Is there a possibility of correcting the many injustices that have happened to humanity throughout history? In Balkan terms... can the Drina curve be corrected? Someone will say - everything is possible, even the crooked Drina can be straightened. Why not? If mother nature twisted the Drina by mistake, what is the problem of correcting mother nature's mistake. An old Latin saying says "Humanum errare est" ("It is human to err"). So why can't Mother Nature make mistakes.
Some readers, I'm sure, remember the banner on the Branko Bridge from 1999, Serbian defiance of NATO bombing: "Columbus, screw you for discovering America"! Today, no one would agree with this Serbian spite better than the native Indians from both American continents. Millions of Indians were killed, their shrines and places of worship destroyed by white Europeans. Aborigines in Australia fared no better, maybe even worse. The British Empire sent them "human scum" to colonize them and take away from them what belonged to them for thousands of years, where they were on their own. Let us imagine the injustice done to the black continent by the white slave owners. Historians estimate that over ten million black slaves drowned or died while being transported across the Atlantic alone. Or, not so long ago, the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust. The United States of America dropped two atomic bombs, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, when imperial Japan was already on its knees and practically on the verge of unconditional capitulation. That was the USA's message to the rest of the world - stop kidding us. Two hundred thousand people were killed, and millions from the next generations were maimed. There are too many examples in history to list.
History gives the Indians in both Americas the full right to show the red card to all newcomers, those from the Anglo-Saxon world, and no less to the Spanish or Portuguese. The same goes for the Australian Aborigines - to buy a one-way ticket to the white descendants of the British casemates. The direction of Europe, more specifically Britain. To go back where they came from. Is it possible to imagine a flotilla of ships from Nigeria, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Ivory Coast, Kenya... that sails into European ports, buys and packs everything that is white in Africa, even the first ten million. How should Jews right the injustice of the Holocaust? To build concentration camps and gas chambers for Aryan descendants. Or Japan, two small atomic bombs on San Francisco and New York, calibrated precisely only to kill two hundred thousand and cripple the same number of generations as the Yankees in Japan. Would it be the rectification of historical injustices? An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth - no more, no less. Unfortunately, we are not the only ones who have the Drina to blame.
The recent history of our environment has taught us that the Drina curve is not easily corrected. Slobodan Milošević, the creator of two eyes in one head, infamously tried to correct "historical injustices" to the Serbian people in the SFRY. We saw how it ended - the Balkans are still paying the consequences of his venture. Unfortunately, the thesis about the danger of Serbia is being pulled out of the drawer again. Finally, it was the turn of "Serbian Sparta". It seems to me that certain politicians in Terazije, standing on the side of Serbia, are the most threatening to Serbia and Orthodoxy with their politics. He defended Free Serbia from Vardar to Triglav, and entrusted his followers to defend it in "Serbian Sparta". When they defend Serbia in "Sparta", then only Serbia remains to defend Serbia there as well.
Because today in Montenegro we have a crooked Drina and protagonists who, each in their own way, want to correct it. At the same time, both of them forget that correcting historical mistakes leads to new ones, so these mistakes must be corrected by making new ones... and so on indefinitely. NATO bombs are still hot enough to forget what correcting historical mistakes brings. Can the historical mistakes of 1918 be corrected without making new ones? Can the mistakes of Avnojev's Yugoslavia be corrected? Maybe they can, but I have no doubt that it can be very painful. I remind all those who quickly forgot his life's work about Slob. He promised at the meeting in Kosovo Polje that "no one must beat you". Which is, yes, he didn't lie to them, because Slobo didn't promise or guarantee that they wouldn't be bombed with depleted uranium.
In democratic Montenegro, and we pride ourselves on being democrats, everyone has the right to their own opinion. He has the right to express civil and religious discontent at protests, rallies and rallies. That right must not be denied to anyone, and it is good that it is not denied to anyone. The other side doesn't think so. And that is their democratic parvo. Let them think and express their feelings in the same way if they feel like it. Democratic Montenegro is this. And the most important thing is that both of them must tolerate the opinion of the other side and understand that the only way to solve the problem that our society is facing today is through dialogue. Church litigations are the right of every person in Montenegro to express their opinion on disagreement with the law. The other side expresses its disagreement with litia and puts itself on the side of Montenegro. Fortunately, these rights, I repeat and remind them, democratic Montenegro guarantees to both. This fact should by no means be ignored. It would certainly be disastrous to politicize the protest against the law. It would be unacceptable for the government to change in secular Montenegro from the streets led by "apolitical" theologians, especially not those who swear by God and curse to "dig themselves up and rub their seeds" on everyone who does not think like them, agreed with with the eye in the head from Serbia or not. Whoever does not like the government should change it with the power of the ballot box. It is a democracy to which "two eyes in one head" swear.
A friend from Belgrade tells me that, even though I have lived abroad for a long time, I still speak pure Serbian, and my former roommate from the student dormitory, from Nikšić, that I should speak Montenegrin. These lines are written in the literary Serbian-Croatian that I learned at school, and I know that both of them will understand me even though they claim that the language I speak no longer exists. Readers who are every Thursday and Sunday at litias in defense of Serbia in Montenegro also understand, as well as those who defend Montenegro against them.
I concluded above that the problem can only be solved through dialogue. It takes two to tango. And for dialogue too. Does Montenegro have the patience for dialogue? Is there tolerance in Montenegro? Does Montenegro need Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu? Does Montenegro need a South African Truth and Reconciliation Court?
Meanwhile, the Drina flows and curves. Just as Mother Nature, perhaps by mistake, created the curve. We should let it flow, the curve. We should not right the historical injustice of Mother Nature. Although she could have been more generous towards the Drina and created it straight, like an arrow, rather than bending, tormenting and curving right and left. Or to fix it anyway. That it no longer flows through Visegrad. Let's demolish the unnecessary Ćuprija of Mehmed Pasha Sokolović... We in the Balkans have the strength, knowledge, and above all, the will to correct mistakes. It's a small thing for us. We were capable of demolishing old cities, then rebuilding them and making them even more beautiful and even older than they were. It is important to have the good will and strength of the crowd.
It is fortunate that Andrić has already written On the Drina Bridge.
Bonus video:
