Blood on the fashion runway

“They don’t work on a fashion runway, but a gunpowder or weapons factory.”

This is what Aleksandar Vucic, president of Serbia, told the father of a worker who, along with one of his colleagues, died in the explosion that happened in “Milan Blagojevic-Namenska” in 2017. It’s a part of the Serbian defense industry, notorious for its frequent industrial accidents. Subsequently, two of the plant managers were convicted to three-year prison sentences, but an appellate court reversed the verdict and ordered a retrial. During the first trial, a mob of “Namenska” employees gathered before the court to verbally abuse the families of the victims and applaud the accused.

“Killed by force majeure” was a ruling of the public prosecutor’s office in Aleksinac in regard to the mine accident that killed eight miners at the “Soko” mine in 2022, located near Sokobanja, and no charges were made.

Such callous behavior of the State never sparked any outrage among the general population, because blue-collar workers in Serbia are considered lower-class “illiterates that didn’t go to school”, so they are expendable and easily replaced because people are born to suffer through life. Out of sight, out of mind. Not caring for others is seen as giving tough love and teaching them hard lessons about life, and in a failed state, life has to suck for everyone, so no one stands out from the crowd of people with a nationwide victim mentality. Life is only meant to be kind to the upper class.

Therefore, fashion runways, floating river clubs known as “splavovi”, high-end neighborhoods, and government offices, where People of Awesomeness gather, are among the places meant to be safe.

So what’s with the often violent protests that followed the Novi Sad railway station canopy collapse, you ask?

Well, that tragedy didn’t befall the expendable illiterates working in unsafe environments, who are safely tucked away from the eyes of the clueless public. It finally dawned on Mr. and Mrs. Average that decades of ignoring the rule of law and safety procedures, while cutting budget corners and looting the country blind under the administrations of hard-right Serbian populist autocrats made the whole country so unsafe that you can get squished anywhere while minding your own business, thinking you are safe because you’re not a loser that “didn’t go to school” or didn’t “get by in life”.

What a surprise – laws of physics don’t care about your social status, gender, age, where you went to school, what you do for a living, or what an extra special super-duper patriot you are.