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“Children are the ornament of the world,” goes one famous Serbian poem by Ljubivoje Ršumović. Today, in Serbia, they are on everyone’s mind.
A generation written off by many as disconnected social-media addicts has proven to be quite the opposite, galvanizing society with their singular brand of civil disobedience, at once rebellious and virtuous, digitally savvy and frankly analogue. They’ve been compared to the liberators of 1945; they’ve been called the avant-garde of Europe; they’ve been nominated for a Nobel Prize and received shout-outs from the likes of Novak Djoković and Madonna.
At the same time, President Aleksandar Vučić insists that he’ll defeat the “colour revolution,” while daily acts of manipulation, intimidation and violence against the students and their supporters continue. After five months of protests, how this all will play out is anyone’s guess. But the students show no sign of giving up.
How Did it Begin?
In coverage of events in Serbia, international news media make passing reference to it—it didn’t make headlines in the midst of wars, fires, and pre-election madness—but it is the beating, bleeding heart of the movement.
At 11:52 am on 1 November 2024, the concrete canopy of the train station in Novi Sad, Serbia’s second-largest city, collapsed. Thousands of people pass through the station daily (I myself use it twice a week). On that clear, sunny, autumn noon, fourteen were killed, three others grievously injured; one of them succumbed a month later in hospital, and another died in March, five-and-a-half months after the collapse. All but two of the victims were under 25, and four were children.
The station had been recently reopened—without the required authorisation—after reconstruction and renovation. While the public reeled in grief and rage, the response from the Government, led by President Aleksandar Vučić and his Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), was characteristically inadequate, which many regard as an attempt to cover up its own culpability due to widespread, systemic corruption.
But to narrate all this is nearly impossible, since there are so many actors and so many confusing, conflicting reports from officials, including whether or not the canopy had been part of the reconstruction. In the weeks following the collapse, there were no immediate arrests; television was filled with expert panels speculating on how it happened and why, and which companies were involved—but to date (early April), there has been no official explanation for how it fell. It bears mentioning that state-run and pro-regime media dominate the national broadband; only one cable provider includes the two independent news channels.
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Immediately after the collapse, peaceful protests were held in Novi Sad and elsewhere in the country. Most strikingly, every Friday at 11:52 am, people would walk out of their universities, schools, or places of employment, and observe fourteen (later, fifteen, and now sixteen) minutes of silence, one for each of the victims.
At the Faculty of Philosophy in Novi Sad, where I teach as a foreign lecturer, we stood on a campus green; at other places, people blocked the roads. To stand with a group of people in silence for a quarter of an hour is quite an experience: a mass gesture of solidarity, both collective ritual and individual meditation. It is heavy with grief—even months later, you can read it on faces, in bodies. There are hundreds of protests a day across the country at this point, and they always include the sixteen minutes.
The fact that even these shows of empathy and solidarity were not respected reveals the level to which Vučić’s regime will stoop. At first, disruptions came in the form of allegedly disgruntled citizens trying to get through a blocked road, or jeering, or hitting protesters. A man drove his car into a small gathering of Belgrade Philharmonic musicians, breaking one person’s arm and injuring a few others.
“Everyone to the Blockades!”
Later, on 22 November, a group of four people attacked students from the University of Belgrade’s Faculty of Dramatic Arts as they were observing the fifteen minutes of silence, and that was the last straw. The drama students blockaded their school three days later; other faculties followed almost immediately, in Belgrade and in Novi Sad, and then in short succession throughout the country. Within a matter of a few weeks, all the faculties of the state universities were under blockade and have remained so.
The students occupy the buildings, monitoring who may enter. They regularly hold plenums to vote on crucial matters: indeed, the university system is currently in their hands, which is no small responsibility. There are no classes (fall semester came to a grinding halt with a few weeks left to go), no exams, and no sense of when things might to return to normality. The President of the National Assembly, Ana Brnabić, threatened that if classes did not resume by 17 March, the entire academic year would be lost. But that, as one student commented, is the least of their worries.
The backbone of the movement is a set of four clear, concise demands, and until they’re fulfilled, the blockade will continue. The students have refused proposals for “dialogue” and negotiations from both the Serbian Government and (reportedly) the European Union.
The first demand is to make public the complete documentation connected to the reconstruction and renovation of the Novi Sad train station. The other demands relate to the arrest of all perpetrators of violence against protestors; the dismissal of charges against students and professors arrested during protests; and a 20% increase in the budget for higher education.
At present, the government insists it has fulfilled all the demands, but the students disagree. While a law was recently passed to address the fourth demand, the others have received only superficial responses. Publication of the documentation has been promised and purportedly done several times, though each time there have been crucial gaps, and months later, we are still waiting for key documents that would point to the responsible parties.
Some arrests have been made, but one of the men caught on camera beating up students was recently photographed standing behind the President at an official event. Arrested protestors were pardoned by the President, but a pardon implies guilt and does not exonerate them.
The Response of the State
At the highest official level, the students have, in turn, been dismissed and demonized. President Vučić insists that they are paid by foreign agents (an old narrative here). In December, he nevertheless tried to placate the apparent traitors by offering them low mortgage rates for their first home—something that is unlikely to resonate with nineteen-year-olds, but sounds good to the broader public. Nevertheless, public support for the blockade has gathered momentum, as seen in the huge response to the students’ calls for two nationwide general strikes, on 24 January and 7 March, as well as massive protests hosted by the largest cities.
Meanwhile, intimidation and aggression continue on multiple fronts: with every passing day the students and their families are targets of threats and physical attacks, which seem to be increasing in frequency and violence.
On 2 January, the online issue of the Novosti newspaper published copies of the passports of two students involved in the blockade—they happen to be Croatian passports, which feeds into the foreign-agents story. The tabloid news channel Informer regularly slanders individual students.
The Security Intelligence Agency (BIA) has been contacting students involved in the blockade, as well as their parents, inviting them to “informal” or “friendly conversations.” In one case, a mother of one law student reported two agents showing up at the school where she works, “on orders from Belgrade”; in another instance, a father was