Vilenica 2025 – by Dragan Velikić

No, this is not the name of a military exercise. Vilenica is a cave in Slovenia, the oldest tourist cave in Europe. The first tourists were recorded as early as 1633. It is located near the village of Lokev in the Municipality of Sežana, on the Karst Plateau. It stretches over 1,300 meters in length and 180 meters in depth; to reach the section open to visitors—truly a fascinating one—you must descend almost 600 steps. Since 1986, in the second half of September, the Vilenica International Literary Festival has been taking place in the cave and its surroundings. The central event of the festival is the awarding of the European Prize for Literature, presented in the cave’s Dance Hall by the Slovene Writers’ Association. This September marked a jubilee—the 40th anniversary of the prestigious festival and award. The laureate is the world-renowned Bulgarian writer Georgi Gospodinov. As every year, the prize was awarded in the presence of numerous writers and translators from around the globe, with more than ten literary events held in multiple venues across the once borderland, today a shared Slovenian and Italian space. Without borders, without visas and documents, without barriers and uniformed faces, without waiting in lines.

You slip from one country into another as if entering your own bathroom or kitchen. With that forgotten, pleasant feeling of freedom.

In Lokev, a calm, sunny autumn. As elsewhere in Slovenia. At the head of the state is a president her voters are proud of. A woman who knows well what humanity and justice mean, and who is not afraid to defend them even beyond her own doorstep. In a world where most of her colleagues remain silent and avoid interfering in the affairs of the great powers, Nataša Pirc Musar publicly declares: “With our actions toward Gaza we reveal who we are.” Thus, at one end of the former country, normal life unfolds—by our standards, more than normal. But in its eastern part, in the once shared capital of Belgrade and throughout Serbia, the ninth circle of hell takes place. A military parade is held, bearing the name The Power of Unity.

Power? What power? The power of worn-out, ancient tanks and of aircraft and pilots rented from abroad for astronomical sums? Unity? What kind of unity? The unity of divine justice in the prison sentence of Bogdan, a student chained and condemned, and those who brought him to the point of burying his own father? Unity with Bogdan’s mother, whose son responds to the extension of his prison term with a hunger strike? Unity with the unfortunate mother Dijana, threatened with physical assault because she joins in the shared mourning for the victims, in the collective cry for justice? Unity between the gendarmerie and the people? The people, who pay for all those helmets and shields, all those batons and sound cannons—covering from their own pockets all the salaries and bonuses of those tasked with protecting order and the legal system? Unity of the people with those who are dismantling that very legal system, equating law enforcers with criminals, issuing them orders and sending them against us, their very providers? Unity between the fascist who once drove the youth into a disastrous war, and who now heads the national theatre, and the actress who had been an inseparable part of that theatre her entire life, only to live to hear the new leadership command her: “Get out of here!”? Unity with the lies, insults, and threats broadcast by every media outlet tied to the regime? With the destroyers of fertile land and of agriculture as a whole? With the sellers of water and air, while the last drops drip away from this plundered and ravaged country? Unity with the thugs who on a peaceful afternoon assault families with children on their way to a football match? Or did you perhaps mean unity with the burned residents of the retirement home that for years has been operating with the blessing of your offices without any license whatsoever? Perhaps unity with the sixteen dead under a collapsed shelter and the half-alive Teodora?

What remains for you, genius of failed strategies, is merely unity with ZERO ambassadors at your pitiful parade. Under a non-existent flag.

(Source: Radar, 25. 9. 2025)

Photo: Mankica Kranjec Ducheyne