Uros Antic took part in the Peace Camp in Split 2018 and is involved in our partner organization in Vukovar and at YU-Peace. Outraged by the nationalist propaganda on the occasion of the annual commemoration day for Croatian fighters in Vukovar, he posted the following text on the Internet.

Another November 18th is over. The visitors have returned to their vibrant cities and left us in a ghost town.

Thank you, my dearest homeland, for caring so much about the people in Vukovar. Thank you for burying our coffin one meter deeper and for planting new flowers in the meadow of hate. Even if it’s tough, we have to finally admit how bad we actually are.

I hardly have words for the bitterness I feel towards you. With your tirades you managed to get us young people thinking about who we grew up with and break off friendships. Let’s finally live a normal life in peace!

Are you aware that your brainwashing through stories and films led my friend, who was like a brother to me, to post “za dom, spremi” (Ustascha greeting during World War II, comparable to Sieg Heil) on his social media? What do I have to prepare for next year? That he points a gun at me because I’m a Serb?

Maybe someone will read this and say: What does this little Chetnik (swearword for Serbs) know about the war? I don’t want to know anything about it, I want to have friends who don’t post such messages. I want to live in a real “hero city”, where tolerance flourishes, young people smile and the heroes are proud that Milica and Martina commemorate together hand in hand the victims of August 8 and November 18 and comfort each other in their grief.

Believe me, this is the only way we can have a future, it is the only chance for our city to rise from its grave. None of the „defenders“, not even a Serbian nationalist, stays in the city for a long time, their theatrical appearances are quickly over.

We must and will continue to live in Vukovar, and it is getting harder because you silence our best brains. I feel locked up here, you are hindering our initiatives, blocking our future, and like the noble Romans in the arena, you sit back and wait for us to kill each other.

Vukovar can achieve anything, it can be a wonderful little town that is proud of the coexistence of its citizens. But you bound the city with a chain that it can’t break by itself and that holds it in damned 1991.

I don’t ask for much. I just ask you to leave us alone and allow us young people to form our own opinion. We will be better off without your forced interpretations. And don’t worry, our victims will not be forgotten. We will mourn them. Everyone. Together and without hate. We can and we have to do that, for ourselves and for our city.