Serbia in shock and in mourning

In two days, Serbia witnessed two massacres in which 17 people died and several were injured, many of whom were minors. Unprecedented facts that have shocked the country so far. The news of the events and the behaviour of the media and politicians after the massacres

On the morning of May 3, 13-year-old K. K. entered the school he attended, "Vladislav Ribnikar", in central Belgrade, pulled a gun out of his backpack, and shot and killed a janitor and two students. Then he continued along the corridor, reloaded his gun, and entered the classroom reserved for history lessons, shooting the teacher and the students.

Eight students and a janitor were killed, while a teacher and six students were hospitalised with injuries of varying degrees of severity.

After the shooting K. K. went out into the school yard, called the police, and turned himself in. In his backpack, in addition to the 9 caliber gun with which he fired, there were four Molotov cocktails and a small caliber weapon.

Veselin Milić, head of the Belgrade police, said that K. K. had been planning the massacre for some time and that he had a list of the students he intended to kill.

His parents were also arrested. The father is suspected of having failed to keep the weapons with the necessary diligence, thus seriously endangering public safety.

The noise of the news and the silence of suffering

It is difficult to trace the history of news, statements, misinformation, and speculation that occurred that day. And it is even more difficult to describe the climate of disbelief, shock, and sadness that spread throughout the country as news of the massacre and the victims continued to arrive.

Only a few media outlets behaved in a professional manner, the others competed to see who was faster and more detailed in giving a portrait of the killer boy, reporting that he was a commendable student, coming from a good family from which he had received a strict education, mistreated at school, who practiced shooting with his father and who had taken his weapons from a safe kept in the house.

At the same time, however, many continued to report the statements allegedly made by the police, which portrayed the boy as an insensitive and shrewd villain, aware of the fact that, as a minor, he is not criminally liable and therefore cannot be imprisoned. Some of this information was released by President Aleksandar Vučić. It is not the first time that Vučić has publicly revealed details that emerged in the context of the investigations, details which in this case also concern the private life of a family.

Once the judicial inspection was concluded, citizens began to gather spontaneously in front of the school where the shooting took place. The day after the tragedy, the area surrounding the school was inundated with students from various schools in the capital who organised on social media to come and express their condolences. For days now, a surreal silence has reigned in the streets around the school, usually full of children and noise from the clubs. Citizens, parents, and children continue to go in front of the school, carrying white flowers, toys, and sweets, writing messages and lighting candles.

Serbian citizens are in shock because, although several multiple murders had occurred in Serbia in the past, this is the first time that a massacre has occurred inside a school. Dismay reigns in the region, days of mourning have also been declared in neighbouring Montenegro and in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Throughout the region, from Zagreb to Prishtina, candles are lit in memory of the killed kids.

In recent days, various hypotheses have circulated on the reasons behind the tragedy that occurred in Belgrade. Some insist on the violent legacy of the wars of the 1990s, some blame the media controlled by the government and the leadership itself that daily send messages that trivialise, and even encourage crime, others emphasise the constant increase in violence between peers and the degradation of the school system and traditional values. Now former Minister of Education Branko Ružić even declared that the massacre in the "Vladislav Ribnikar" school is a consequence of exposure to "video games and Western values".

It seems that, in this cacophony of opinions and analyses, the voice least listened to is that of psychologists who have warned about the so-called copycat  phenomenon, whereby media coverage of mass murders increases the possibility that similar crimes will be repeated in the following days. A scenario we witnessed in the aftermath of the Belgrade tragedy.

Another massacre

The morning after the massacre in the "Vladislav Ribnikar" school, a fifteen-year-old girl entered the building of the "Ruđer Bošković" high school – which she had attended for a certain period and left on her own initiative – and with a kitchen knife attacked a peer of hers and then also a teacher who tried to stop her. Luckily, no one was seriously injured. Then, during the day, there were several incidents  in some schools in the capital as attempts to imitate the massacre carried out in the "Ribnikar" school.

On the same day, the police had to intervene twenty-five times in different parts of the country due to – as President Vučić said – the "horrendous behavior of young people who imitate the killer", but also due to false reports of alleged incidents.

Then, in the evening, a new tragedy happened. In the village of Dubona, near Mladenovac, a short distance from Belgrade, Uroš Blažić, twenty-one, opened fire with an automatic weapon after an argument, and then continued the shooting in the nearby villages of Malo Orašje and Šepšin. He killed eight people and injured thirteen. The youngest victim was fifteen, the oldest twenty-five.

The hunt for the assassin continued throughout the night, with the deployment of about six hundred agents from the special units and helicopters of the Serbian police, and ended the next morning with the arrest of Blažić. During the inspection of his house, numerous illegally held weapons were found. Once again, President Vučić revealed several details that emerged from the investigation, including that, when asked by the police about why he fired, the assassin replied by repeating just one word: contempt.

Eventually Vučić defined this second massacre as a terrorist act, motivating this explanation with the fact that the shirt worn by the assassin read "Generation 88" which, according to the president, alludes to the eighth letter of the Latin alphabet and the Nazi salute Heil Hitler. When it later emerged that the writing is linked to a simple school trip, the media, in an attempt to remedy the damage caused by Vučić's comment, shifted the discussion to K.K., and now write that in fact the perpetrator of the first massacre admired Hitler. This is just one of many examples of the schizophrenic reporting of such tragedies that is encouraged by the comments of the ruling leadership.

Video by Massimo Moratti

Government measures and opposition protests

The fact has not gone unnoticed that none of the leaders of the state, neither the president nor the prime minister, went to the site of the massacres in Belgrade and that of Mladenovac to express their condolences together with the citizens. In front of the Belgrade school gate there were only Branko Ružić, former Education minister, Danica Grujičić, Health minister, and the patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church Porfirije. Aleksandar Šapić, mayor of Belgrade, placed a wreath in memory of the victims under the window of his office in the city council headquarters, located a few hundred metres from the site of the massacre.

In the meantime, the government has approved a number of measures  in response to last week's massacres. The law on weapons and ammunition will be amended, tougher penalties will be introduced, and a thirty-day deadline has been established within which citizens can return illegally held weapons without incurring penalties. President Vučić proposed lowering the age limit for criminal responsibility from 14 to 12 and even suggested reinstating the death penalty, but – as he himself stated – it was Prime Minister Brnabić who dissuaded him from doing so since the idea is inconsistent with European standards.

The succession of confused – often even wrong – messages which marked the days following the massacres prompted the opposition and many citizens to gather after the days of national mourning and to organise parades in Belgrade and in other cities throughout the country to protest against violence.

Before the start of the protest, during one of his speeches President Vučić declared that the opposition is "the worst scum that sees its only political opportunity in the tragedy of Serbia", to then add: "We will always have to fight against these hyenas, for the salvation and future of our country!”. So soon the focus shifted from crimes to politics.

The opposition is calling for the resignation of members of the Regulatory Body for Electronic Media (REM), the timely suspension of media programmes that promote violence, and the dismissal of ministers who objectively bear part of the responsibility for the recent massacres. One of the requests of the opposition was granted on the eve of the protest, when Education Minister Branko Ružić resigned.

Contrary to the announcements of the regime media, which predicted chaos and violence in the streets, the citizens, who took to the streets en masse to protest, marched through the streets of Belgrade in a silent commemorative procession, while in Novi Sad they threw flowers in the Danube, thus expressing their sorrow for the victims.

Serbia is still in shock and one of the messages we will remember after the recent massacres is the one written at the entrance to the Vladislav Ribnikar school: "Talk to the children".