Suspected corruption has sparked a powerful protest movement in Serbia. Pavle Ilić examines the sequence of events

On 1 November, the concrete overhang of the newly renovated main train station in Novi Sad, Serbia, collapsed, killing fifteen and gravely injuring two. Two months later, President Aleksandar Vučić and his Serbian Progressive Party are faced with what is undoubtedly the biggest popular challenge to their twelve-year rule, spearheaded by a seemingly implacable student movement.

It was a lazy Friday morning, bright and sunny. Perhaps a bit too warm for November, but this didn’t seem to bother the couple of dozen people walking by the main train station in Novi Sad or lounging on the benches in front of the newly renovated modernist building. As the minute hand was just about to catch up to its shorter companion at the zenith of the clock adorning the facade, the entrance below was mostly deserted. Without warning, this tranquil scene was shattered by the thunderous collapse of several tonnes of concrete, steel, and glass. Seventeen unfortunate souls were now trapped under the rubble; fourteen perished before they could be excavated.

As the news broke, the entire country railed in disbelief, retraumatised. Almost exactly eighteen months earlier, Serbia had been shaken by an unprecedented school shooting followed, the very next day, by another mass shooting: one in downtown Belgrade, the other in a village on the capital’s outskirts. Candlelight vigils quickly turned into demonstrations against the government demanding changes. The number of people who took to the streets was enormous, and the crowds swelled to levels not seen since 2000, when the regime of Slobodan Milošević fell. Unfortunately, the self-styled leadership consisting of liberal opposition parties proved too timid and it wasted the enormous energy of the movement, allowing it to dissipate without ever truly endangering the government.

Anger and despair

This time around, the citizens of Novi Sad were the first ones to show their grief and wrath. Two days after the tragedy, they gathered on the city’s main square, demanding the resignations and criminal prosecution of several key figures in the government, including the prime minister, as well as the publication of all documents relevant to the reconstruction project, as the initial reaction of the regime was to claim that the overhang had not been renovated: a blatant and stupid lie, exposed as such almost immediately. Additionally, the reconstruction of the main train station building was part of a Chinese-financed strategic project aimed at renovating the Belgrade-Budapest railroad, while the subcontractor was a private firm with connections to the regime.

The Novi Sad demonstration introduced the symbol of the bloody hand, alluding to the responsibility of the regime. The situation escalated: the police fired teargas, made multiple arrests, and there were allegations of agents provocateurs inciting wanton violence. However, in the following days, a tangible concern started spreading among the core of the demonstrators. They believed that Serbian society was too tightly in the grip of resignation, and that the regime would again weather the storm with minimal consequence. Goran Vesić, a universally despised figure and the minister of construction, transport and infrastructure, was to be the scapegoat. He resigned and was even taken into custody, as the opposition media speculated about the location of the diplomatic posting that would eventually cushion his fall from grace.

In the following weeks, the still leaderless and spontaneous movement switched tactics. Unable to maintain mass long-term blockades, groups of demonstrators started blocking busy intersections in Novi Sad, and later in other cities. Memorialising the moment of the tragedy and the number of the victims who lost their lives, these blockades would take place on Fridays at 11:52 and last for fifteen minutes. The turning point came on 22 November, during one of these actions organised by the students and staff of the Faculty of Dramatic Arts (FDU) in Belgrade. They were harassed and assaulted by a group of regime supporters including, as it would turn out, low-level state functionaries. While the regime had by that point routinely turned a blind eye to, if not outright instigated, these sorts of provocations, this time the spark found its way to a tinderbox.

Like wildfire

The students of the FDU, supported by their teachers and the faculty management, decided to occupy their faculty building and halt all regular activity. Following their example, students of several other faculties united and occupied the rectorate of the University of Belgrade four days later. The chain reaction was set in motion, and by mid-December, the vast majority of faculties in Serbia were under student occupation. With 85 faculties (including one private institution) and entire universities, this is the largest student movement in the country since 1968. Just as the students were running out of faculties to occupy, high schools joined in, and the public was overjoyed by reports of defiant teenagers and a significant subsection of teachers clashing with pro-regime headmasters.

The next layer to this already extraordinary situation came in the form of a spectacular wave of support for the students among the general population. Society is gripped with the sentiment of something momentous happening, and ordinary people are willing to pitch in, while links of solidarity between different groups are starting to sprout. Organised farmers, especially those from western Serbia, galvanised by government plans to allow the international mining conglomerate Rio Tinto to construct a highly polluting lithium mine on fertile and water-rich farmland, were among the first to declare that they would protect the student occupations. Images of farmers cooking stew for students in huge cauldrons in front of their tractors have been making rounds on social media.

Other acts of support were no less impressive: thousands of ordinary people have been donating food, drinks, camping equipment, materials for making banners, money, and many other supplies to occupied faculties. The students, acting through plenums — ad hoc student assemblies, which have been a staple of faculty occupations in the Balkans since the early 2000s — have set up a functioning logistical network which allows the supplies to be distributed to where they are needed the most. Housewives and working women in Novi Sad have organised through Facebook to cook and provide meals to students on a daily basis. The single most spectacular act of popular support undoubtedly came in the form of a massive, 100,000-strong demonstration on Belgrade’s Slavija square, which included a surreal, damning and defiant fifteen minutes of complete silence.

The student movement adopted and expanded on the original demands. Apart from the publication of the documents relating to the project and the resignations and indictments for those responsible for the collapse of the overhang, the students are demanding that all individuals who physically assaulted peaceful demonstrations be arrested and indicted, including state functionaries. They are also demanding that the demonstrators and activists arrested during the demonstrations in the aftermath of the tragedy be free from prosecution and that the government increases the budget of public universities and faculties by 20%. The government and the president have been claiming that all of the movement’s demands have been met, but this has demonstrably been proven false on multiple occasions.

It is obvious that the movement is ambitious (evidenced, among other things by an appeal to students around the world to stand up for their own rights), and that its inspiration is still significantly stronger than the government’s fear mongering and attempts at low-level bribery. Most importantly, there are voices in the movement which are calling for a general strike. This comes in the wake of multiple waves of worker discontent and industrial action. Primary and high-school teachers had been on strike demanding better pay for weeks before the student movement erupted. Post-office workers are threatening action. Both of these sectors are required by law to maintain a ‘minimum of working activity’, but seem to be prepared to go into full cessation of work.

Meanwhile, the employees of public television in the autonomous province of Vojvodina (the capital of which is Novi Sad) have called a strike demanding the resignation of their director. Other strikes, including bus drivers and lawyers have sprung up, while groups of miners from the Kolubara coalfields, whose instigation of and participation in the general strike was critical in toppling Milošević, have voiced support for the students. So far, organised coordination between the student movement and workers has failed to materialise (the same is true for coordination between different sectors of the working class). However, if the movement wishes to increase pressure on the government and make it unbearable, especially if it gathers enough strength to start saying the quiet part out loud and starts calling for the end of the regime, this remains the only viable strategic avenue.

Spitting venom

As for the government, its response has been anything but masterful. The current movement strays from the usual scenario by which the regime’s spin doctors and damage-control consultants operate. Mainly in that it is fed from multiple sources, that its centres are somewhat shielded both by the autonomy of university and the support of the majority of university staff, and that it shows a sustained energy that doesn’t seem to wane no matter the reaction of the powers that be whom it challenges. Attempts to ignore it and hope that the holidays will shut the movement down only allowed it to spread faster, but both direct and indirect attacks have had the same effect. Furthermore, the student movement is sceptical towards the mainstream opposition, regularly distancing itself from liberal and nationalist parties, which both weakens the government’s insistence that the students are in service of the opposition who can’t win an election and thus wishes to topple the regime, and inspires and mobilises a broad spectrum of people who see the regime and the opposition more as two sides of the same coin.

All of this has led to president Aleksandar Vučić coming out with a series of increasingly unhinged accusations that he levels against the movement on a daily basis. The students have been accused of being junkies, lazy bums, foreign agents (primarily Croatian and Ukrainian), mercenaries, fools and even anarchists and Bolsheviks. The lowest strata of the regime’s power base have been lashing out at the demonstrators and students blocking the streets, but the movement has shown that it will not be intimidated.

So far, most of these provocations ended in humiliation for their perpetrators. The government has declared that the winter break in elementary and high schools will start a full week earlier than planned while threatening striking teachers with the sack, in an attempt to pull the rug from under the high-school wing of the movement. At the same time, the president announced that a housing-credit subsidisation scheme for under 35s will be introduced, while the mayor of Belgrade promised free public transport in the capital in 2025. However, as of yet, neither the carrot nor the stick seem to be having the desired effect.

As all sides of the conflict prepare for the holiday lull between the New Year and Orthodox Christmas (celebrated on January 7), 2025 promises to kick off with a bang. Whatever it may bring, one thing’s for certain. The youth of Serbia have shown that they have nothing but contempt for the government and that they are prepared to step onto the political scene. While the student movement has already proven that it is a force to be reckoned with, if the voices within it advocating for deeper and more meaningful changes succeed in taking it to the next step, its enormous energy might just give birth to the truly radical force for which Serbia has been thirsting for decades.