Why?!

I was always curious... I once asked my mother: Mom, how come everything is white?! I asked my mother - why is Jesus white, with blue eyes and blond hair? Why are all the men white at the Last Supper? Angels are white, the Pope, Mother Mary is white... I asked my mother: Mom, when we die, will we go to heaven too... She answered: Of course we will. Then I asked her: Then why are the angels white in all these pictures? Then I added: Ah, I know! If white people are in heaven, black people are in the kitchen, preparing honey and milk! Why can't I have steak, mom, I don't like honey and milk. They are only laxatives. And are you sure there are enough toilets in paradise...

I've always wondered why Miss America is always white. All those black women in America, with beautiful looks, skin, curves - but Miss America is always white. And Miss World is white. And Miss Universe. Then we have White House cigarettes, then the White Swan soap brand, or the White King, White Cloud wipes, White Rain shampoo, White Tornado floor cleaner... Everything is white. And the angel's fruit cake is white, and the devil's cake is chocolate!

I asked: Mom, why is everything white? And the president lives in the White House. And Mary from the children's song has a white lamb, the fleece is white and Snow White is as white as snow... Everything was white, even Santa Claus... And everything bad is black. An ugly duckling is black and a cat that brings bad luck is also black... Even if I blackmail you it's blackmail - why can't I blackmail you with whitemail... Well, I've always been curious, I've always asked why….

BUT SO DOES FRASER

This monologue, the chatterbox from Louisville, the greatest boxer of all time, but also one of the greatest promoters of human equality and the rights of people of color, Muhammad Ali, uttered under his breath, for the BBC, sometime in the fall of 1971. And that very year, on March 8, held is the historic Ali - Fraser match, three days before my 9th birthday. That day, just about Ali, or Clay as we called him as kids, I also asked my mother - why! We were preparing for the late night, that is morning, and the live broadcast of the match from Madison Square Garden. In the cheering atmosphere that was spiced up by even the closest neighbors who did not yet have a television in their home, a discussion began about who was rooting for whom. I had no dilemma - for Klej, of course. Because of his dancing, skill, charm, irresistibility... I was still a child to know and understand the significance of his involvement that had nothing to do with sports. A rebellion against the Vietnam War, a change of religion for the same reasons, and an unwavering fight for the rights of African Americans. In a time when there were only black people. At my glorification of Ali, my mother angrily retorted - He is silent, biting his tongue. You know nothing, Fraser is ours... I didn't give up, staying in the world of boxing, announcing the great victory of my idol, but as my mother didn't give up on Frazer either, I asked her at the end - why?! Why are you rooting for Frasier when Clay is irresistible… Red in the face, she came up to me, gently grabbed my ear and whispered the same: Fraser didn't flinch...

Although at the moment I didn't know what the word meant - to Turkish, I didn't even understand why she felt the need to whisper it in my ear. I concluded that she did it to punish me, pulling me by that same ear.

A year later, I was 12, in a different situation, but with the same meaning, so again the problem was diversity, I understood what this means to Turkish, and why my mother whispered the thing about Fraser in my ear 3-4 years ago. The story is related to my first falling in love. The girl from the neighborhood was called Drita. She was Albanian, Catholic. The only thing that mattered to me was that she had a wonderful name, long black hair that fell down her shoulders, almost imperceptible freckles that dotted her face, and unforgettable eyes, deep and green like the Morača river that flows through our city. The mother then chose the wrong side. She started with Drita is not for you, she is a year older, to finally make a point - she is not ours! I asked my mother again - why. She replied coldly: She is from Malisorka...

Since I was already a "big" guy, this time I didn't need clarification of what my mother wanted to say. Then I remembered 1971 and that night when she was rooting for Fraser. I already knew it was then to Turkish meant changing religion by converting to Islam, and my mother whispered all this to me because our first neighbors, the Šehovićs, were watching the match with us, in the same apartment, in front of the television. Muslims. With whom my mother drank coffee every morning, often prepared pancakes or priganice, for all our children, as she and Tuna Šehović called us all. And so until we moved and changed the neighborhood. Until today, therefore, I did not understand and did not want to ask, so that my misfortune would not take on even greater proportions. Why another religion was a heresy for her only in my upbringing, but not in everyday communication outside the home. If she spread the best possible relations with her neighbors or colleagues at work, without expressing any prejudices, why did she feel the need to plant the seed of racism and stereotypes in her child?! It seemed to me that she calculated, like any mother, how she could best protect her child. And then the tradition full of various conspiracy theories was more important to her than her personal experience. The stereotypes that she took from her village, while growing up, convinced her that children should be protected from those who are different and different. Because when difficult and troubled times come, it is best to see that "blood is not water". Be it religion, nation, skin color or name. For her, the Šehovićs were just neighbors, and that's why she adored them, while the Muslims were some other, unknown enemies, from history textbooks and the stories of her parents and ancestors.

BELGRADE IN THE EIGHTIES

Then it was time for studies. Fortunately, there was no journalism at the faculties in Montenegro, so that's how I arrived in Belgrade. The year was 1981. Tito had just died, the bureaucracy he left behind to rule immediately began to show signs of disorganization and incompetence. The great country of SFRY, where I was born, began to shake. And again, through sports, I had a new, strange experience that definitely convinced me that fighting for something different is actually my calling in life.

Again, like Ali, I asked why and again, like once from my mother, now from my college colleagues, I got a similar answer. Namely, it was the final of the Yugoslav Cup in football, the iconic Marakana stadium in Belgrade, I was on the north stand with four friends from Belgrade. But the most interesting part again takes place before the match itself. The official announcer announces, in front of 80 fans, an ideological performance - jumps of paratroopers from a helicopter above the stadium, who will land in the center of the playing field with the flags of all our republics. The audience rises to its feet, the announcer announces one after the other, the paratroopers and the flags they carry, the applause subsides and there is no sign of anything bad. Until the moment when the official's voice announces that a paratrooper is landing in the center of the playground with the flag of the Republic of Croatia. As in the previous few cases, I start to applaud, but what's the point, when almost the entire stadium was overwhelmed by the deafening noise of the whistle! I was taken aback, I didn't understand what it was about, I asked Mark, my friend from college, who was closest to me - why? Why is this parachute different from the previous ones? Marko answered with a smile: So who are you rooting for?! For Zvezda, I answered briefly. And you? The answer followed: if only they weren't blue!

Again, nothing was clear to me at the moment. Except that, as in the case of Muhammad Ali, the problem is in the colors. It's not her fault, therefore, only black - the mind knows that white and blue are eclipsed. In color, I again saw the imprint of people's fears and stereotypes, their unwillingness to accept the different and diverse.

THE NINETES

And when the dominant population of a society has a problem with stereotypes, when they are closer to conspiracy theories than scientific discoveries or unquestionable arguments, when their closeness is determined by religion and nation and not by values ​​and similar considerations, then you have a tor and not a state. Then sheep live in that area, not citizens. And then a shepherd or a leader is our daily need. Thus, at the end of the 80s, some anonymous communist apparatchik Slobodna Milošević became the Leader. And the citizen is drowned in the people. He quickly intoxicated him with nationalism, blinded him with hate speech towards a different, different religion and nation, a different opinion, so that guns and tanks would then be distributed. It was October 1991. Dragana, my wife, had just given birth, we had a son Filip, and somehow at the same time I received a call for mobilization. My fellow citizens, neighbors, relatives, the vast majority of them, were already under arms, in a shameful campaign and aggression against Konavle and Dubrovnik. A story from my student days came to my memory from somewhere. A college friend, a student from Palestine, told me how Yasser Arafat had to sleep in a different place every night. To save his head from the enemy. I was faced with a similar choice - to save face and dignity. At the price of losing my head. The propaganda was so relentless that one day it seemed to my mother that she would be without a son. After losing her brother, father, three uncles and two uncles in the Second World War. All were in the partisans. When one day, in the autumn of 1991, the Minister of Defense, one Babić, came to the session of the Parliament of Montenegro, and in front of the entire public that watched the broadcast of that historic session, he announced that all deserters who refuse military service will be arrested and briefly shot in the process. I just stopped by the apartment to see Dragana and Filip, grab a sandwich and go to the new shelter that my wife and I had planned for that evening. The phone rang. Dragana was nursing Filip, I had to answer, fearing that on the other side I might not hear the voice of some military commander chasing apostates and deserters. So I just picked up the phone, waited to hear the voice first and figure out who it was. Instead of a voice, a cry was heard. And sobs. Žeka... Žeka... It was my mother. It was easier for me. What's the matter, why are you crying, I asked her, although of course I knew - why. They will shoot you if you don't answer the call. Now the minister said, she spoke! Furious and desperate, I just slammed the receiver down and hung up. I took a sandwich, kissed my wife and child, and left. To the new shelter, of course. I betrayed my mother again. And that evening, while I was trying to sleep with our godfathers Radović, I asked that minister Babić, his commanders, Milošević, Bulatović and Đukanović - why. Why is our yesterday's neighbor and brother a Croat now an Ustasha, why should he be robbed, humiliated, displaced, even killed. Why are Muslims and Albanians still enemies of the neighbors? Why did they become overnight Balije and Shiptari. Why the war, the biggest in Europe after the Second World War, instead of parting with a smile and champagne as Czechs and Slovaks. But in every bad thing, says my mother, you should look for a good side. The war directed me to journalism. To protest against every kind of violence and promote every kind of freedom.

THE INDEPENDENT PRESS OR THE DANCE WITH DEATH

That's how the magazine began to be published Circle, which will later flow into the weekly Monitor. It will be the first press in the history of Montenegro that was not controlled by the government and that will spread the ideas of diversity all these decades.

But, as with any great true mission, a heavy price was paid for this promotion of free and independent media. Just as Clay had to lose his freedom, change his religion, and he never stops asking why all his life, so we also promoted the values ​​and importance of a different and free opinion, unaware that we might be risking our lives by doing so. Even when one of us was killed.

It was May 28, 2004. The previous evening, my colleague and friend Duško Jovanović, editor-in-chief of a competing daily, was killed. Then. A little after midnight, after the newspaper went to press, he left the newsroom building, crossed the street, got into his car, and then, while he was fastening his seat belt before starting the engine, he was bombarded by a burst from a "golf" in motion. Like in the American films about Al Capone's terror on the streets of New York, in the 30s. After a sleepless night, I'm sitting in a cafe with the editor-in-chief News, we are speechless in front of the committed crime, we can barely form the words and I ask again - why. Why was Duško killed, but why wasn't I?! Who and in what way made the decision that a chief editor and founder of the newspaper should be killed?! And why Duško and not Željko?! A few hours later, son Filip, who was 13 at the time, answered such a difficult question. Namely, when I came home around 17:XNUMX p.m., Filip opened the door - when he saw me, his jaw just trembled from the crying that was pouring in, he hugged me tightly and whispered: It's good, dad, that you're not the editor-in-chief! It was not, of course, an answer to my previous why, but an expression of the pain and anxiety of a child. Escaping the thought that his father could also have been killed the night before, he found solace in the interpretation that directors are not responsible for criticism of the authorities and the powerful by the media as editors-in-chief. And that makes his dad the director, safe.

Until then, I thought that Montenegro was not Russia, although I knew that Djukanovic was the same as Putin. Less than a year before the murder of Jovanović, another journalist and editor whom I knew personally was killed. Yuri Shchekochihin. We met and spent a few unforgettable days in Herceg Novi, on the Montenegrin sea, where Milica and MDI organized the biggest media conference that Montenegro can remember. Not only until that 1999, but also until today. He worked for New newspaper, the only independent media outlet in Putin's Russia. I admired a man who talks with such passion about research topics related to corruption in the Russian Duma or covert operations of the FSB, not caring about the questions of many colleagues about his security. Many years later, after my own experience of physical attack, I realized that Yuri was thinking similar to me that night - why would a regime, no matter how unscrupulous, beat or kill a journalist if he was just doing his job. Unfortunately, in the summer of 2003, after returning from Beslan, where he was reporting on a heinous terrorist attack that the Putin regime tried to minimize and cover up, Yuri was poisoned. Most likely on the plane he was flying back to Moscow. He was transferred to the hospital where he died after 12 days. The Russian prosecutor's office never accepted the request New newspapers and conducted an investigation into that crime.

About ten years later, as a tribute to Duško and Yuri whom I knew personally, but also to all the other murdered colleagues, I wrote a text about journalism in autocratic societies or dictatorships. The title was Dance with Death: That's what happens when you live in a devastated country and a humiliated society. Where journalism requires courage, fear and trepidation prevail. And silence. Everything that happens is expected, nothing that is said is shameful. No matter how contrived and false. We live on a desert island where cowards rule, the powerful and rich decide, they curse over the infamous headlines - the worst. A few of us naive people don't give up, they don't want to see the desert around them and show the pain they feel from the crucifixion. We fight in public, we cry in silence. Because if we were to show fear, what would be left of those for whom we are the only hope. Who are not allowed to speak or write, but who have not stopped believing.

WAITING

But my mother could not understand it. Now she asked - why. Why do I have to bark at the stars and drive out justice. Why doesn't someone else put their head on the stump. Why am I called to change society? Mother asked, with the well-known conclusion: a shot with a horned always loses. Whenever he brought up this topic, I would just turn my back and walk out because I knew that every answer or explanation was useless and every word was superfluous. Because her fear and anxiety are incurable. It will last as long as she lives or until the dictator falls. The words especially became redundant when I welcomed and "waited". It was the morning of September 2, 2007, the tenth anniversary of our diary News. Around three o'clock in the morning, I left the restaurant where we celebrated a significant jubilee, and headed for the car. Within reach of him, suddenly a trio of attackers descended on me. One, the commander-in-chief, was with a phantom, the other two only with baseballs. At first I thought that everything was just a bad dream, that I would wake up quickly, sweaty and scared, but still happy because everything was just a nightmare. When that didn't happen, I started to defend myself and try to pull myself out of the death grip... After five or six baseball blows, with a cracked cheekbone, a bruised meniscus and a lot of fluid on the body, as the doctors of the Clinical Center will say in a few hours , I managed to break free and run back towards the restaurant. The mercenaries also concluded that I had received the beating that I deserved and that the client of the work asked for, so they also ran their way.

I've never wondered why and I've never been as curious as I was that night. In the first minutes after the attack. Why did I annoy someone so much that they ordered my beating?! Why are different opinions and criticism so unwelcome in any person, even a dictator. Does he have children, I wondered that evening, thinking how will my mother live after this?! And only the children. And a woman. Why is the world so unfair that it gives the right to the powerful to decide on other people's lives, and violently if they feel like it?! I asked my mother in my mind, why did she give birth to me and raise me so stubborn, unwilling to back down or bend my tail even when life is at stake. I asked my mother why they beat me with a wooden and not a metal bat, is that a sign that I am not so guilty and that I deserve a lighter punishment?! I thought of Ali, whether he was similarly beaten or just tortured to go to Vietnam. That is, he agreed to remain silent.

I was curious again and if I could have done all that in the morning, when she woke up and heard the first news, I would have asked my mother... Of course I couldn't, it wasn't an opportunity, because she just cried... And repeated through tears that she couldn't shoot with a horned and that I survived this time by chance, but if I don't shut up, they will kill me next time. Like Duška, she repeated sobbing. In those moments, I thought about that evening, March 9, 1971, when she cheered for Fraser and I cheered for Ali, she cheered for non-freedom and I cheered for freedom, so even then everything was predetermined. It's only a matter of days before my mother gets to see her son in the ring, where he's Ali versus some cruel Frazier. Of course not innocent Joe, that's why this f - little. Frazers from injustice, inequality, lack of freedom... Who are bothered by any diversity. From the color of the skin to the color of criticism.

I could make a point and tell my mother that at the root of all persecution, all injustice and all violence, is an attempt to deny one's right to free choice. But, of course, I gave up because it would be futile. You don't know the rest of the story, but you have an inkling. My mother was more sick of such a life than a dictator was sick of his rule. She died before he fell. The rest of her life after that evening in September 2007, the mother spent in fear and waiting for the worst news, wondering, probably, why her son was so selfish that, for the sake of his mission and profession, he sacrificed the peace and tranquility of his loved ones, his family. She died satisfied, the dark forebodings did not come true, and the worst news did not arrive.

In his bestseller "Man's Search for Meaning" from 1963, famous psychotherapist and writer Viktor Frankl, who also had the experience of a camp inmate from the infamous Auschwitz, writes: "Don't aim for success - the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you will miss. Because success, like happiness, cannot be caught, it has to happen. I want you to listen to what your conscience tells you and do the best you can. Then you will experience - maybe sometime in the future - how success will follow because you forgot to think about it"...

WASHINGTON 2022.

Unfortunately, my mother did not live to see it. To see the fall of the dictator and that evening, it was September again but in 2022, in Washington she got the answer to the question she heard most often from me and which she asked herself most often - did everything make sense? I am going up to the stage of the National Press Club in Washington, entrance from 14th Street, where the Freedom Award awaits me, for my overall journalistic work, especially for the comments and opinions that I have been writing for years in News.

I see the award as a small victory for reliable information over fake news, the award is also a victory for the rule of law over corruption and nepotism, the award is at the same time a victory for the profession over organized crime, this award is also a triumph of reporting in the public interest over third and propaganda, finally, this award is also the victory of morality over immorality.

I hope that you understand what I have dedicated my life to, as well as what are the most important topics that our Vijesti media group has been dealing with for decades and every day. Thank you to all journalists, editors and employees of Vijesti, thank you to comrades and partners. Without the sacrifice of all those mentioned, even my sacrifice would have no meaning or result. Last but not least, thanks to my wife and children - only they know how much sweat, tears and even blood was laid for the result that led to this moment.

And before I spoke these words, I mentioned my mother, I said - if she was with us tonight, even she would finally be satisfied with her son. Even she would have to admit that it all made sense. And Ali's and this curiosity of mine.

(Media Diversity Institute)