Pablo
Pablo is a fox that lived near the mountain lodge in Risnjak in the summer of 2019. The author of the Letter from a Hiker, in his text entitled “On the Side of the Beast”, compared the way in which the visitors of Risnjak, and even the members of the special forces who stayed there at that time, treated the fox with sympathy, in contrast with their treatment of people on the move, in order to point out the bizarre nature of their attitudes: “One special forces officer was enthusiastically telling us how he gave Pablo a meat breakfast one morning, then spread a pâté on a piece of bread that Pablo licked off, and how he also recorded a nice video of that interaction. Listening to these stories, watching this man, who also hunts refugees, feeding an already well-fed fox with such zeal and consideration, I couldn’t help but think – even a fox has the right to a name and all the humanity that comes with being named. At the same time, refugees are generally not seen as people, not even as living beings, but as a nuisance that needs to be removed, at best”. Thus, Pablo, along with other representatives from the animal world (cf. Candy; wild animals), became associated with irregularized migrations, and the note about him highlighted the contrast, which can be seen in other examples from the public media space (Bubo and Endi), between, on the one hand, the individualization of animals and, on the other hand, the dehumanization and deindividualization of people on the move.
1/3/2022