What is it that makes young people take away each other’s lives?

Every parent thinks about how to fill their child’s time. Apart from the obligations at school, they enroll them in foreign language courses, in creative skills courses, dance classes, music classes, information science classes, sports activities, etc. All this depending on the child’s affinities. Every parent that is a fan of a sports club dreams of taking their child to sports competitions. I haven’t. I have given up long ago on watching sports competitions at stadiums in Macedonia, in the 90’s when with my friends we encountered a fan group in the middle of a Square, chanting insulting words about my ethnicity and religion. That insult provoked revolt, but also a wish for revenge, not to go in the opposite fan group and to tell them off. On the contrary, I gave up on all of them!

Here, but also in the region, there are messed up values in terms of this issue. Fan groups at sporting events chant hate speech, and hate speech, unfortunately, leads to hate crime. In Sarajevo, public transportation does not run when a city derby is being played, because fans go and destroy public property. Bosnian Croats chant “knife, wire, Srebrenica”, wanting to show how much greater Croats they are than those in Croatia. Paris is demolished by fans after the victory at the world cup. And not to point out others. This is not the first time, it was especially frequent in the period of the regime, for fan groups to be used for inciting violence, with the purpose of realizing certain political agendas. And the same is not lacking now, for the opposition to manipulate with the feelings of the families and fan groups whose member was the victim Nikola.

The life of every person is sacred, just as his honor, property and family are, and nobody has the right to willfully take another person’s life away. Condolences to the family and to his closest ones. The protest is a constitutionally guaranteed right. Yesterday I watched the protest for justice for Nikola, led by father Ivica. The comments I heard, addressed to the police, are not any different from the chanting at the violent protests against the changing of the name. Father Ivica was successfully trying to calm them down, to give a peaceful connotation to the protest, like one such protest deserves. At one moment, while calming them down, he said: “We have a responsibility and they have a responsibility, and the politicians have the greatest responsibility”. I agree Father Ivica. Every function bears weight that is called responsibility. But depends on what direction and with what purpose this is being expressed, and what one means to achieve by it. I would let the judiciary deal with the politicians that are creating destabilization, as well with those carrying it out. The process for one and the other are already in progress. We have no religious or secular mandate to judge anyone. But we do have a responsibility, regardless of whether we are believers or believe in whomever, to reexamine our own actions.

How many of us have urged the fan groups on the social networks to refrain from chanting filled with hate speech? How many of us have sat down to talk to the leaders of the fan groups in order to calm things down? How many of us have tried to explain to the fan groups that the citizens are refraining from taking their children to sports competitions so that they don’t have to listen such chanting? How many of us have tried to explain to the youth and the fan groups that the sports ground is not a field for competition of political and nationalistic ideologies among the citizens?

Here’s a challenge for NGO’s dealing with peace projects, sit down the young people from various fan groups, play a friendly match on a neutral field, not with a ball, but with words. Wake up the humanity among the youth, explain to them that every one of us is human made of flesh and blood, regardless of ethnic, religious, political or club affinity. Explain to them that every insult hurts the same, sometimes even more than a physical hit, and that every mother cries for her child. Explain to them that sport unites, and that their only settlement with the opposing fan group is the victory of the team that will be cheered the best while it is playing. May all of that result with a hand shake, with reconciliation, mutual remorse and forgiveness, and of course, a proposal for a code among the fan groups. For them to agree, to sign, and with all forces to try to respect it. That would bring lasting peace among citizens, would protect the fan groups from political manipulations, would return parents and their children back to the stands, and above all, would protect the honor and life of one another.

Translated from Macedonian by: Natasha Cvetkovska