Dizajn Slaviša Savić

Six days ago we published an article by three authors who, very seriously, using facts and in a civil manner, analyzed a PhD dissertation of the current minister of the police, and immediately half of the state apparatus came down on us, i.e. Pescanik.

The level of aggression, lies and nerve is no longer funny. For six days and six nights somebody has been using significant resources of all kinds to hack our website, telling us that there is no place for us or our authors in this country.

When we decided to publish that article we knew that it would cost us. However, everything that happened afterwards became surreal. Why is there such hysteria of the ministers, the prime minister, members of the parliament, owner of Megatrend? What are they defending by defending the indefensible, claiming that publishing of that article is part of an international conspiracy to bring down Aleksandar Vucic. Are they all crazy? And this is not a rhetorical question.

Some people are already tired of listening about plagiarism, Pescanik and hacking of our website for days, saying that this country has far greater problems. And we agree. We, too, are tired of it. We just want them to call off their dogs that violate our right to exist. We, too, think that this country has many other and much bigger problems than one fake doctorate and the hacking of one website.

The fact that they won’t leave us alone, that they humiliate various people by forcing them to publicly lie about the doctorate of their colleague Stefanovic, is not our choice. That doesn’t say anything about Pescanik, but it says something about the country we live in.

This latest madness can’t end well: the issue of plagiarism won’t be resolved in a place where such problems are resolved, because no one with power in this country wants that.

Half of the ministers in this government teach at Megatrend or got their PhDs there. The police, whose chief got his PhD at that same Megatrend, is supposed to chase hunt down who keep hacking our website for days, while the most promising leads point to Megatrend.

Prime minister Aleksandar Vucic himself set the tone of this madness, being angry for many things, including the fact the OSCE and the European Commission don’t trust him when he says that there is no media censorship in Serbia. By diagonally reading his protégé’s doctorate, armed with a law school degree, he immediately announced orbi et urbi that the doctorate is as pure as the morning dew, trying to make everyone shut up and visit Angela Merkel unburdened. This way, besides the questions of Serbia’s position regarding the Ukrainian crisis, the German chancellor will ask him about the state of the media in Serbia.

I don’t know how much longer the world is going to tolerate the fact that our prime minister spends part of his day imitating Vladimir Putin, part imitating Vojislav Seselj, and then occasionally and briefly Angela Merkel and Zoran Djindjic, but here at home that show is over.

He and his associates and minions are using aggression, disqualifications and violence more and more often. As if they want to let us know that in future, anyone who criticizes them or asks them anything will be silenced by all means necessary. Of course, all for the sake of healing of the state and EU accession.

Even during the floods it became clear that the prime minister will deal with the miscreants, as he called us, without mercy. The media, crippled by the democrats, are now torn to the ground. The Internet remains the only field of freedom.

Thousands of people inhabit that virtual Serbia. They built their communities there, their roads and their squares. They can’t, and don’t want to wallow in the mud produced daily by this government and their media.

If Aleksandar Vucic and his echelons actually charge at those squares and streets, at some point, those people won’t have any other choice but to come down to earth, to the actual streets and actual squares.

In this country, there are still a lot of people ready to pay any price to stay free.

Translated by Marijana Simic

Peščanik.net, 12.06.2014.