“Russia is not our enemy” was one of the slogans that could be spotted at the recent rally in Ljubljana. The other was: “Slovenia against Russophobia.” Both are supposed to stand for peace in the world. Former MEP Aurelio Juri and former President of the Republic of Slovenia Milan Kučan were also present at the rally.
On Saturday, the so-called “peacemakers” gathered by the Prešeren Monument in Ljubljana. Their presence was intended to draw attention to the many armed conflicts currently raging around the world and to call for peace. “Ukraine, Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Armenia, Haiti… We have grown numb because of the numbers of civilians killed, squeezed in between other news reports, day after day, for months, for years,” the organisers, united in a peace coalition called Not in My Name!, said in their invitation to the rally.
According to the Slovenian Press Agency (STA), they also warned of “rampant evil leaving millions of victims in its wake” and of “cities that have been flattened completely”. “Where are your conscience and mine, united in the knowledge that there are no just wars, much less justified crimes against humanity?” they added.
At the rally, where psychiatrist and paediatrician Anica Mikuš Kos, journalist Uroš Lipušček, director of Amnesty International Slovenia Nataša Posel, sociologist and political scientist Rudi Rizman, mathematician and activist Marko Hren, lawyer and activist Eva Marn, and former MEP Aurelio Juri spoke, you could also see participants carrying banners that read: “Stop the wars, give people peace. The democide and our uncritical agreement with the Western policies is an act of violence.” As photographs of signs expressing support for Russia have also been circulating on social networks, one cannot help but wonder about common sense. In this particular case, this was supposed to be a peace rally, and it is Russia that is the aggressor in the war in Ukraine, not Ukraine.
One is therefore justified in concluding that, in the case of this particular rally, it was also about the dissemination of Russian propaganda. That the protesters had a political agenda can also be inferred from Kučan’s attendance at the rally. In a statement to the national media outlet, Television Slovenija, Kučan pointed out that politics is feigning ignorance and refusing to call a spade a spade. He also pointed out that genocide against the Palestinians is taking place in Gaza.
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