The dean of the Faculty of Philosophy in Niš, Natalija Jovanović, tells Vreme that she was stabbed by the president of the state, Vučić, since he has been conducting an orchestrated hunt for her since the beginning of the blockade in this city. "I can't believe what happened, but when I think about it, I subconsciously expected this, because this repressive and totalitarian regime in its final phase is certainly ready for this."
When the president of the state and other state officials have been targeting the dean of the Faculty of Philosophy in Nis for months in the regime's media To Natalia Jovanovic calling her evil, criminal, enemy of the state, usurper and traitor, violence becomes the expected outcome of such a campaign. The MUP uses a euphemism and says that a knife attack is violent behavior. For the academic community, it is an attempted murder, especially when the attack is put into context and the threat of dousing with acid is added to it. Aleksandar Vučić however, he believes that the wound that Dean Jovanović received on Sunday is not serious. He also tried to relativize the severity of the injury by comparing it to a scratch caused when "cutting a cucumber or onion".
The protest on Sunday, April 30 in Nis, called "Under the Scrutiny of Science", seemed completely normal, peaceful, without incident, with 16 minutes of silence and noise making. Just before the start, there was an elderly woman on Pavle Stojković Square who first threw a can at the gathered citizens, and not long after she pulled a kitchen knife on Dean Jovanović and cut her right hand. The attacker was soon taken into custody and detained for 48 hours.
At the same time, she threatened the attacked dean with acid. The motive for the attack of the elderly woman is her claim that Professor Jovanović "destroyed" her granddaughter.
The dean firmly claims for "Vreme" that she was stabbed by the president of the state Vučić himself, since he has been conducting an orchestrated hunt for her since the very beginning of the blockade in Nis. "I can't believe what happened, but when I think about it, I subconsciously expected this, because this repressive and totalitarian regime in its final phase is certainly ready for this," Natalija Jovanović told Vreme.
WHAT PRECEDE THE ATTACK?
The campaign on all fronts, as assessed by Istinomer, has been going on for months against the dean through the regime's tabloids and on television with a national frequency. People who follow the media could only read and hear that she is a "slut on the cube", a serious criminal and that she has more expensive purses than Vučić ate an ice cream cone in his lifetime.
Recently, after the protest in Niš, which ended with the arrest of several students and high school students who threw eggs at Mayor Dragoslav Pavlović, the President of Serbia said that there is a "three evils" in this city. It consists of the founder of the citizens' group Movement for Decentralization of Serbia Dragan Milić, dean Natalija Jovanović and MP Đorđe Stanković from the National Movement of Serbia. Of the three, two reported the attack - dean Natalija Jovanović knife attack and doctor Milić, who says that on the night between March 21 and 22 someone shot through his bedroom window at the pillow he was sleeping on. The Basic Public Prosecutor's Office and the Police Department have confirmed this as a possibility. By the way, Milić says that he perceives this as an assassination attempt and that the president's statement about the "three evils" could have encouraged someone to shoot him.
"Recently, the highest officials of this state said that there is some supreme evil in Nis, where there are two other people and I. If someone hears that the top of the state says that Dr. Milić is the number one evil, then they will say, 'Let's get rid of that evil in Nis,'" Milić told Južne vesti at the time.
Before the very phrase about the "three evils", the President of the Republic had a habit of calling Dean Jovanović a naked criminal and other names, and as the University of Niš assesses, the vocabulary he uses is primitive and streetwise.
The day before the largest gathering in the history of Serbia on March 15, Vučić addressed the nation regarding current events and touched, for the umpteenth time, Dean Jovanović. Then he said that he regretted pardoning "some people", including her. That pardon is his biggest mistake since he was the president of this country, and he also stated that the "pardoned" Natalija Jovanović has more expensive purses than he has eaten "ice cream cones" in his life.
"She plays the great honesty of a great revolutionary," said Vučić at the time, who often calls her "the wife of Baneta Banana."
By the way, Natalija Jovanović's husband is Branislav Jovanović, an opposition politician from Niš. From 2007 to 2012, he was a deputy of the G17+ party. Although the dean and Branislav Jovanović are two separate individuals, Vučić probably does not want to acknowledge her personal achievements. He persistently attacks and defines her through her relationship with her husband, which is why she plays only one social role in the narrative created by the media and the government - she happens to be the wife of a local politician who the president doesn't particularly like.
The president is not the only one who talks about dean Natalija Jovanović in a negative context. And the President of the National Assembly, Ana Brnabić, stated that Jovanović was leading the "face of fascism" in Niš when the protest took place, after which students were arrested for throwing eggs. According to other state officials, she is also a "disgrace and shame" of the Serbian academic community and deserves to be in prison.
Natalija Jovanović says for "Vreme" that she was not aware of what all the authorities were saying about her in the media until she suffered a knife attack and adds that, according to her knowledge, the woman who attacked her was an active member of the Serbian Progressive Party: "They receive clear instructions from the leader of Aleksandar Vučić and then they repeat it like a mantra - 'this one is a liar, this one is a criminal'... They label in order to tarnish someone's reputation, and it is terrible that those whose conscience is doing it impure while professors, students, deans are accused of crime".
THE AUTHORITY IS TRYING TO REDUCE THE SERIOUSITY
Through its media, the regime is trying to downplay the importance of this case - the administration of the Faculty of Philosophy in Niš is allegedly "exaggerating" when it says that this attack is "the result of several months of targeting and humiliation and humiliation of the academic community, which has not been seen in recent history."
Professor of the Faculty of Philosophy in Niš, Dušan Aleksić, said on March 30, when citizens gathered in the evening at the place where the dean was attacked earlier that day, that the President of Serbia is very obsessed with Dean Jovanović, he has been mentioning her in the most negative possible context for months, and called on the institutions to do their job.
"This is an attempted murder and we expect it to be treated as such, and that the top authorities immediately stop pursuing a policy of violence and targeting not only representatives of the academic community, but also all those who fight for a better and fairer society," Aleksić said.
By the way, dean Natalija Jovanović is one of the first heads of faculties throughout Serbia who publicly stood by the students, and that at the very beginning of the protest. On the same day when Niš students blocked the Rector's building for six hours and announced that they would first block the Faculty of Philosophy in the territory of Niš, she supported that decision and declared that the faculty was theirs. From that moment on, the media hunt for her and targeting began through information that she was allegedly arrested in an action by the SBPOK, that she was linked to organized crime and that she was arrested for accepting bribes. Two months later, in February, at a protest, she experienced her first attack by an unknown woman who threatened to kill her.
"I was shaking," Professor Jovanović told "Vreme" at the time. "Not out of fear, but out of anger that such characters who are inspired by obscure media can - when you least expect it - cause you great harm".
She also said that Vucic, who pardoned her - although she doesn't know why - is the editor-in-chief of the aforementioned media. The dean was then hospitalized due to high blood pressure, and almost two months later, another woman stabbed her.
On March 21, when a citizen's protest was held in Nis regarding the announced arrival of former Prime Minister Miloš Vučević, Ana Brnabić and Darko Glišić at the Officers' Home, the police blocked and fenced off the nearby park so that those gathered could not approach. Dean Jovanović then came to the police and asked to let them go to the amphitheater where they reported the rally, which is why at one point she jumped over the fence to "greet" the SNS members, but the police took her back. Eggs were "flying" that night, and several students and a 16-year-old were detained.
Because of the attack that happened to Natalija Jovanović, support rallies were held in four university cities (Niš, Novi Sad, Belgrade and Kragujevac) on Monday, March 31. At the meeting in Niš, the vice-dean for scientific and research work at the Faculty of Philosophy, Sanja Ignjatović, said "we cannot return to the simulated reality of 'Caciland'".
All in all, the knife attack on dean Natalija Jovanović reflects the atmosphere in which violence has become the logical outcome of a campaign by which the government insults and targets those who oppose it and support students. That's why it's only a matter of time when someone else will "cut themselves like they're cutting a cucumber".
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