Bojanić Lalović: When young people see criminals turning into "heroes", they learn that violence is permitted and rewarded

The beating of a 15-year-old boy in Zeta has opened up many new questions, but also confronted us with the realization that all violence is normal today, said Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) MP Zoja Bojanić Lalović.

"A society in which silence has become synonymous with safety, and the spoken truth an obvious risk, relativizes the phenomenon of three young men attacking a peer, without anyone's reaction, to the point of banality. This is not a coincidence, it is a mirror of a system that is silent when it should react, when it must do everything not only to punish the bullies, but also to help those who have experienced violence. Much is not only important here, but urgent for examination. It is about a minor, about the first days in a new school environment, about the beginning of a new chapter in life. However, upon entering he was met with hatred and attack, but most of all, indifference and a lack of empathy. What did we tell him? That he should be silenced or, even more seriously, that strength lies neither in arguments nor in knowledge, but in poetry," the statement reads.

At the same time, as she said, before the eyes of the entire society, journalists are being threatened as symbols of free thought, monuments are being erected or personalities who are known in history for their crimes and bloody traces are being celebrated.

"When young people see criminals being turned into 'heroes' and their misdeeds being covered up with false myths, they learn that violence is not only permitted, but also rewarded. That is the most dangerous message a society can send to its youth. Montenegro can and must be a society of freedom and solidarity, not violence and false heroes. This is the only way we will help young people cope and respond to all life's challenges, and this is the only way we will develop tolerance, empathy and the desire to always be better in them," said the DPS MP.