Circuses without bread: When state kills without responsibility

By: Amina Corbo Zeco

'Bread and circuses'... that's how apathy of the old Romans was cured. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, those in power have halved the famous quote, so we are left with – circuses. And what circuses – most horrific ones.

Lavish gladiator games and other public spectacles organized by the state we can see wherever we go. They kill our children in the streets and our neighbors 'gladiators known to police', fathers who kill their children, while we deal with the issue of flags and divisions by national sheepfolds built for us by the men in power.

Equally important to us is distribution of power within ruling coalitions.

We and our children have become targets of half-educated and immature people, raised in the society which rewards rudeness and brutality, while it mocks responsibility and honesty... I've read this written by Mirsad Hadzikadic and remembered that we have lost any interest in politics and care for common good, while letting all good to some new and unrefined bureaucratic cliques.

There are circuses yet no bread.

What have we done wrong, what is it that keeps turning us in the wrong direction at the end of which a 38-year old father brutally kills his 3 children and commits suicide.

I have heard rumors that the wretched man, after his wife had left him with 3 small children, and because of deep poverty the family lived in, announced this tragic act no less than to the Social services in Bihac! However, for confirmation, you have to contact the Social services in Bihac. Alas, only director can give statements to the press. And his highness the director is away from the office.

And that's exactly where the answer to the question what-we-did-wrong lies. It lies in a rotten system in which the state directly 'cooperates' in killing citizens merely by sitting idle and watching from a distance games of the poor, games of life and death.

Without any sense of responsibility, laid back in comfortable armchairs and cozy warm offices, mostly without adequate education, failing to do their jobs, merely forwarding the poor and the miserable to seek help at dead-end addresses in hell.

Meanwhile, we will in vain seek explanation as to how come that the society places on high positions people who don't give a damn about other people's lives, including children. How can one stay calm without putting on a yellow vest? Although, given the situation in BiH, we should put on red vests for those who tailor our destinies to remember how much evil and misery they have so far produced.

Unless we soon start to build our community, a society based on noble and humane foundations, we will be in dire straits.

We celebrate disciplinary measure for the chief prosecutor Dalida Burzic, while Dzenan's killer welcomes another day of being free.