NeoDinamika: From Tragedy to Resistance: The Rising Wave of Student Protests in Serbia

Serbia is an abducted state, with a degree of totalitarian power hard to imagine for those who have not experienced it firsthand concentrated in the hands of its president, Aleksandar Vučić, whose powers, by constitution, should be merely ceremonial. He has turned the country into a lawless party state, where tycoons from his close circle break all regulations while draining the budget and robbing the population in every way that the lack of state regulation allows. A central part of it is the substitution of the representation of all social groups – from workers to students, to ethnic minorities, to women, to various minorities with abducted bodies and appointed party soldiers. Recently, an event occurred that alarmed the citizens to the extent to which Vučić's rule has compromised all dimensions of public life, including basic human rights and public safety.

On November 1st, 2024, at 11:52 CET, a 48-meter-long concrete canopy at the central railway station in Novi Sad, the second-largest city in Serbia and the capital of its province Vojvodina, collapsed onto people walking or sitting beneath it, killing 15 people, including several children, and severely injuring two more.

The station, listed with the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments of Novi Sad as a "property under special protection," was renovated in a process that began in 2021 and lasted until 2024. Before the renovation, the construction was assessed as structurally stable without signs of structural damage. However, shortly after the renovation under the banner of unlimited corruption, the canopy collapsed with tragic consequences.

The state, to the extent that such a thing even exists, reacted in a way that raised suspicions. Numerous politicians, along with their loyal media teams, were present at the scene during the rescue operation, often obstructing the rescuers. Owners of some companies involved in the renovation also arrived at the scene and behaved provocatively, showing disrespect for the victims and the injured. Before there was a chance for a complete forensic inspection, the remnants of the canopy were removed. The government and the all-powerful president stated that the canopy was not part of the renovation, which was quickly disproven by project documentation and photo archives – in the service of a political campaign, it underwent works that inevitably led to the collapse, and the building was put into use before the inspection, bypassing the law. It turned out that numerous important steps in the procedure were skipped or ignored, including the final safety check and the usage permit.

The engineer who was the supervising authority for some aspects of the renovation stated that many procedures were not followed, that paper sacks were shoved into the concrete to save money, and that crucial structural elements were removed to cut costs. Other engineers noticed that during the renovation, the canopy was additionally burdened with steel construction, glass, and stone slabs, which increased its weight by as much as eight or nine times, while the supports were not reinforced. It was revealed that the engineers responsible for the projects were from different engineering fields, such as road-building, making their qualifications questionable for renovating such a structure. Numerous indications – from earlier statements by President Vučić himself and his general style of governance to statements by some of the suspects – pointed to the major role of politics and politicians in the tragic event. A prominent politician deeply involved in the renovation was originally arrested, but even during his arrest, he received privileged treatment, and soon after, he was released, despite the high likelihood that he could influence witnesses and manipulate evidence.

Overcome with grief for the lost lives and faced with a situation where citizens’ safety is sacrificed for the profit of the president's oligarchy, and where no one in the public space is safe, citizens, initially only from Novi Sad, and then from many other cities in the country, spontaneously began to take to the streets every day at 11:52, the time of the tragedy, to hold a one-minute silence for each victim. The arrogant authorities arrested citizens for protesting, staged an attack on the Novi Sad City Assembly, and organized attacks on citizens. Officials of the ruling party – local government members, directors of public enterprises – in groups, attacked and beat citizens protesting, including severely injuring four musicians from the Belgrade Philharmonic and attacking students from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade. In response to the latter attack, the entire student population in the country reacted by blocking all universities and formulating four demands, which remain the demands of the civil protest to this day, and until they are met, the blockades will continue:

Release the full documentation related to the renovation of Novi Sad Railway Station
Release all those arrested for honoring the victims and dismiss the charges against them
Bring charges against all those involved in physical attacks on citizens and their organizers
Increase the budget for higher education by 20%.

Students were joined by their professors, and then by some faculties, so that eventually, the majority of universities adopted stronger or milder support for the student blockade.

For a while, the state continued with arrests and attacks by hooligans, but then signs of relaxation emerged: those arrested were released (except for one student, who remained in prison for two months without charges and was only recently released), and part of the documentation related to the renovation of the canopy was published – along with some potentially unreliable documents and without the documents most important for determining accountability. What is especially disturbing is that an indictment against 13 people was raised based on this incomplete and questionable documentation. The additional suspicion about the fairness of the process is raised by the fact that after receiving the indictment proposal, the court decided to lift the detention for the only political official among the accused, with the explanation that the indictment does not provide grounds for any charges. In Serbia, there is a specific procedure for accepting or returning the indictment, which had (and still has) not yet begun. Announcing that the indictment does not hold before it has been assessed by the court indicates that the court is under political influence.

The student protests show some properties that distinguish them from previous protests in Serbia and beyond. They refuse to elect representatives or coordinators, but rather decide in plenums. They also refuse any negotiations with the officials, insisting that they only ask for the rule of law, which should not even be asked for, let alone negotiated. They also successfully remain dissociated from any political parties, movements or other organizations. The students establish a kind of alliance with farmers, whose protest was already going, and receive support from teachers and high-school students, who also go on strike.

Simultaneously, pressures by the regime are growing. The students are taken to the security service’s premises for interrogations, security service agents visit their parents at work and threaten them, people with foreign citizenship seen at the demonstrations are interrogated, deported, accused of working for foreign secret services. Party soldiers are sent to occupied faculties to beat the students, provoke incidents.

The student protests are growing too, citizens are joining, and protests are being organized in a huge number of cities, even the small ones where they have never occurred before, and where the government has firm control. On Friday, December 22nd, the streets of Belgrade saw the largest number of people protesting in the history of Serbia and Yugoslavia to the date, more than when Milošević was overthrown. When the authorities expected that the Christmas and New Year holidays would dull the edge of the protests, they continued to grow. Students were joined by other sectors: educators went on strike, as did the bar associations. On Friday, January 24th, a general strike was announced, with a massive number of individuals, firms, and associations participating, and the streets of Serbia saw the largest number of people in protests in the country's history. Meanwhile, the government started a new strategy: individuals in cars drove into the crowd, injuring random protesters. Two female students were seriously injured this way, many received lighter injuries. After a series of such attacks, universities strongly stood by the students in the blockade and demanded that the state prevent violence against them.

It is evident that the regime responds to demands for the functioning of institutions and the rule of law, for respecting the law, with violence and an unwillingness to make even the smallest step in that direction. Besides traditional allies of authoritarian populists like Putin, Erdoğan, and Netanyahu, sporadic and reserved reporting in the West on the protests far more popular, creative, politically potent, than many that have been exciting the Western audience for months, indicates that there is also support from the United States and the European Union. This was openly confirmed when Richard Grenell, one of Trump's closest associates in charge of international politics, published a statement that falsely accuses student process of taking up institutions by violence, and on the same day, Gert Jan Kopman, the General Director of the Directorate-General for Neighborhood and Enlargement Negotiations of the European Commission, expressed support for Vučić and gathered Serbian opposition parties and NGOs to warn them that the EU would not support a violent change of government (which no one is attempting).

Victims of the canopy collapse: