BELGADE: Although many international and local news sites reported Serbian writer Dobrica Ćosić had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, it turned out to be a clever Internet hoax initiated by the group of “independent self-organized Serbian activists,” who were opposed to the fact that Ćosić was not even mentioned as a potential laureate. In a press release issued later, the organization took responsibility for the confusion that the news had been created, explaining the reasons behind the actions to register a copy of the official website of the Nobel Prize committee, nobelprizeliterature.org, on October 5, where the news of Ćosić's award was “announced.” The activists emphasized that they “have registered the domain of this obvious hoax site on the 5th October 2011, as a symbolic reminder of that day eleven years ago, when Serbia missed a historic opportunity to create a different and better world,” adding that “today again, Serbia turns to war, terror and deadly kitsch of the nineties, violence towards diversity, nationalist conservatism and dishonest orthodoxy.” “Dobrica Cosic, author and public political figure, active for decades was always close to the highest political power and those who exercise it, from the Communist Party of former SFRY, aspirators of their manifest of Serbian nationalism, infamous Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of sciences, former president of the Milosevic's wartime SR Yugoslavia, to present alliance with reactionary and most dangerous Serbian pseudo-democratic circles in the new era,” said the statement of the group of activists behind the hoax. They accused Ćosić of being one of the most prominent figures in the group who inspired nationalist chauvinism in Serbia during the 1990s and who kept it alive in the aftermath of October 5, 2000. In support of their position they cited the poem “The Poet of the Revolution on the Presidential Ship” dedicated to Ćosić by another Serbian writer Danilo Kiš. The Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts also fell victim to the hoax. In the statement issued today it expressed its disappointment with the incident, proclaiming it “another in the series of attacks targeting significant cultural institutions, the intention of which to mock social and cultural values of the country.” It further said that “the case will be reported to the ministry of interior, the public prosecutor and the Special Department for High-Tech Crime for further investigation and prosecution of the suspects.” The only previous Serbian winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature was Ivo Andrić, who was in 1961 awarded the Nobel Prize for his entire literary work and especially for his novel “The Bridge on the Drina.” BM
