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Matvejevic, Predrag
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4 articles of this author have been cited in the European Press Review so far.
Predrag Matvejevic on the immigration debate in Italy
In the left-liberal daily La Repubblica writer Predrag Matvejevic, who left his home town Mostar in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1991 and has lived in exile in Rome since 1994 makes suggestions as to how Italy's immigration debate could be improved: "The numbers arouse no sympathy. A discourse that informs us only about the number of those stranded or drowned in the sea easily turns into a merely quantitative, almost totalitarian discourse. … Certain elementary references to values - the cultural, social or moral values of humanism and Christianity - should have their place [in the debate]. … As far as the possibility of a 'qualitative approach' is concerned, we can start with a syntax that has been used by all emigrants from time immemorial. It is characterised by a kind of division in which we distinguish between 'ours' and 'theirs', between we who have come from other places and the people of the country where we are now. There is also a topographical particularity – the 'here' where we have arrived and the 'there' we have left - … and a temporal particularity that splits the biographies in two: the 'before' and the 'after'."
» more information (external link, Italian)
More from the press review on the subject » Migration, » Italy, » Global, » Bosnia and Herzegovina
Extending the Schengen area
Predrag Matvejevic, bosniac writer and professor of Slavic literature at Rome's Spienza University, ponders the opening-up of the Schengen zone. "So many people who only yesterday were still living within the closed borders of former eastern Europe today have to become the attentive guardians of adjacent land ... . It is not for example difficult to imagine a Pole or a Czech preventing a Russian or a Ukrainian from crossing his territory. But how will a Slovenian behave when twenty kilometres away from Zagreb he will have to stop a Croatian or a Bosnian with whom he shared a common fate so very recently."
» to the homepage (external link, La Repubblica)
More from the press review on the subject » EU enlargement, » Europe
Predrag Matvejevic and "democratorship"
The Croat writer Predrag Matvejevic, who splits his life between Paris and Rome, was sentenced in Croatia in 2005 to five months in jail, suspended for two years, for 'libel and insult' arising from an article in which he accused various intellectuals of inciting 'national hatred'. In an opinion piece, he analyses the political evolution of the Balkan countries. "In the first few years after I emigrated, I invented the term 'democratorship' to describe the status of nations that were having difficulty freeing themselves from the Soviet yoke. ... It is easy to proclaim democracy and to incorporate it in consitutional documents or programs. But that is not enough to abolish the legacy of the former ways in which totalitarian regimes applied pressure or conditioned minds. Just about everywhere a sort of hybrid has developed that has the features of both dictatorship and democracy. On the inside, different aspects contradict one another in form and substance, truth and justice not going hand in hand."
» full article (external link, Spanish)
More from the press review on the subject » Literature, » Croatia
Matvejevic and the post-Milosevic era
Predrag Matvejevic, a Croat writer and professor of Slavic studies, analyses the consequences of Slobodan Milosevic's death. "Those who, like me, saw Milosevic close-up were able to realise that he was not a true nationalist, but rather a man who craved power. A man who wished to exercise unlimited power. The government of the current Serb prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, is supported by Milosevic's party and his followers. The process of 'demilosevicisation' has been slow up to now, and we can now ask whether it will continue in the wake of his death. Looking elsewhere, we see that in Croatia after the death of [Franjo] Tudjman - who probably would have ended up in front of the Tribunal were it not for his early departure - achieving real 'detudjmanisation' has been very difficult."
» more information (external link, Spanish)
More from the press review on the subject » International Relations, » South East Europe
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