The aggressive disruption of 'Peshmerga' film and attack on Bernard-Henri Levy
French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy was in Serbia this week to showcase his acclaimed documentary film “Peshmerga” about the Kurds and their role in the fight against ISIS.
Just as Levi was about to address the audience gathered at the Belgrade Cultural Center on Wednesday, a woman from the audience ran past him and threw a pie in his face.
Levy continued to speak until a young man representing the New Young Communist League of Yugoslavia (Novi SKOJ) climbed onto the stage holding up a banner that read “Bernard Levy advocates imperialist murders.”
Levy responded by shouting in French, “Long live democracy!”
A brawl broke out at one point between a protester in the audience and Levy before security escorted the protesters out and the rest of the event had to be cancelled.
Levy is known for his criticism of 1990s Balkan wars and Serbian nationalist policies.
In itself, the aggressive disruption of a film festival by a
group of nationalistic Serbian communists deserves little attention, so
thoroughly does it discredit the pathetic individuals who committed it.
It is indeed regrettable that the people of Belgrade were
prevented from discussing the future of ISIS, its criminal endeavor, and the
valiant struggle of the Kurdish Peshmerga.
But, unfortunately—as all my Serbian friends have told
me—this act of violence reflects something that those friends and all the
country’s believers in democracy endure on a daily basis: pressure, insults,
bullying, propaganda, and media functioning in the service of the regime. As
well as groups that, like the one that acted yesterday, are tolerated and even
manipulated by the authorities.
My Serbian friends, you live under a regime that calls itself
by a new name—a “democrature.” It is a dictatorship that makes use of universal
suffrage and the appearance of democracy to bring civil society to heel and
stifle Serbians’ aspirations to freedom.
You still enjoy real freedoms, of course. But often, it’s as
if Milosevic, the dictator toppled in 2000, were still in power. Milosevic
lite. Milosevic 2.0, without the war. An heir to the Milosevic who was hostile
to culture and a stranger to freedom of the spirit and to historical truth. You
live with a former Milosevic minister who is interfering with the duty to
remember and with the work of mourning the horrors of the war in Bosnia, of the
ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, and of the torture and repression of Serbian
citizens.
At the same time, your recently elected president, Mr. Vusic,
calls himself a European and claims to want to lead Serbia into the European
Union.
And on their side, Europeans, in my country and others, play
along and take his statements at face value.
Why is that? Because the same perception of the Balkans has
prevailed for a century: turbulent people always stirring up trouble, unsuited
for democracy, people who supposedly need a strong leader to tame them—in the
present case a mixture of Viktor Orban et Recip Erdogan who wants Europe but
without Europe’s values and who the Europeans hope will serve as a barricade
against the influx of migrants fleeing war.
In the face of all that, my Serbian friends, I am here to
show my solidarity.
Goran Markovic (the Serbian director of the film),
Philip David (a Serbian writer), cherished companions from Vreme and Danas, you
are (exactly as when I first met you a quarter-century ago at the dawn of the
wars in Yugoslavia, not far from where we are now in Belgrade) in a state of
resistance.
You were on the front lines, like the great Yugoslavian
novelist Danilo Kis and so many others, against the suicide of your nation at
the hands of nationalists. On the front lines you remain—and I admire you. You
are the real Europeans. It is you who deserve Europe’s aid. And it is you
whom I have come, once again, to honor.
~ Bernard-Henri Levy