It was an Easter miracle.
Protesters had been blocking the building of Radio Television of Serbia, the national public broadcaster in Belgrade, with a simple demand: cover objectively the monthslong struggle against Serbia’s increasingly autocratic president, Aleksandar Vucic. But after days there, they needed reinforcements. On Good Friday students from Novi Pazar, the largest city in the region where most of the country’s Muslims live, arrived to take over the blockade. Since Muslim students were not celebrating Easter, they volunteered to relieve their colleagues from Belgrade.
This show of solidarity was magical enough. But then a war veteran, who had been wounded in 1992 during the siege of Sarajevo, addressed the crowd. After denouncing the broadcaster for siding with those in power, he greeted the students from Novi Pazar: “Salaam aleikum” echoed across the square. “Don’t worry about your children,” he told their parents. “There are no more ‘ours’ and ‘yours.’ They are all our children now.”
It was a cathartic moment, a gesture of profound inclusion in a country scarred by wars and deep-seated divisions. But it was more than that. It marked a Copernican shift for Serbia, as the country is being transformed by a brave and enduring student-led movement. Combating an entrenched and powerful autocratic government, protesters are showing what — against all the odds — is possible. Here in the Balkans, something extraordinary is happening.
Serbia has seen major protest movements before. In 1996, students launched mass demonstrations against the regime of Slobodan Milosevic, beginning his downfall, which finally came in 2000. In the 13 years of Mr. Vucic’s rule, there have been several waves of protest — against shady development projects like Belgrade Waterfront, in defiance of widespread violence and, most recently, opposing lithium exploitation by the mining company Rio Tinto.
But today’s movement is the largest and most extensive yet, reaching deep into Serbian society. Its catalyst came last November, when the canopy of a train station collapsed in the city of Novi Sad, killing 16 people. The station’s reconstruction had recently been completed: Corruption, many believed, lay at the heart of the tragedy. Protests demanding those responsible be held to account began almost instantly and continued through the winter, spreading across the country.
The government tried to defang them. Mr. Vucic induced his prime minister, a longtime ally, to resign and released thousands of documents related to the station renovation. His administration also said it would offer young people loans of up to about $100,000 to buy apartments. Yet a huge protest on March 15 — the biggest single demonstration by far — showed these efforts had failed. Estimates vary, but it’s safe to say that close to half a million people filled the streets of Belgrade that day.
I was one of them, and it was a truly joyous occasion, though not without tension. Figures in dark clothes were spotted on rooftops, gathering around the presidential building and patrolling side streets, looking like the dark-clad men who beat up students in an early protest. Even so, the day was peaceful — until, during a 15-minute silence for the victims of the rail station disaster, there was a sudden piercing noise. It was, we were sure, a sonic weapon. The government denies it, though the authorities have admitted to possessing long-range acoustic devices.
Whatever it says, the government is clearly rattled. Since coming to power in 2012, Mr. Vucic and his governing Serbian Progressive Party have had things mostly their own way. Blending hard-line nationalism and constant fearmongering about internal and external enemies with a pro-European facade, Mr. Vucic has successfully consolidated control of the country. In the process, he has turned Serbia into something of a Frankenstein’s monster, flirting simultaneously with Russia and America, China and France, Turkey and Germany.
At home, his success has been built on uniting the business class behind him and rigging the electoral process. Mr. Vucic has also built a network of so-called loyalists who, he recently claimed, “swore in blood” to serve him. These are the people he trusts more than any single institution, even those entirely under his sway. Though the government uses its control of the media to secure the support of a significant portion of the population, it still depends on this layer of loyalists as both its foundation and its primary instrument of intimidation.
This is the climate Mr. Vucic is relying on as he moves against the rectors, professors, students, independent journalists and intellectuals who have joined the protest movement. As university occupations and student-organized assemblies have continued, he has frontally attacked Serbia’s educators and academic community. Including threats of firings, the withholding of salaries and the beating of students, it amounts to a wholesale assault on universities.
In this, he is following in the footsteps of fellow would-be autocrats. In Viktor Orban’s Hungary, one of the most important higher education institutions in Europe, Central European University, was effectively forced out of the country. In Turkey, after a failed 2016 coup attempt, thousands of professors were fired and a few even imprisoned under accusations of supporting Fethullah Gulen. And in the United States, of course, President Trump has turbocharged a conservative attack on universities, threatening cuts and withholding funding from major institutions.
In Serbia, no one has backed down. In collaboration with workers and trade unions, students organized a major May Day protest and have been trying to raise international awareness of the struggle. A group of 80 students cycled to Strasbourg, France, to bring the situation to the doors of the European Parliament and the Council of Europe, and a group of runners are making the marathon journey from Belgrade to the European Union’s headquarters in Brussels to do the same. Determined to change the country for the better, protesters are now calling for early elections.
There’s no assurance they’ll succeed. After months of protests, blockades and door-to-door campaigning, many are exhausted. Some have been imprisoned, accused of plotting a coup, and there have been incidents of police brutality. But for all the difficulties, the protesters are doing it their own way — without leaders, without hierarchies, through plenums and strictly horizontal decision-making. Equal and united in solidarity, they are changing Serbia and setting an example for the world to follow.
Now, that really would be a miracle.
Filip Balunovic is a research fellow at the University of Belgrade’s Institute of Philosophy and Social Theory and an assistant professor at Singidunum University. He is the author of “Revival of the Left in the Balkans: Counter-Hegemonic Activism and Ideas That Fueled It.”
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