I meet Aleksandra in the early evening of March 14 at the Pančevski Bridge in the north of Belgrade. Darkness is slowly falling on the city, the chilly air is cut through by the honking of cars and the shrill blasting of whistles – the sound of anti-government demonstrations being held every day.
Aleksandra is waiting for the lights of the torches and reflective vests of the students to appear on the other side of the bridge; it is the fifth day of their march on Belgrade from Niš, a town two hundred kilometres away in southern Serbia. Her son is also taking part in the march.
“I thought he was just an ordinary kid who likes to sit in front of a computer all day,” she says with some emotion. “Now, when I see what he is doing for his country, I am so proud of him!” A pink plastic whistle that matches the hem of her grey sports jacket falls from her neck. “The students bring joy wherever they go!” She picks up her phone. “Look, I have something I must show you.” It’s a video taken yesterday, which she says was the hardest for the students who are marching from Niš.
It was raining, the wind was blowing and the students, if they wanted to reach Belgrade on time, had to walk almost fifty kilometres. They had no choice but to hurriedly treat their blisters and march on after dark. To make it easier for them despite the wind and the rain and the sore feet, one girl started singing folk songs in a soft, beautiful voice. Most of the five hundred marching students joined in.
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At last, on the other side of the bridge, lights flash. Straight away, a massive, many-headed shadow emerges, raising a broad white banner. I rush to meet the procession, and walk with Vyacheslav, who has caught my eye with flowers wrapped in thin paper of an old, pink shade. He is carrying them to his girlfriend, who today joined the march of students from Niš in Pančevo, a town sixteen kilometres from Belgrade, where they both live.
“She’s a skilled hiker!” Vyacheslav says. “I take part in the protests too, but nowhere near as as often as she does. Since we were young,” he goes on, “we’ve been told that corruption will always be here and that nothing can be done about it. But now people have finally plucked up the courage to say what they think and what they want.”
Smiling, he asks if I’ll make him famous. A man carrying a flower to his girlfriend in a protest march is an image reporters are grateful for, I reply – and yes, I will probably use it.
“No, don’t put it in,” he says. “A bouquet is a cliché. Instead,” he laughs, “write that I’m bringing her sandwiches, her beloved thick sandwiches of salad and beef – a total cholesterol bomb.”
‘The more they prevent us from demonstrating, the more we organise’
The week before, thousands of students from all over the country have set off on foot to convene in Belgrade to take part in a mass anti-government demonstration on Saturday, 15 March. The student movement has been leading anti-government protests in the country since November, when a concrete shelter at a newly renovated train station collapsed in Serbia’s second largest city, Novi Sad, killing fifteen people.
Civil society is blaming the tragedy on the corrupt state administration, over which former Prime minister and current President Aleksandar Vučić of the Serbian Progressive Party has held power since 2012. Serbian society has regularly demonstrated against his autocratic manners since 2014. Observers agree that these are probably the largest student-led protests in Europe since 1968.
How well Vučić has succeeded in subjugating the Serbian state is shown by the events leading up to 15 March. On 14 March, a significant number of train and bus connections to Belgrade were cancelled out of the blue, and on 15 March, public transport in and around Belgrade stopped working from early morning. The trains had been cancelled, reportedly, because of a bomb threat. Why the buses had been cancelled just before a large anti-government demonstration no one bothered to explain.
“The more they try to prevent us from demonstrating, the more we organize,” notes my host and friend Anka. “It took exactly one hour and thirty-three minutes to organise transport for 322 students from Niš whose bus to Belgrade had been cancelled.”
Similarly, activists from across the country joined together to support the students marching to Belgrade. In towns and villages they were greeted with refreshments and bandages for their blisters, and each night mattresses were rolled out for them on the grounds of schools and universities where classes have been suspended as part of the protests.
Vučić’s hijacked state system is crumbling from within
On the eve of the demonstration, a celebratory mood enlivens the air in Terazije Square in the centre of Belgrade. The students are greeted by Goran Perišić, a stocky, smiling man with kind eyes, who worked at the Kolubara power plant, part of the state-owned EPS, from 1997 until this February. Goran Perišić knows well how much the state sector has changed since Vučić came to power.
“Since 2012, it’s been impossible to get a job in the company without family or party connections,” he says. “Unqualified people were given senior positions.” At one point, he says, managerial failures at EPS almost resulted in the entire country being cut off from electricity.
Now and then, over a few beers, Goran and his colleagues talked about politics. Their opinions differed. But when students led the protests after the November tragedy in Novi Sad, most of the employees of the state company seemed to support them.
“They only talked about it, though,” he says. “Many workers had long been frustrated with the corruption in the company. It’s just that out of 10,000 of us, only about 100 were ready to take to the streets and fight for change.”
Goran and a few colleagues not only joined the protests in Lazaravec, where he lives, but also organized two protests right out front of the EPS head office. In mid-January, the director of EPS called him and warned him not to “do anything stupid”. A week later, Goran and his colleagues submitted a request to form a union, and at the end of January they organised a third protest out front of EPS. Goran was then called on the carpet by his supervisor, who told him that he was a great worker but urged him not to bring his personal views into the workplace.
Goran received the letter of dismissal in early February. The official reason for his termination after twenty-five years with the company was his New Year’s Eve video wishing everyone a happy new year, which he made at work – something he was told he was not allowed to do.
“Nonsense,” he argues. “There are plenty of photos and videos of the company already bumping around on the internet.”
“Yeah, Goran’s a star now!” Bogdan, his former colleague, in a battered miner’s helmet and a black-and-blue EPS T-shirt, pats him on the shoulder upon our arrival. Next to him, a 60-year-old colleague, wearing a vest with the word ‘Solidarity’ on it, waves the company flag. “The Kolubara flag is famous all over the country,” Bogdan laughs.
Like Goran, cameraman Milan Stanić from the theoretically public, but in reality state-owned television and radio station RTS, has spoken out at several recent demonstrations about the pressure that state employees face. Similar signs that the system of Vučić’s hijacked state is beginning to crumble from within are growing.
“When Vučić claims that his party has 700,000 members, it means nothing,” points out journalist and professor Dinko Gruhonjić. “Milošević’s party had a million members. But unfortunately, many people actually genuinely loved Milošević. The same can’t be said of Vučić – he enforces his alleged popularity by terror and blackmailing state employees.”
Intimidation and manipulation
But the authoritarian president is clinging on to power like a tick. At the beginning of the protests, he tried to intimidate students without damaging his reputation by using direct police force. In November, students were attacked by members of the ruling party during a 15-minute silence for the victims of the Novi Sad tragedy, and in January a car crashed into a demonstration.
Now, Vučić is resorting to various manipulative tactics to give the impression that he is retaining the support of the silent majority. In the beginning of march, putative students who wanted to return to their studies were camped outside Parliament. Activists and journalists, however, proved that these were not students, but paid party members and people in need.
Supporters of the protests began calling the protestors “čaci”, a neologism that meant “students who are bothered by the protests”. Someone had spray-painted a sign on one of the blocked high schools that read “Students should be going to school”. However, he made a spelling error, and instead of the Serbian “žaci” he wrote “čaci”. The nickname caught on fast.
At a blockade of the RTS state television and radio station on March 10, police used batons against students for the first time. One of the police officers hit a colleague in plainclothes, who was then taken for treatment to a hospital, where Vučić rushed in to put on a show for the captive media. Flanked by a silent policeman with an eye swollen and as purple as a plum, Vucic barked that the policeman had been beaten by students. Video footage, however, proves otherwise.
The EU is primarily about business and stability
Compared to Milošević, Vučić enjoys good relations with foreign powers. Although the Serbian government is popularly framed by the Western media as pro-Russian – and although it is true that the Serbian pro-government media disseminate pro-Russian propaganda as if snipped from Sputnik – the truth is that Vučić is playing it artfully on all sides. And it is true that, to the EU’s infinite shame, the Serbian population has many good reasons for its declining support for the Union and for anti-Western sentiment.
“It is, among other things, the fault of Scholz, Macron and others who betrayed EU values in the name of business and ‘stability-ocracy’,” says Gruhonjić, the journalist and professor. “Serbians today are fighting for European values – for human rights and the rule of law. However, I am not sure that Ursula von der Leyen represented these values during her visit to Belgrade.” Just a few days before the Novi Sad tragedy, Gruhonjić recalls, the President of the European Commission flattered Vučić that he had introduced important reforms in Serbia regarding democracy and the rule of law.
‘While the Vučić government is good for other countries, it is absolutely terrible for us’ – Danka
“Even for us European enthusiasts, her words were a slap in the face,” agrees Jovanna Djurbabić of the civil society organisation CRTA. Shortly before then, during his visit, French President Macron sold twelve fighter jets to Serbia for almost three billion euros. Last July, German Chancellor Scholz also visited Belgrade to sign a memorandum on a strategic partnership between the EU and Serbia to mine lithium in a populous, fertile area in western Serbia.
Not to mention the fact that Serbia has been stuck in place for ages when it comes to the EU accession process.
“Both sides have made mistakes,” notes Ivanka Popović, former rector of Belgrade University and one of the founders of the ProGlas civic initiative. “Serbia has not done enough to bring its policies into line with EU requirements, and the EU has not shown enough interest in Serbia’s accession. The EU has taken a very pragmatic stance towards Serbia – and backs Vučić as a leader one can make deals with.”
Danka, a bespectacled 50-year-old with blue eyeliner, leans towards me while welcoming students in Belgrade. “I hope that, thanks to your words, the European Union will finally see what we have to put up with from the government. While the Vučić government is good for other countries, it is absolutely terrible for us.”
I’ve heard similar sentiments – sometimes expressed more harshly – many times.
“Damn colonialists,” my friend Anka says repeatedly and angrily. “They care about nothing but our natural resources.”
In contrast to the approach to the protest movement in Georgia, however, the EU is reluctant to express clear support for the Serbian student movement. The European Commissioner for Enlargement, Marta Kos, has stressed only that Serbian students have the right to free assembly and has called on the Serbian institutions to properly investigate the attacks on the demonstrations. In the context of the state hijacked by Vučić, that is indeed not enough.
On 25 March, von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Kostom met with Vučić in Brussels for a working dinner, which, given the ongoing mass anti-government protests, was criticised by the pan-European movement DiEM25. From the dinner there emerged no more than a call from EU leaders to implement the necessary media and electoral reforms.
The student movement, however, is not overly concerned about the silence from Europe.
“We’ve learned from the student protests in Belgrade between 1996 and 1997,” says Vanja, a representative of the student plenum at Belgrade Law School. “That generation of students then thought of the West as a sacred place, and the demonstrations were flying EU flags or Western brands, like BMW – and that didn’t save them. We don’t want the support of the EU or anyone from outside. All we want is for the European media to cover our protests.”
He who doesn’t jump is a čaci, or “chachi”
“Write something nice about us,” an older woman in a cream blouse with ornaments smiles at me, carrying a chocolate muffin with a golden candle stuck in the middle. “Our protests don’t get much coverage in the European media. They’re afraid the protests will spread to them.”
It is 15 March, and we are marching with tens of thousands of people from the Banovo Brdo neighbourhood to Belgrade’s Slavija Square, where we are to meet marchers converging on the square from other areas of the city. The same thing that happens at every protest is happening now – moving expressions of support everywhere you look. Outside the hospital, nurses wave to us with paper hearts in their hands; a long-haired older woman leans out of the window and sends us air kisses with her arms spread wide.
When Anka and I enter a café to seek out the bathroom, the barman invites us for a double shot of the finest rakija.
“I hope you don’t turn out to be ‘čaci’!” he laughs.
Despite the intermittent rain, the whole centre is packed with people – some with plastic bags tied round their heads. The rhythm of the demonstration is reminiscent of the chanting in a football stadium, the latest hit being the mass jumping to shouts of “Those who don’t jump are ‘čaci’!”
“Two months ago, there was another protest at Slavija,” a student of the Faculty of Philosophy hurriedly shares his impression with me. “And it was terribly depressing. The motif was bloody red hands of dead children. But today is beautiful, encouraging! Tell the world that we are ready to fight to the end.”
And then suddenly someone switched it off
At 7 p.m., the crowd goes quiet. Hundreds of thousands of mobile phone lights held overhead light up the darkness over Belgrade. Fifteen minutes of silence have begun for the victims of the Novi Sad disaster.
Suddenly, there’s a quiet thud. My friends and I look at each other in dismay, but we honour the fifteen minutes of silence. As it ends, excited people come running with confused news. A car has crashed into a building nearby, they say. The students have taken off their organizer’s vests; the protest is over.
At the nearby flat of Anka’s uncle, members of the older generation – the parents of today’s students – are resting after the demonstration. Oil painting after oil painting cover the walls, and those crowded into the flat are talking excitedly about what will happen next and watching the broadcast of the independent television station N1.
The turnout for 15 March demonstration is estimated at up to eight hundred thousand people – the largest demonstration in Serbia’s history. At the same time, state-run RTS was broadcasting a knowledge quiz.
Videos circulating on social media cast some light on the loud ‘thud’. At one point in the demonstration, people suddenly run screaming from the middle of the road to the sides, as if hurled aside by an unknown force. Evidence is mounting that the police used a sonic cannon, which sends out powerful sound waves that can cause headaches, disorientation or tinnitus. Several of the demonstrators were treated in emergency rooms for these symptoms.
Meanwhile, Vučić is addressing the nation. A large demonstration indeed took place, he admits, which he says was attended by up to 100,000 people – a number underestimated by several times, and which many foreign media also cited in their reports on the protest. Most importantly, however, he stresses that “The Serbian people do not want a colour revolution. (…) The Serbian people want the government to be decided in elections.”
A new beginning
Vučić tries to get out of every crisis with early elections – the last followed the mass demonstrations in 2023.
“He essentially has control over the elections,” says Djurbabić, from CRTA, the civil society organisation that monitors elections.
“Up until 2023, in connection with the unfree elections, we mainly pointed to the unfair approach of the media, pressure on public employees and welfare recipients, and abuse of public funds. In 2023, however, for the first time, the electoral register was tampered with, and there was a mass migration of voters from precinct to precinct.”
The only acceptable way out for civil society, therefore, is to appoint a transitional government composed of independent experts to prepare the country for the first free elections since 2012.
“Professors and students could play an important role in its formation,” reflects journalist and professor Gruhonjić. “They are not only leading the protests – universities are also the only institution that Vučić has not brought under his direct control.”
Mass mobilisation alone, though, is not enough.
“The people are angry enough, and the mobilisation is at the mass level, but we need the student movement to formulate new demands,” points out journalist Nikola Burazer. “For example, to establish a transitional government or to straighten out the electoral conditions. Or for a broad political front to emerge that students will participate in or support.”
Moreover, the political opposition has been devastated by years of Vučić’s propaganda and the population simply does not trust it.
“The Vučić regime has managed to convince society that party politics is something dirty,” notes Biljana Đorđević of the opposition Green Popular Front. “Meanwhile, the ruling party has merged with the state, so if you attack it, you are attacking Serbia itself.”
During the decade of anti-government protests, on the other hand, people have become active all over the country.
“A number of civic initiatives have emerged to participate in local elections,” notes former rector Popović. “And now, they have been setting up facilities for the marching students and holding public meetings. Within these initiatives, political actors are maturing. I believe that, given the circumstances, they will be ready to participate in politics at the national level – that new faces will appear there on the political stage.”
While Serbian society is showing enough political will to change the regime, the absence of political parties that could take power is not necessarily a bad thing.
“It’s a unique situation where change is happening from below, spreading outward from local initiatives. Who knows?” Gruhonjić muses. “Maybe during the democratisation process, we’ll be inspired by how the students are doing things and organise civic plenums.”
One thing is certain, though. Serbian society has come an admirable distance in the last four months – and there is no turning back. As Gruhonjić notes at the end of our meeting, “Even if the protests gradually die down, the next government scandal will spark more mass protests. This is the beginning of the end for Vučić.”