“I cannot understand how people accept such a life, maybe they don’t have a choice, but the bottom line is that they put up with a life in which they receive salaries and pensions from Serbia – and that’s okay because they have to live on something. However, these are young people and they don’t do anything. A young man from here, in his 30s and 40s, gets up in the morning and does nothing,” journalist Danica Vučenić shared her deepest impression during her last week’s visit to North Mitrovica.
The author of the show „Iza vesti“ on N1 TV and a Pristina-born journalist, now a resident of Belgrade – Milivoje Mihajlović, spent a few days in Mitrovica last week. They were KoSSev’s guests at the award ceremony of the first annual „ČasTnica“ award for professionalism and integrity. The award, which Vučenić came up with, was presented to Mihajlović.
They used the opportunity to stroll through the town, see their acquaintances and feel the atmosphere on the streets of this northern town.
Everybody is talking about leaving…
She revealed that almost all of her acquaintances are talking about leaving, stirring a feeling of discomfort in this Serbian journalist as it reminded her of familiar stories told by people in Bosnia and Croatia in the 1990s…
„Unfortunately, I have a feeling of discomfort over the fact that everyone we met is talking about leaving. That’s how people once talked about leaving the areas in Croatia, Bosnia… Croats from Vojvodina who were also expelled from Vojvodina in the nineties – from Srem, when I spoke to them, they said the same thing – ‘we’ll have to leave’. Now I’m hearing it here – ‘we’ll have to leave, we’re moving. There is no future here.’“
Danica Vučenić emphasized that she does not see the future of a community if people do not contribute to it.
What are the people who have been pulled out of institutions doing now?
This journalist testifies that the deepest impression she had during her stay in North Mitrovica was an image of a lack of perspective.
She revealed that she cannot understand how a „huge number“ of Serbs in the north have been unemployed for a year and are putting up with such a life.
„It’s great that they have something to live on, but is that society intellectually, spiritually, energetically, politically atrophying? And what is the future of that society in which people in that community do nothing? What is happening with those people?“
Reminding that these are people who instead of doing concrete work, earn their income exclusively through lists, she wondered: What will they do?
„Maybe they don’t have a choice, but the bottom line is that they put up with a life in which they receive salaries and pensions from Serbia – and that’s okay because they have to live on something. However, these are young people and they don’t do anything,“ she said.
Specifying that not everyone is in such a situation, she goes on to describe:
„A young man from here, in his 30s and 40s, gets up in the morning and does nothing.
It’s fine that he has a salary and a pension he can live on, but there is a whole generation, that is dozens of judges who were retired from institutions, the police, and the prosecutor’s office. What are they doing?! What is going on with them? What is their motivation?! I don’t understand that and I wonder if the society in Kosovska Mitrovica, I mean both highly and not so highly educated people – is the society atrophying if the majority in that society does nothing?!”
For decades, the government has been dragging Kosovo Serbs into high politics and not allowing them to live
Vučenić raises the question – What kind of life does our government imagine for Serbs from Kosovo?
According to her, the citizens of North Mitrovica, those „small people with small lives“ are in a bad situation, precisely because of the lack of perspective.
„Of course, an ordinary man wants to get up in the morning and go to work, to send his children to school, to go to the market in the afternoon, to go to a birthday party. To deal with things that we all deal with in some other areas. To live a life, and it does not consist of high politics.“
She then responded to her earlier question. In her words, the problem lies in the fact that the Serbian authorities have been dragging Kosovo Serbs into high politics.
„Our life does not consist of high politics, but I see a problem in the fact that the authorities in Serbia, not only this one, but also the previous ones, constantly involve Kosovo Serbs in high politics, and it seems to me that we do not allow you to breathe, to live your individual ordinary lives.“
Vučenić emphasized that this attitude of the Serbian government towards the Serbs in Kosovo has been the stance of the current but also „all previous governments“.
„We constantly dragged the Serbs from Kosovo into highly political topics in the late 1990s and early 2000s,“ she says.
Like we are grabbing your neck and not allowing you to breathe, to live your individual ordinary lives
Mihajlović: Expectations constantly raised for the Serbs in the north
What was Milivoje Mihajlović’s impression of the people he met last week in North Mitrovica – fear, disappointment in the state of Serbia and pressure from the Kosovo authorities.
„What the people here told me is that they are all scared, that the people from the North are disappointed in the Serbian state, that they are under incredible pressure from the Kosovo authorities, that they have terrible dilemmas about these crucial dilemmas whether to stay or leave, they are indecisive and have nothing to hold on to“ – Mihajlović disclosed what the people of Mitrovica told him.
He notes, on the other hand, that in the areas south of the Ibar, the picture is more stable when compared to the north, because the Serbs living in these areas are already used to such a relationship with Serbia, which was based solely on payments and the expectation that they stay.
In contrast to them, he says, „expectations were constantly raised“ for the Serbs in the north.
„I won’t give Gazivode, I won’t give license plates, I won’t give dinars, this and that, and it all goes away slowly… I think this is too harsh to say, but I think that a kind of reflex similar to a Pavlovian one has been created among Serbs from the north: The more I encourage you, the more I will take you down. That is Serbia’s attitude. And that’s why people from the north often describe Serbia’s attitude in the last few years with the word betrayal. Because they take it as a betrayal. When you raise someone’s expectations and then lower them and make them expect a stronger vocabulary, they expect a higher level of surrender, whatever you want to call it.“
You can watch the entire interview below:
Preuzimanje i objavljivanje tekstova sa portala KoSSev nije dozvoljeno bez navođenja izvora. Hvala na poštovanju etike novinarske profesije.
