on the street.

And then they attacked the children again. In front of the School of Design in Novi Sad, students gathered on Monday, February 3 to hold the now regular 15 minutes of silence for the 15 who died under the canopy. There appeared a man, let's say, who physically attacked the children. And again, the girl, so to speak, the girl, the orderly, managed to prevent him. Fragile build, but nimble and tough, in a yellow vest, she did separate him from her schoolmates, but she also received one rather strong blow. Fortunately, there were some adult women who literally protected the girl from the attackers with their bodies, and the others managed to drive away the one whom, for the purposes of this text, we have called a man.

photo: 021

RECTOR'S COLLEGE HAS NOT ISSUED

Despite all these incidents, Aleksandar Vučić again called for dialogue. This time - the Rector's College of the University of Belgrade. Topic: how to get out of this situation, although the student's requirements say how. Time: Tuesday, February 4 at 11 a.m. The evening before, students of the Faculty of Law in the blockade issued a statement reminding the Rector's College that they were invited to the negotiations by a person who, according to the Constitution, has very limited, mostly ceremonial powers, and therefore is not authorized to negotiate. The rectors announced themselves on Tuesday morning and answered that they are also not authorized to negotiate because both the demands and the blockades are student-related.

"A series of inconsistencies in the public statements of representatives of state bodies does not assure that the dialogue leading to the fulfillment of student demands is possible, nor effective, if it is organized between two parties who do not have a mandate to discuss the demands and to whom the demands have not even been addressed", announced the Collegium. In the statement, they add that the call for dialogue comes at a time when all moral and legal norms have been exceeded, in an atmosphere of general mistrust: "As representatives of the University and academic citizens, we are further discouraged that the proposed dialogue is possible due to continuous attacks directed against the academic community in the media space, and even more brutal, inadmissible, physical attacks in the public space."

The last appearances of President Vučić are filled with twisted threats and attempts to intimidate everyone who is on the street these days. No use to him. Out of 28 cities and 145 municipalities in Serbia, all cities and 127 municipalities are on the street. Now the rectors told him the same as the students: you are not in charge.