BRANKO ĆOPIĆ MONUMENT VANDALIZED AND THE INCREASINGLY FREQUENT ATTACKS ON THE KROKODIL

20 Nov BRANKO ĆOPIĆ MONUMENT VANDALIZED AND THE INCREASINGLY FREQUENT ATTACKS ON THE KROKODIL

When we came to work this morning, a destroyed two-dimensional monument with the image of Branko Ćopić awaited us on the staircase between Karađorđeva and Fruškogorska streets. Together with the author of this work, our world-famous illustrator Dušan Petričić, in February 2022 we inaugurated this beautiful tribute to the beloved children’s writer whose life ended tragically.

On Saturday, at exactly 11:36 p.m., a group of young men appeared from the direction of Karađorđeva Street on the Male stepenice Street. Seemingly unprovoked, they broke off the upper part of Branko Ćopić’s figure and threw the pieces towards the plateau below Branko’s Bridge, and then continued on their way towards Fruškogorska Street almost disinterestedly. The ease of vandalism indicates to us the truly worrying state in which Serbian society finds itself today, and this acute hatred for everything that represents normality, gentleness and beauty is one of the basic features of our dark everyday in which, unfortunately, many citizens participate in different ways. This event is by no means isolated, nor do we highlight it as something unusual for us, on the contrary. Just a month ago, seemingly random passers-by were threatening and insulting our employees while they were cleaning up the staircase and the entrance to our Center. Information about that event has already been forwarded to the Ministry of Interior. Although these two attacks, in our opinion, are not directly related, they belong to a whole series of frequent threats, insults and attacks that we have been exposed to in the last year, which, in addition to a total of twenty-eight SLAPP misdemeanor charges against KROKODIL employees, worries us more and more.