Femicide and Lipstick
The story that’s currently setting the front pages on fire in Bosnia and Herzegovina is the killing spree in the town of Gradačac in which a thuggish perpetrator killed his young ex-wife in front of their child and broadcast it live on Instagram. Unfortunately that was only the beginning of his bloody rampage, since he went on with killing two more innocent people and injuring three others. It is only due to the bravery of the clerk of a hunting equipment store who sold him blanks that the body count wasn’t higher. In the end, he committed suicide, like many other bullies that didn’t have the balls to face the consequences of their actions. Though judging by his athletic torso, you’d think he could knock out the devil if he wanted to. Well, that’s probably where he’s headed now so he’ll have the opportunity.
It’s no surprise that the shocking aftermath incited protests all over the country and a broad discussion about safety and protection of women in abusive relationships. What’s more, in the video that has since been removed, he was bragging about other crimes. To add insult to homicide, several users expressed admiration which led to a series of arrests, a rare blink of sanity and purpose not usually associated with our police forces, tarnished by corruption and selective justice. Now the whole system is trying to find excuses for their lax approach to the suffering that led to brutal murder of the young woman. We can only hope the baby is too young to remember what it witnessed, but you never know. In a new and safe environment she will be provided with help to process the trauma.
Madeline Albright said that there’s a place in hell for women that don’t support each other. This is one of those instances where it’s definitely true because there are two women who were, in various ways, instrumental for the success of the murderer’s plans. The first one is the local judge who refused to grant protection due to an alleged lack of evidence. The second is a police woman which was having an affair with the killer and after the victim fled to a safer place, tracked the address down which effectively sealed the fate of the unfortunate girl. It wouldn’t be so ironic if the cop hadn’t been so vocal about protecting other women on her own social media. It makes a mockery of what she professes her values to be.
Ever since the sad events there’s been a campaign to locate, arrest and persecute the two as effectively accessories to murder when they were actually supposed to prevent a hideous crime like this from happening in the first place. This isn’t sisterhood or feminism or whatever you choose to call it. It’s backstabing, corruption and negligence with lethal consequences. And it would be a mistake to say that it’s the first time I see it, though usually in a much less harmful form. Men can be homicidal maniacs and you never know for sure because the creepiest don’t look like movie villains, as established by Hannah Arendt in her book The Banality of Evil. She ponders on the shocking ordinarity of Adolf Eichmann.
But women are capable of facilitating or committing crimes like this as well. In the post-Weinstein era issues of abuse and predatorship returned into the focus of the media with numerous high-profile cases. Since the accused were usually men, the bigger picture wasn’t always as prominent as it should have been. The case of Hillary Clinton’s enabling of the predatory behavior of her husband and the subsequent smear campaign against his victims shows you shouldn’t trust the political elite with solving a problem like this one. Of course, she didn’t kill Monica Levinsky but she did make life very difficult for her. It’s unfortunate we need tragedies like these to trigger us into decisive action and step up to it.
It turned out the papers regarding the victim’s request for a restraining order got mixed up with something unrelated, which is why it was consequently dismissed. Now that there’s something like a digital fatwa against the two women and people demand justice, the judge must be either in hiding or defending herself with an elaborate bureaucratic explanation that makes her tragic misjudgement sound even worse. While it’s hard to conceive this could transpire without serious consequences for her and the officer, don’t be shocked if they get away with it without having to answer a few difficult questions about their own role in this. The system is rigged so there must be a few loopholes to protect them from the mob.
In Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, people take justice in their own hands to avenge a crime that was never properly processed and the culprit got away with it. All sorts of things can go horribly wrong when we decide to play both judge and jury. As a consequence of obvious missteps, the judge Lejla Numanović is facing a full-scale witch-hunt and the fury of people who put the blood of the victim on her hands too. If she knows what’s good for her, she won’t wait for protesters to show up with a guillotine but step down before things escalate further. It’s easy to succumb to mass hysteria in a situation like this one. You can hardly keep your cool if she had the authority to help. You’ll have to try hard to find anyone who doesn’t want her head on a spike. But that won’t help us solve the problem.
On the photo circulating in the media, the judge wears a green dress and red lipstick, her eyes shining with pride while she holds what looks like her degree or work licence. The barrage of hatred against her is of gigantic proportions, ranging from words I can’t mention here, insults to death threats everywhere. As cruel as it sounds, I don’t blame them. Twitter must be fizzing with it by now. In a curious twist of fate, now she’s the one who will need a restraining order, but against all of us. I’ve been working and hanging around women for long enough to know that sometimes they can be their own worst enemy instead of a mutual support system they can rely on. The amount of backstabbing, competition and jealousy is staggering.
Once you step outside Medium and the bubble of feminism, you’ll encounter many women don’t overthink life unless they have to. They’ll choose wealth over hapiness and kids over a career, provided they got enough dough to burn on shopping sprees. That’s perfectly fine but it can sometimes make us ignore someone else’s suffering unless it personally affects us too. It’s a short road from self-involved to self-obsession. The tide has finally shifted and we all woke up from this illusion that everything is fine as long as the bad stays outside. Because the same thing could happen again, we can’t afford to ignore red flags. If a woman with a black eye asks you for protection, legal procedures are a waste of time. You don’t need a law degree to know what’s the right thing to do. Anything else is an excuse.
Colleagues of the judge are now explaining it away by how a piece of paper wouldn’t have stopped the killer. It’s too late for hindsight now, I’m afraid. There’s a reason why the slogan says “women and children first”. To say it was disregarded would be an understatement. The story with the notorious video opens the door into a much more complex issue. From exhibitionism, toxic masculinity, attention-seeking to our own hidden needs that transform a cold-blooded femicide into snuff people want to see. I don’t have balls to do it, but judging by social media, quite a few did. You could compare it to the enduring obsession with Sharon Tate’s death.
What is it about human psychology that makes you press play? There’s no way of knowing how many children saw that video in the endless ocean of content on Instagram. It could be the tip of the iceberg when it comes to darker corners of the internet. Your own kids might unintentionally walk into it without you having any knowledge of the fact. If I had them, I’d probably be paranoid since in so many cases, online barriers are easy to circumvent with the level of digital prowess new generations are practically born with. It’s never been so hard to protect them from harmful influences and radicalisation. As if parenting weren’t challenging enough, you might be raising a future serial killer as we speak, yet completely unaware of it.
I don’t know if the man behind this disgusting mass murder has living parents. If he does, they probably wish they were dead now. There are all kinds of behavioural patterns that can trigger this and they’re rarely palpable in the beginning. Maybe you’re a school bully who hides his own vulnerabilities behind violence against weaker peers. Maybe you’re desperately stuck in a dead-end job while others build careers. Maybe you’ve been emotionally rejected more times you can count and look for solace in drugs or casual sex. None of it warrants homicides as a retribution for all the bad stuff life piled up on your plate. None. Ever.
The roots of a rotten sprout are always planted early. But in order to know, we need to care. Now that we do, it shouldn’t be just an another storm that will wither out from our memory as soon as you click the refresh button on your Facebook feed. There’s no such option for the people that lost their loved ones in the carnage that took place in broad daylight in that Bosnian town. Their lives are irrevocably destroyed and a little girl will grow up without remembering the sound of her mother’s voice. While this has provided a lots of material for the media it won’t help the victims to find their peace. Let’s hope this case will get the ball of law rolling in the right direction. We can’t afford to fail like this ever again. That doesn’t mean it won’t, like a stinging grain of salt still burning in this painful wound.
