The zipper where the motherland sleeps

Arrest, detention in a prison cell and conviction of Index.hr journalist Gordan Duhaček - because he published the punk acronym ACAB (short for "All cops are bastards") on Twitter, along with a note about a brutal police intervention in a Zadar fast-food restaurant. , and on another occasion uttered a vulgar treatment of the patriotic vigil Vila Velebita (with the title "Govna Velebita") - these are a reliable sign that the Croatian regime has moved to measures of methodical repression in order to protect "our values".

"Our values", as shown in the case of Duhaček, include the police and patriotism, i.e. - as we will show in this text - one and the same. The most striking feature of Croatian patriotism is that it is watched over by the Croatian police. The inflamed and ubiquitous love for the homeland is the result of state terror.

Due to the ACAB, Gordan Duhaček has already been sentenced to the maximum misdemeanor fine of HRK 730 (monetary compensation for 30 days in prison), while the verdict for "Govna Velebita" (a song that, by the way, deals with environmental pollution, which means "shit" are not a metaphor for the nationalist government, but simply shit) is expected on the day when this text is created. In the first case, the journalist was convicted for "disparaging state authorities", and in the second, he was accused of "insulting the moral feelings of citizens". In fact, Article 14 of the Law on Offenses of the Republic of Croatia is instructive to quote: "Whoever insults or belittles the moral feelings of citizens in a public place will be punished with a fine of 50 to 200 German marks or a prison sentence of up to 30 days." , i.e. its satirical treatment, touches on the "moral feelings of citizens", and what are "moral feelings of citizens" at all, and why it is normal for patriotic feelings to be equated with morality, from which it follows that anyone who does not remain silent is a patriot by law immoral, it cannot be clear to the average citizen, but there is, as we said, someone who takes strict account of it: the police force for enforcing patriotic moral order, that is, the Croatian police, which filed charges against the journalists. Even if there are no verdicts, the intended mission has been successfully accomplished - to sow fear and shatter the last illusions of those who still naively believe that there is constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech in Croatia.

Therefore, the judgment was preceded by a performance of interesting dramaturgy. Index's columnist was arrested on Monday (September 16 - ed.) at the Zagreb airport, from where he was supposed to travel to a journalism seminar in Germany, although he went to the police department the day before (on Sunday) to give a statement and announce tomorrow's trip, where he was told that he was free to travel and that he would be questioned when he returned. Duhaček describes the events after being sent to prison as follows: "Before the hearing, the judge came to my cell where I was guarded by three policemen and asked: 'What are we going to do with you now?' I asked where my lawyer was, and he told me to confess or face 9 days in Remetinac."

The same judge - his name is Krešimir Ožanić - convicted the activist Zoran Erceg some time ago, because he shouted that he was a criminal near the monument to Franjo Tuđman. After an intensive police search, Filip Drača was also arrested in Zagreb, because he had drawn a hammer and sickle on the pedestal of the same monument, and an indictment was brought against him for "criminal offense against property" in which a sanction of ten months in prison is requested. Recently, the police even detained a man who addressed Prime Minister Andrej Plenković as "caća", since the term "caća", thanks to Split jokers, evokes unpleasant associations with the corrupt Ivo Sanader.

The police are therefore working at full steam, and we know why. Regardless of the different legal qualifications of their misdemeanor and criminal actions, the misdeeds of Duhaček, Drača, Erceg and the like fit into one and the same crime: undermining the spirit of the times.

As we all know, the Croatian police do not arrest those who shout "Ready for home" or "Kill the Serb!", even though the streets, stadiums, walls, stages and social networks are littered with such and similar lovely messages, there is nothing a conscientious member of the law enforcement who will take Thompson off the stage when he releases the Ustasha shout from his lungs and send him to the cell, so that then a dark misdemeanor judge walks up to the bars, asks the singer "What are we going to do with you now?" and finally cuts him the maximum sentence for " insulting the moral feelings of citizens"...

No, for God's sake, because the Ustaše and Serb haters do not question the spirit of the times in today's Croatia; on the contrary, they feed and strengthen it, and thus at the same time steel the "moral feelings of the citizens", while Gordan Duhaček, stuffing shit into the legendary national vigil, otherwise boring as diarrhea, like Erceg, like Durrës, shows his teeth to the spirit of the times. and cancels loyalty.

Villa Velebit is paradigmatic because it is famous in national mythology as a symbol of suppressed Croatia, a melodic code used to recognize and encourage nationalists in the age of dissidence. In the Croatian version of Wikipedia, it is proudly emphasized that the song was banned in socialist Yugoslavia due to its patriotic content, that it was "sung only in secret", and those who did so publicly "received a prison sentence".

This is what the spectacular change of the regime in the early nineties brought about: previously, singing an authentic version of Vila Velebit was sent to prison, while today one goes to prison if the performance of Vila Velebit is not authentic. Everything changes, the prison remains. The devil is the zeitgeist. No one brought him as strikingly close as Kolinda Grabar Kitarović when - just two days before the arrest of Gordan Duhaček - she opened the 54th Festival of Kajkavian songs in Krapina with an appropriate recital, saying: "That's why today sing that beautiful song 'Došel boom doma, sel si boom pod brajde', which we sang with the soldiers in Afghanistan, because it is one of the songs that were created in those times when it was not allowed to mention Croatia, Croatian Zagorje, homeland, bregi, zipka where the homeland sleeps, all that expressed patriotism. "

It turned out, fuck it, that the song "Pod brajde" - whose verses are full of mountains, zips and homeland is cited by the enthroned Croatian president as an example of musical and literary resistance to the boots of Yugoslav socialism that mercilessly trampled Croatia - was composed in 2000, almost a decade after its formation independent Croatian state. That's how Kolinda Grabar Kitarović - if we remember that the same lady explained to foreign journalists how in socialism we only had one type of yogurt - what Adam Michnik called "anti-communism with a Bolshevik face" was brought to the point of parody.

Duhaček, on the other hand, by touching on the myth - more precisely: filling the heart-wrenching rhymes of Villa Velebit with a sufficient amount of shit - touched the essence, even though it may not have been his original intention, and with his resistance to the spirit of the times he provoked the regime's apparatus and only confirmed what we already know: that Croatian post-socialist anti-communism moved from haranguing to concrete and systematic repression.

And so it becomes obvious that the era when Croats ended up in prison for "singing songs" never ends. It's just that it's clear to them that, just as they weren't allowed to be too big in the past, Croats shouldn't be too small today. The format of the desirable Croatia is radically changing, but the totalitarian measures to preserve its dimensions remain the same. History is such a strange force that it can bring anything but freedom to an adaptable Croat - who carefully listens to the schizophrenic demands of the spirit of the times, so he has to be small, sometimes big, and then again. He knows that the "string in which the homeland sleeps" is made of the strongest material, prison bars.

And this one sleeps, sleeps him. One would say, who slaughtered.

(Peščanik.net)