What began as a quiet vigil of a few students at the end of last year has grown into one of the largest protests in the history of Serbia, comparable to the mass demonstrations that overthrew the autocrat Slobodan Milošević a quarter of a century ago, The Washington Post writes in a comprehensive article.
Students, it is added, are putting constant pressure on President Aleksandar Vučić, his security apparatus and pro-government media, which have accused the demonstrators of being puppets and traitors, under the influence of unnamed forces and liberal non-governmental organizations from the West, which, they claim, want to destroy the homeland.
This, the Washington newspaper writes, is a page from an old book of tactics.
The first group that was attacked by Vučić’s supporters last year were acting students. Most of the young people carrying banners on the streets still live with their parents. But Serbia’s Generation Z – which was previously thought to be apolitical, apathetic, and more inclined to emigration than protest – has surprised the country.
Serbia is facing a decisive moment: will the country embrace the West and the standards and values of the European Union – through the reform of the judiciary, security services and media – or will it spend another decade on the margins, being pulled towards Russia?
The question also arises as to how Vučić will respond to the protests, which are growing in both scope and intensity. Many fear repression.
The growing unrest is being carefully monitored by Brussels. EU Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kos expressed her dissatisfaction at the beginning of this month with the “wave of violence and the continuous use of force against demonstrators in Serbia.”
Kos said that EU members are beginning to question “Serbia’s sincere commitment to the European path.”
The Washington Post notes that European leaders speak very cautiously about Serbia, being careful to gently encourage the Serbian leadership because, it is stated, too much pressure on the President of Serbia could push the country further away from Europe.
Silence, on the other hand, can give the impression that Europe does not care about the democratic backsliding in Serbia, or that it is powerless to stop it.
“We cannot continue in Serbia as it is going now,” said Ana (24), a student at the Faculty of Agriculture. She predicted that Vučić would fall. When asked how she could claim this, given that the president has been in power for a decade, she replied: “We have woken up the people.”
History, it seems, is repeating itself. In 1998, when Serbia was part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, a student movement known as “Otpor!” also started at the University of Belgrade, in protest against Milošević during the Kosovo war. Most of today’s students were not even born then.
In interviews, students say they are appalled by what they see as the corruption and incompetence of the authorities, which is reflected in the tragedy at the train station. They started with a request for full responsibility for the deaths in Novi Sad and are now demanding extraordinary parliamentary elections.
In a written response to the questions of The Washington Post, Vučić (55), who has been in the office of president or prime minister for 11 years, accused the demonstrators of instigating violence.
“In the last nine months, Serbia has endured more than 23,000 unreported gatherings,” said Vučić.
“What started as a student protest, unfortunately, has turned into mass blockades and, recently, violent incidents instigated by extremist groups.”
Along with the president’s answers to the questions, photos were also attached, the Washington newspaper states, showing a young man with a bat and another hitting the shield of a riot police officer.
Vučić stated that he offered to negotiate with the students, but that they refused, and he rejected the demands for extraordinary elections, calling them destabilizing.
The government, he says, has launched investigations into the collapse of the station. When it comes to violence, Vučić said: “More than 170 police officers were injured while performing their duty to protect citizens.”
The Washington Post also writes about Saturday’s military parade in Belgrade where 10,000 Serbian soldiers paraded, French-made fighters, tanks from Russia and air defense systems from China were displayed (the American newspaper does not mention that Israeli PULS missile systems and the Hermes 900 unmanned aerial vehicle were also shown for the first time).
Students who tried to attend the “Day of Serbian Unity, Freedom and the National Flag” event were stopped by the police, the text states.
The young demonstrators are not children of war, but their parents are, who survived the Balkan wars of the nineties – which included ethnic cleansing and mass displacement – as well as NATO air strikes to force Serbia to stop the killings.
Today’s students grew up in a Serbia that hosted the Eurovision Song Contest in 2008, when Belgrade was a city of entertainment, and many believed that the country would soon join the European Union. Serbia applied for membership in 2009, and three years later became an official candidate.
That promise, however, now seems very far away. The desire to join the European Union is still strong in most of the Balkans, but apparently not in Serbia.
According to the latest research conducted for the European Commission, support for EU membership is high in Albania (91 percent) and North Macedonia (69 percent), while it is the lowest in Serbia – only 33 percent.
Ana’s college colleague, Kristina (25), studies hydrology and cares about climate change. At one protest in January, Kristina was a steward – she wore a yellow vest and helped with the safe movement of the column of participants.
While standing in front of a car that was stopped, the female driver suddenly started and hit her, throwing her onto the sidewalk, where she hit her head on the concrete. She didn’t remember anything until she woke up in the hospital. The video of the attack soon went viral.
Students demanded that the prosecution charge the female driver. However, all charges were eventually dropped, as Vučić pardoned the woman who drove the car, saying that he “must protect the weak, the persecuted and the victims of daily student attacks.”
“We are the future of this country, and it is obvious that the government does not care about us, or our future,” said Kristina. When asked if her parents were afraid for her safety, she replied: “They are afraid, but they know they could not stop me.”
Vučić and his supporters call the students “terrorists” and “foreign mercenaries” who are encouraged by the West to start a “color revolution,” like those that shook Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia and other countries of the former Soviet bloc.
The history of authoritarianism in Belgrade – from Josip Broz Tito, who ruled Yugoslavia for decades after World War II until his death in 1980 – has made students wary of highlighting individual leaders. They are afraid that someone could create a personality cult.
They also fear for the safety of demonstrators who appear in the media, so they rely on a rotating group of representatives.
Ela Zeković (24), former president of the student parliament of the Faculty of Political Sciences in Belgrade, once appeared on a program on state television, where she spoke on behalf of the demonstrators.
Soon after, a pro-government tabloid announced that she was “almost crowned the new leader” of the protests.
They found a video of BBC Serbia and claimed that Zeković was “enthusiastic about communist ideas” and “unequivocally supports the LGBT movement.” Zeković said that she did attend pride parades in Belgrade, but that the young person in the photo with the communist-era Yugoslav flag was not her.
Zeković believes that the state’s security services cooperate with the pro-government media, which consist of a few TV stations, tabloids and portals. Most media are allies of Vučić, although there are still some independent ones.
However, Serbia is ranked 96th out of 180 countries according to the Media Freedom Index compiled by the organization Reporters Without Borders. Investigators from the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, a watchdog group, recently reported that Serbian journalists were physically attacked and subjected to coordinated smear campaigns.
They found that laws passed in 2023 – which were nominally supposed to allow for greater diversity of ownership and pluralism – in practice allowed the government to further consolidate control over the media.
Vuk Cvijić, a well-known investigative journalist for the magazine Radar, said that last year he was hit in front of a cafe by the owner of a pro-government tabloid. In August, a riot police officer approached him and sprayed him with pepper spray.
“I staggered around blind,” Cvijić said, adding that such incidents suggest that “the hunting season on us has been opened.”
Vučić, in his statement to The Washington Post, said that Serbia is “fully committed to its European path, democratic values and the rule of law,” and that the protests represent a threat even beyond Serbia’s borders.
“Our priorities are dialogue, stability and constructive cooperation with European partners. However, attempts to destabilize our country through violence and misinformation threaten not only Serbia, but also the fragile stability of the wider Western Balkans region.”
After a march in Belgrade in August, Nikolina Sinđelić (22), a student of marketing and communications at the University of Belgrade, stated that she was detained by members of a special police unit known as JZO – Unit for the Protection of Certain Persons and Objects. On that occasion, her phone, camera and signal flare were confiscated.
Sinđelić said that one police officer became very aggressive, hit her head against the wall and shouted: “Why are you trying to destroy your country?”
According to her, that police officer, in front of other detained persons, threatened her with sexual assault using the flare she was carrying.
On the advice of a lawyer, Sinđelić spoke publicly about her experience by being a guest on N1, an independent television station in Serbia. After that, a presenter close to the government accused her of “doing OnlyFans as a profession,” while showing her private photos live on the show – what Sinđelić called “revenge pornography.”
“The goal was to silence me, to destroy me – nude photos, death threats – they used all their power against one student,” she said.
Today, she is recognized on the street, and her name is often mentioned at student protests, where she is seen as a martyr and a fighter, The Washington Post concludes in its comprehensive text on the situation in Serbia.
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Source: N1; Photo: ATA Images