Warning: main(ezlink/user/menubox.php) [function.main]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /var/www/ezpublish/sitedesign/standard/frame.php on line 164
Warning: main() [function.include]: Failed opening 'ezlink/user/menubox.php' for inclusion (include_path='/var/www/ezpublish/:/var/www/ezpublish/pear:.:/usr/share/php:/usr/share/pear') in /var/www/ezpublish/sitedesign/standard/frame.php on line 164
|
|
Turn Mostar into "Battlefield" for Peace and Democracy
Once again, Mostar turned into a “battlefield” of nationalist hatred, xenophobia and petty bourgeois upbringing that rules the minds accustomed to division, chaos, mistrust and feeling of constant humiliation and fear of everything and everybody different.
We were not surprised by the stampede of youthful madness, mistrust and destruction that rush through and destroyed the little things that the citizens of Mostar try to create. We saw, heard and lived through a stampede of hatred and evil the other night, in the “clash of football fans’ (nationalist) passions.
Every little thing that surrounds us in Mostar: the streets, buildings, people and their “protests”, local TV and radio broadcasts, newspaper articles, school curricula, culture clubs, galleries, public spaces, the city administration, politicians, student organizations, all of them talk and create one thing only – the nationalist spirit of hatred and human beings suited to that spirit – members of a tribe or a clan, a nationally identified being that doesn’t see and know the other, doesn’t even want to talk or engage in a dialogue with the other.
The citizens of Mostar never seriously engaged in issues of reconciliation and debated the events of the past decades. Our children learn and know the truth of their own tribe and clan only. Only “our own” are seen as good and proud, and the children’s identity is based on the hatred for the other and the different.
The national animosity is the dominant “cohesion” factor of B&H society and we can’t ignore that fact or fail to recognize it. It takes little to get the man living “on the other side” on the battlefield, for instance, a football match. The other day, it was the football match that was the “guilty party” for the destruction and the hatred. Tomorrow, a xenophobe can use another excuse, such as the motley clothes or the unacceptable hair colour.
All above listed things are ideas and evil spirits from our unsolved and little recognized past, a sample of quality and honest interpretation of history as thought in the schools in which religion takes over the place of “the mother or all knowledge”. The religion, lamentably, slowly turns into an area for serious discussion about people and their identities, discussions about long suffering and broken up country and the irrational Bosnian man. We have to mention it here the insane need of the media to relate and promote alcoholic beverages as carriers of sporting spirit and victory.
In the inflammable national context prevailing in Mostar, the idea “Beer = Football” (there are a variety of programmes and advertisements that make that equation), we have reached the combustible compound that combines the rebelliousness of youth with aggression and destruction. Unemployed, hopeless, disoriented young man, engulfed in the web of passions and only virtual material wealth, lost all measure and faith. The city and the state don’t have, or don’t want to search for a solution or offer help to the youth in the search for escape from the vicious circle of nationalist and xenophobic ideas.
The responsibility for the “Brazil-Croatia” case ultimately falls on US, the citizens of Mostar. OKC Abrasevic decided that it will not stand by and just wait for another, similar case. We pledge to stand firm on the battlefield for peace and safe future of the youth and the city of Mostar.
|
|
|
|
