As summer seems to slow down the months long mass protests in Serbia, the situation remains confusing. The protest movement and the government seem to wait who flinches first. Part two of a reportage series from Novi Sad and Beograd.

Bordžo seems cheerful as he sits on the stone steps of the main building of Serbia’s government and Beograd. The 50-ish man with his long curly hair smiles as he sees me take some photos. He’s been here for a couple of hours, he says. Not for the first time, as it were. „We’re blockading the main seat of our government until the students’ demands are met“, Bordžo says.

The blockade had been going for a few days at the time I stopped by to talk to people and get a sense of what’s going on in Serbia’s deepest political crisis so far. Police made and make no attempt to clear the area. No police in riot gear are to be seen anywhere near the area, The few members of the special intervention unit IJP that patrol around here are almost ostentibly lightly equipped and seem relaxed.

By the time of this writing, Serbia’s main government building had been under blockade for two weeks. There are no news that the round the clock rally had been dispersed. This situation is unthinkable in any Western country.

To outsiders as well as to many people in Serbia, this is an almost bizarre episode in the struggle between the students lead mass protests in the country and the country’s government that have dominated public life in the country for seven months now. Neither side seems to be able to gain the upper hand. Neither side seems willing to give up.

Bordžo says he’s been active in the protests ever since they grew big in December. „I was working as a construction worker in Germany at the time and came back to support the students in their demands for justice and a functioning government“, he says. He went do dozens of rallies, and comes in from his home town of Pančevo just north of Beograd every day to support the current blockade. „It’s important that some of us are here around the clock, and as I am currently out of a job, I do it at times when other people have to be at work.“

Bordžo has never been a political activist in the stricter sense of the word. Before going to Germany, he had participated in protests against corruption, but that was about it. This also goes for the members of the zborovi who have literally set up tent in the little tent town that has emerged in front of the government buildings.

Zborovi are local citizens’ councils. They have sprung up in several towns in Serbia during the protests. „We immediately formed one in my neighborhood when the students called for support. They can’t do this alone, we all gotta do what we can to get rid of this corrupt system“, Nele says. He and his fellow council members draft political resolutions and lend a hand whenever necessary.

Here, they provide food, water and coffee to fellow blockaders, and collect money for the students and university staff. With faculties in Serbia under students’ blockades for more than half a year now, the government simply stopped paying university staffs’ salaries four months ago and also stopped paying subsidies to students.

Anger At Everyday Corruption

Nele asks me not to take a photo of him. „I work in a company with close ties to Serbia’s ruling party SNS. If the wrong people film me or take a photo of me here, I could be fired“, he says. This is a story one hears quite a bit in Serbia these days. As well as the other part of Nele’s story. „A couple of years ago, I was due for promotion. I should be a branch manager. At HR’s office, they flat out told me that I was expected not only to join SNS but to be active in their local meetings and attend their rallies. I didn’t want to do that.“

It is experiences like these that got and get many people in Beograd to support the students’ protests over the collapse of the canopy of the freshly renovated train station in Novi Sad that killed 16 people on November 1st. Not that this doesn’t also play a role in public support in Novi Sad, but there, the anger is much more focused on the catastrophe as an example of everyday corruption in the country, and the sense of not being safe anymore.

In Beograd, it’s a different kind of anger, broader, less focused. Long held resentment against the corrupt political system at large and Serbia’s ruling party SNS that has erupted over the catastrophe of Novi Sad and channeled by the mass protests. While the students lead the protests fed by this anger, they also keep it in check with their discipline and their strict policy of non violence. „Had it not been for the students and their appeals to be peaceful, I certainly would have hurt someone by now or destroyed something“, Nele says. He is not alone in this.

Protest Have Slowed Down, But They Are Still There

With summer approaching, and after months of struggle, the protest movement has noticeably slowed down. „We’re still on blockade, but frankly, we can’t be in the faculty for 24 hours a day anymore“, a student tells me at the Technical Faculty of the University of Beograd. „But we won’t give up“.

The signs of their protest are still all over the faculties of the city.

Depending on current events, even new banners are mounted. Such as this word play here, in which the students accuse Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vučić of cheating at two local elections in two smaller towns a few days before. After massive campaigns and infrastructure projects for those municipalities in the prior months, Vučić’s party SNS barely held a majority and a plurality in these municipal parliaments.

And there are still daily blockades of streets and street crossings in Beograd. Such as here near the faculties around Vukov Spomenik. Students from several faculties gather and in a spontaneous plenum decide which street to block at 11:52 AM.

11:52 AM, that’s the time when the freshly renovated canopy of the freshly renovated train station in Novi Sad came crashing down on November 1st 2024. Its debris killed 16 people.

Their names are Sara, Valentina, Đorđe, Milica, Nemanja, Anđela, Miloš, Stefan, Sanja, Goranka, Vukašin, Mileva, Đuro, Vasko, Anja and Vukašin. The youngest victim was eight years old.

As the students block a street, they stand there in silence. 16 minutes long. One minute for each victim of Novi Sad.

Passers by join in, easily doubling the number of student activists.

A bus driver on the blocked street gets out and looks on in silence.

Is he just making the best of an inevitable break? Or does he do what he can to mourne the victims without risking his job?

Two of the bus’ passengers get out and hurl injuries at the students. They are far fewer than those Beogradians who joined in the vigil.

Drivers who can’t move their cars look on. They may not support the blockade, but they show no sign of resenting it, either.

This is typical, Nele says. He and his local zbor have blocked streets in their part of Beograd probably more than a hundred times so far for the 16 minutes of silence. „There are always one or two who insult us. But there is ten times as many, and more, who join us spontaneously. And sometimes, still, when there is only eight or ten of us who block a road for the vigil, when we turn around after it ends, we got a hundred ore more people behind us.“

Signs Of A Revolution

There can be no doubt that the protest movement is still dominating public space in Serbia’s capital, and by far.

There are occasional attempts by government supporters to counter that. They usually smear prominent leaders of Serbia’s opposition parties. Such as Dragan Đilas. SNS has accused him of being corrupt for more than a decade now. Đilas was a political leader in the early 2000‘s and mayor of Beograd until 2014. He now leads Serbia’s biggest opposition party, the center left SSP.

Ever since the protests started, SNS have tried to paint them as an attempt by Đilas to take power in Serbia via the streets and to erect a corrupt regime. The students consistently have avoided any association with him or any other opposition leaders.

This also has to do with the fact that Serbia’s opposition parties are widely seen as as corrupt as SNS and considered incompetent. With the exception of Zeleni Levi Front, the parties and their leaders have been around for decades in ever changing alliances and break ups, that seem to reflect less ideological or other political differences but who just fell out with whom or who kissed and made up.

In other words: Like SNS, Serbia’s opposition parties are almost all part of an ancien regime large parts of the population see as irreversibly corrupt and which they deeply mistrust.

This perhaps hampers the prospects of Serbia’s protest movement. As far as political parties go, there is no credible alternative to SNS in sight.

And seven months in, many older supporters of the protest movement seem to have given up. Like Dejan, who owns a company in Beograd. „Nothing has changed“, he says. „They are still in power.“ Dejan says that also a lot of the students are now frustrated. His much younger wife is doing her PhD on one of the technical faculties. „She is angry now. She was in it from the beginning, and now she’s lost a year of her life and career for nothing.“

Dejan thinks that the students remained non violent for too long. „It would have taken decisive action, and you just can’t do that with strict non violence.“

Be that as it may, SNS and government supporters seem far from being able to control the situation. Stickers, graffiti and buttons supporting the protest movement still dominate public space in Beograd – and perhaps even to a higher degree than in Novi Sad.

And they are not just in the city center, where most protests took and take place.

There is plenty of cafes and bars that either openly support the protests or at least tolerate signs of support such as stickers in their bathrooms.

This button here in a cafe in the city center also shows how many grievances these protests address. It supports the movement against Lithium mines in the Jadar valley in Western Serbia.

Where Is The Working Class?

It has gotten later. As I pass by the blockade of the main seat of the government, the crowd has grown considerably. People who have just finished work trickle in, swelling the numbers. The mood seems cheerful, almost like a party.

Professors, students and volunteers hold impromptu gigs, students entertain the kids many new protesters have brought with them.

„It’s like that every day“, a member of the so called Cappucino Brigada tells me. Like in Nele’s case, it is a local zbor from Beograd who have supported the protests early on. On a gas cooker they brew instant coffee and tea, and sell it for donations.

„All we make from this goes to the support funds for students and university staff“, the activist tells me. „We were also there when they were blockading the public broadcaster RTS, serving the students and their supporters two hot meals per day, plus breakfast. We could pay for that with the donations we got, and there was still a bit of money left over. We donated it to a couple of local schools, who were also on strike at the time.“

There can be no doubt that while these protests are lead by Serbia’s students, they are carried by Serbia’s workers. But this is a result of many individual efforts and contributions. As a class, Serbia’s workers are absent. With the exception of a handful of labor unions, what organisations the working class of the country still has, has kept out of this struggle.

This graffiti is a reminder of that. It stems from the time when the students called for a general strike. Tens of thousands of workers heeded the call, including public transport workers in Beograd. Thousands of bakeries and cafes closed. The country’s large unions did not support the general strike. The vast majority of workers just went to do their jobs. At no time did the called for general strike resemble a general strike.

„This is what he have to work on“, Marko says. He works in IT for a foreign company and is in his early 30‘s. „The students can’t do this alone. I mean, they have done great things. I had all but given up, just trying to make the best of my life. Then the students came and showed me that we could indeed fight for a better future for this country“, he says. „I still believe that, but we, the older generations, we have to do a better job supporting them.“

For Marko, this will have to involve some form of general strike. „And then, we’ll have to get rid of the entire political class of this country. We’ll have to build a new prison just for them“, he vents his anger in mistrust in the political system.

He hopes that Vidovan, June 28th, will bring some form of catharsis. Vidovdan is the most important traditional holiday for Serbs. For this highly symbolic day, the protest movement has called for a big rally in Beograd.

„Let’s hope this goes down without violence“, Marko says.

Chances just got better that his – and many other people’s – wish may be fulfilled. SNS leader Miloš Vučević, who had to resign as Prime Minister during the mass protests, announced last Sunday that SNS would not go through with its plans to hold its own rally in Beograd on Vidovdan.

In a public statement he said that this was to avoid increasing tensions and possible violence.

The standoff between Serbia’s government and the Serbian revolution isn’t quite over, it seems.

This is the second part of a reportage series that analyzes the state of the protest movement in Serbia. The first part was published here.

Some of the names have been altered. In some cases, this is because my interview partners feared repercussions. In other cases, the remarks that were quoted were made in more private conversations. I decided not to leave them out as they contribute to an overall view of the mass protests in Serbia as seen by their supporters.

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