ANNOUNCEMENT FROM THE KROKODIL ASSOCIATION REGARDING THE ATTACKS ON THE DIRECTOR OF OUR ORGANIZATION, MILENA BERIĆ

15 Apr ANNOUNCEMENT FROM THE KROKODIL ASSOCIATION REGARDING THE ATTACKS ON THE DIRECTOR OF OUR ORGANIZATION, MILENA BERIĆ

Over the past week, the KROKODIL Association and it’s director Milena Berić have been subjected to yet another prolonged campaign of public defamation and unfounded accusations, accompanied by the usual barrage of insults, profanity, belittlement, and inevitable threats of physical and sexual violence, even death.

All this was motivated by Milena Berić’s online appearance on the morning program of TV Nova on Tuesday, April 8, 2025, during which she discussed, alongside Feđa Štukan, the recent deportation from Serbia of Italian pianist Davide Martello, as well as a whole series of similar situations in which the authorities have relentlessly targeted (mostly regional) artists and punished them with deportation for the support they have unreservedly given to democratic processes in our country. A striking example of this is Feđa Štukan, who, while speaking with host Nevena Madžarević, analyzed various dynamics of these demonstrations and expressed well-founded concern about the increasingly visible infiltration of ethno-nationalist right-wing elements into the protest ranks and the completely normalized presence of nationalist symbols, Chetnik flags and emblems, šajkačas, and šubaras with cockades, along with other elements that significantly distort the pure image that the student movement nurtured at the very beginning, before their significant enlargment. To support all this, Milena Berić additionally problematized the fact that the protests are secured by “war veterans,” which, to make matters worse, is met with open enthusiasm from many citizens and an acute lack of any questioning about where these so-called “protectors” were and what they were doing during the wars of the 1990s. It is particularly unacceptable and scandalous that these same people have somehow been delegated a very dubious right to carry out “citizen arrests.”

Speaking about this, Milena Berić referred to a VIDEO that was circulating on social media during those days. It shows middle-aged men in non-standardized uniforms depriving two civilians of their freedom during the protest on March 15. Yet to this day, we have not learned, nor does it seem that anyone has cared at all, who those arrested individuals were, what they did, why they were arrested, where they were taken, what their fate is, and similar questions that apparently seem completely unimportant to the majority of those who support these demonstrations or actively participate in them.

Milena Berić has repeatedly stated that the protests are “the most democratic thing that has happened to us in the last 12 years”, that Association KROKODIL wholeheartedly supports the students in their demands, and that we, as an organization, have been helping them in various ways for months. Furthermore, she emphasized that young people should not be blamed for their ignorance as their distorted perspective is a consequence of growing up in this society, and that the responsibility for concealing crimes and creating a self-victimizing or heroic fantasy in place of the bloody and dirty fratricidal wars, which were largely instigated and led from Belgrade, lies exclusively with the political elite.

Immediately after the mentioned program ended, Milena Berić, as well as our Association, came under a series of orchestrated attacks with occasional manipulative attempts to personalize the situation, even though it was about a phenomenon rather than any specific individual, organization, or even informal group. Emphasizing in quickly released statements that they were “shocked by the performance on the morning program of TV Nova S” and that “as students, we remember, respect, and are grateful to all who defended the freedom and independence of our country… and to those who gave their lives for Serbia in that heroic act,” students hurried to underline that the mentioned support is “one of the most beautiful examples of intergenerational solidarity,” as well as to deny, despite the existing footage that “arbitrary arrests” were made, reducing everything to the unification of Serbia “for a future in which freedom, equality, and tolerance will prevail.” Thus, student bodies (so-called plenums) have undoubtedly aligned themselves with all those who have systematically distorted the truths about Serbia’s participation in the wars of the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia, transforming them into a “heroic struggle for the freedom of the homeland” and similar post-factum implanted and, judging from the logic of time and place, completely illogical and impossible interpretations of the crimes and tragedies of the past and their main perpetrators.

We at the KROKODIL Association strongly support our director Milena Berić and stand in defense of the fundamental ethical values that urge us to continually strive for the truth, no matter how painful it may be, as well as to maintain a radically critical stance toward the reality we live in. We regret that among young people we find as many misconceptions regarding our recent history as there are in the rest of society, but this does not surprise us. On the other hand, to put it as simply as possible, we in the Association KROKODIL do not fall for such fairytales and, furthermore, we uphold our right to critically engage with everything that obstructs our society from thoroughly confronting the tragic and profoundly corrosive legacy of recent history, specifically that part which we collectively refer to as “the ’90s.” We warn that everything that burdens us and hinders our progress will not simply disappear just because we have willingly and insensitively closed our eyes and ears, and especially our hearts, to all the terrible consequences of crimes and to those who committed them, and which, after all, were propelled and enabled by practically the same politicians against whom the current protests are directed.

We emphasize that our support for the student protests and civic demonstrations remains strong and is present in various ways. On the other hand, we consider it our fundamental responsibility to continuously warn that one cannot step into a better future alongside the actors of an unpleasant past that our society has not gathered the strength to truly confront for a full quarter of a century.

The KROKODIL Association was founded as a platform for restoring the ties that were severed by war between the peoples that made up the former common homeland of Yugoslavia, and for two full decades, it has been working on engaging culture, primarily literature, in this mission. In the society we live in, particularly over the last thirteen years, we who work at the KROKODIL Association face numerous problems, threats, and various forms of physical and systemic violence practically every day. We would like to believe that the future we are building together over these past months will offer a better, more tolerant, and inclusive environment, and an atmosphere where it will finally be possible to intensively work on building a much more harmonious society that nurtures positive values and relations with its closer (regional) and more distant (European and global) surroundings, rather than merely perpetuating all the misconceptions and conflicts from the past.