PANEL DISCUSSION 2023
Mina ZIROJEVIĆ:
THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT IS LIKE THE TOWER OF BABEL
Well, dear friends,
it's really an honour and I'm more than happy to be again with all of us on this wonderful occasion of speaking freely with people that understand everything you said and you are not just one of part of the anti-values and changing-history people that you are probably all around for like we are. So I'm glad that even many years we are still here in the same positions, defending the same values and there are more and more of us. I am glad that now our countries also understand that there are more of us, and that we have formulated our demands partly right here for all these years. Of course, I still speak in my name and the name of Troboika and not as a member of government, because it's easier and you can speak more freely and you can speak, as I already spoke for years before.
Despite the drastic change in our world, our problems unfortunately remain the same, and they can be formulated as an attack on the core of the society, which is the family. The pension system, migrants. The development of anti-values lead us to conflicts on our doorsteps as a family and as a patriarchy. All the rights that are required have already been taken: love, empathy, generosity, which we already have taught by our families and our churches and covered all the requirements that they now ask. We are not against Europe. We are exactly the opposite. We would like to make Europe better and more unified, but on a sound foundations, as we have been heard today.
Sometimes it's very hard. The situation where Serbia is forced to leave the people and leave the really big part of her own tradition and territory, and leave the history and leave all the values that been taken in our hearts and our minds, and in everything we value, is more difficult every day for every person that lives there, every day, really the struggle. And it really goes from 90s to this day. And of course, I have to quote my dear friend from Croatia, it's a little bit easier when you are inside in the European Union than we are now. Challenging the idea. Should we go into European Union or stay on the border? On one side we are Europe, but on the values that are presenting by the Brussels it's really not easy and we think that we are not the right partner as Europe would like to. I've been going to European Parliament for years, and until recently I didn't remember what the building itself, like an architectural one, reminds me of. And then a few weeks ago, I looked at the picture of the Parliament and the picture of the Tower of Babel that we already spoken about. And I see a striking similarity. If you see the logo of the European Parliament, many, many languages, one voice, you cannot not to remember the story about the Babylon. And if you see the statue in front and that's a kidnapped Europe, you can still think the same that there is either a strange similarity or something that that are already taken and said we didn't just saw it. Maybe it's the easiest to show everything through education.
There is a transformation of the facts and we let the most important thing to be forgotten. But the bad thing that led to two, maybe now three wars, but also the common history we forgot and shaped the growth of the unification of Europe. Our dear friend from Austria already explained that. In Serbia today we have more and more programs in which we bring young people together. We introduce them to similarities and differences with love, and we try to tell the story of history. We offer a hand of reconciliation and understanding, but on a healthy basis with respect and love. Sometimes that hand is not accepted, but there is no other way. Knowledge is power and that with love we must win. It is not easy to talk less than an hour if you are a professor and a girl. But I will try and I will finish now with a word of our St. Nikolai Velimirovich. He said: "Since the beginning of time, wolves has been dragged a lamb to a slaughter, and no lamb has ever slaughtered a wolf. Yet there are more lambs than wolves in the world. The first hunger of men is hunger for truth. The second hunger of our souls is the hunger for justice. And the third hunger of our souls is the hunger for a pure world." I hope this is the way to do it.
Thank you.