A story involving a student from a school in Ljubljana is yet another sign of the more or less latent xenophobia that exists in Slovenian society
Wearing the veil to school “good manners are not respected”. This is the opinion of a professor at a high school in Ljubljana, who kicked a hijab-wearing student out of class. The headteacher reassured the girl by telling her that she hadn’t done anything wrong, but she also specified that in order to take measures against the teacher, it will be necessary to take into account the legislation in force. At the moment it is not clear whether the professor continues to enter the classroom or whether the girl participates in the lessons.
Theoretically, the Slovenian constitution prohibits any discrimination due to one’s religious beliefs, but the fact is that wearing the veil in Slovenia is not one of the easiest choices for Muslim women to make. The annoyance towards this community, considered extraneous to society and the bearer of values that do not conform to national ones, is testified by the endless delays that led to the construction of the mosque in Ljubljana. At the time there was no lack of considerations that such a structure had nothing to do with the Slovenian cultural context and even that it would be transformed into a potential hideout for “terrorists”. Today the Islamic center, located in the suburbs, is a real architectural jewel. Slovenians and immigrants gather around it, mostly of Bosnian origin or from the other former Yugoslav republics.
The episode of the veil at school is just the umpteenth sign of the more or less latent xenophobia that exists in Slovenian society. The most serious fact is what led to the cancellation of more than 25,000 people from the list of residents after the proclamation of independence. Most of them were immigrants from other Yugoslav republics who had not applied for citizenship within the established terms. The operation, conducted by obscure bureaucrats, took place amidst general indifference. Those affected found that they had progressively lost their right of residence in Slovenia, usually when they went to renew an identity card or driving licence. Often on those occasions the diligent official took care to ask the unfortunate person to hand over the other valid documents that he was in possession of and then destroyed them in front of his eyes. Thus began for all these people a life on the margins and a long and Kafkaesque journey to be able to reside again in Slovenia. The authorities had a hard time admitting that a serious violation of human rights had been committed and even when they did, they tried to do everything to make it difficult to be readmitted into society anyway. Some did not manage to reintegrate after the cancellation. The news reports that a few months ago a man died in the fire of his shack on the outskirts of Ljubljana. Sick and without a steady income, he lived off the support of charitable organizations. After years he had only managed to obtain the right of temporary residence in Slovenia. Not enough to enable him to get adequate health care or even get subsidies.
Now in Ljubljana, the city authorities have decided to build a monument commemorating the removal of those people from the register of residents. It will be located in the middle of the new elegant Rog cultural center. In the spaces of the old bicycle factory, the mayor Zoran Janković has decided to create a structure that gives space to alternative culture. An elegant tourist attraction and a meeting place for hipsters from all over Slovenia and beyond. To do this, he did not fail to dismantle the old social centre , which had found a place in the former factory. Among the various collectives that had operated within it was also that of the erased. To clear out the building, they did not fail to use strong methods, resorting to vigilantes and special police departments. An image not exactly in line with that of a left-wing mayor, but the former manager of a food distribution giant in Slovenia, who entered politics after the center-right had taken away the reins of the company he had helped to make growing up, he has become more and more the master father of Ljubljana and he never fails to demonstrate it with his rather brisk manners.
In any case, now, in what will be the Park of the cancellations, the monument dedicated to them will rise. The project conceived by Vuk Ćosić, Aleksander Vujović and Irena Voelle will have the shape of the upper part of an accented ci (ć). The letter present in the Serbian and Croatian alphabet does not appear in the Slovenian one and is the ending of many Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian surnames. The font chosen is Times New Roman, the very one that the bureaucracy used to draw up its documents at that time. A monument that symbolically brings back a letter deleted from the Slovenian context and from many surnames, which in the period after independence were Slovene, changing the “Balkan” ć with the diacritical sign present in the Slovenian alphabet (č). The aim is to remember a dark page in the country’s recent history, but which also wants to represent what multicultural Ljubljana would be like. Obviously, even the noisy detractors of such a showy public recognition did not fail to make themselves heard immediately. As usual, the mantra was repeated that in doing so all you are doing is placing a monument above all to those who at the time spit on Slovenia and who, in short, would have been against independence and ready to collaborate with those who would have wanted to jeopardize the process of establishing an independent state. The thesis is always the same: the erased would have asked for it and would have been responsible for their fate and not victims of Slovenian nationalism or xenophobia.
The umpteenth demonstration that in Slovenia they have not yet fully come to terms with what was the most serious stain of the independence process and that they have not even gotten out of the “genius” idea that the Slovenian is basically nothing else than an innocuous defensive “nationalism”, indispensable for defending oneself against larger and more powerful nationalisms, which for centuries have been trying to jeopardize the Slovenian nation.
Have you thought about a subscription to OBC Transeuropa? You will support our work and receive preview articles and more content. Subscribe to OBCT!