SERBIA: 16th Railway Tragedy Victim & more – 25th Mar 2025

Dobar dan from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Serbia Update from the 25th of March twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what's going down in Serbia.

On Friday the 21st, Novi Sad’s canopy collapse tragedy claimed its sixteenth victim. The nineteen-year-old student, who was severely injured in the incident, died after four months of treatment at the Military Medical Academy in Belgrade.

The railway station canopy collapse incident in the northern city of Novi Sad has sparked some of the largest protests in the country, causing faculty blockades and numerous boycotts, which we covered in previous shows. The main trigger for the protests was a high-profile renovation that the railway station had undergone just months before the tragedy. Citizens have accused the government of corruption and official negligence, as the main cause for the canopy’s failure.

On Friday, students all over Serbia paid respects to the sixteenth victim, and declared Saturday the 22nd a day of mourning.

On that note about the students, they’ve called for citizens to make noise every day at 7:11 PM, to mark the moment when an unidentified sound interrupted a vigil during the largest protest in the country on the 15th of March. The noise caused a stampede in the crowd. Citizens believe that the police used a military-grade sound weapon made for dispersing large crowds, which is illegal because it is inhumane.

Just last week, we mentioned that Vučić and his close allies, alongside the interior ministry, denied having such a weapon. However, on Thursday the 20th, the minister of internal affairs confirmed that the police does, in fact, have a military-grade sound weapon, but denied having ever used it.

Due to the list of contradicting remarks from the state’s officials, students are urging citizens to make noise, until they explain what caused the noise in the protest.

Speaking of protests, Sunday the 23rd marked twenty days since the Belgrade Philharmonic went on a strike, demanding that the government raise the employees’ salaries to the national average. Serbian philharmonic orchestra musicians earn around 80,000 dinars a month, which is around 720 dollars, while the average salary in the country is around 110,000 dinars, about a thousand dollars.

The philharmonic orchestra’s musicians labeled the situation as embarrassing for the state, saying that the ministry of finance didn’t fulfill their demands, and pointed out their lack of interest in the matter.

On Friday the 21st, the editorial board of the state-owned broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia, or RTS, announced that their journalists and editors are facing enormous pressure from both the student protesters and ruling party officials. They added that their workers are facing public humiliation, no matter what they do.

Recall that a few weeks ago, students in Belgrade blocked the RTS building, demanding the broadcaster stop the slander of those who protest against the ruling regime. President Vučić is not very fond of the RTS either, despite being the most broadcast person on the channel’s program. He doesn’t like that it reports on the students’ protests (even though it doesn’t do it often). He went as far as calling one of the channel’s journalists a slur, for reporting on the student protests.

Students accuse it of contributing to media darkness - an issue that even the EU has called Serbia out for.

While on the topic of the media, the news outlet Balkan Insight Research Network, or BIRN, has reported about an attack on one of their journalists by a member of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party, or SNS, during a protest on Sunday the 23rd. Sasa Dragojlo, the assaulted BIRN journalist, said that he was filming the protest when the SNS member approached him, and after presenting his press credentials, Dragojlo was physically assaulted.

BIRN highlighted that the attack happened in front of several police officers, who removed the attacker, but failed to check his identity, despite Dragojlo asking them to do so.

Journalists’ associations have condemned the attack, and called for a proper investigation which will identify and prosecute the aggressor. They warned that cases like these often go unpunished, which sends the message that attacks on journalists are acceptable.

Next up, MPs in the national assembly have formally acknowledged the resignation of Prime Minister Miloš Vučević - fifty days after its announcement. Vučević’s resignation officially marked the end of the government’s mandate, and the official deadline for the formation of a new one is set for the 18th of April. If the assembly fails to form a new government, Vučić will have to call early parliamentary elections.

Remember that Vučević resigned back in January, after a few members of the SNS attacked a student and broke her jaw. Vučević said he felt partially guilty for the incident because he was the leader of the party.

Croatia, Albania and Kosovo signed a defense agreement on Tuesday the 18th, establishing joint responses to security challenges. However, this has caused a stir in Serbia, with president Vučić calling it a threatening move. He condemned Croatia and Albania for cooperating with Kosovo without previously consulting Serbia, highlighting that Serbia does not recognize Kosovo’s independence.

However, Ivan Anušić, the Croatian defense minister, said that neither they nor Albania needs Serbia’s permission when signing agreements. Anušić added that Croatia’s cooperation with Albania and Kosovo fosters good neighbourly relations, promotes knowledge exchange and collaboration between military industries.

Shifting gears, on Thursday the 20th, the NGO Renewables and Environmental Regulatory Institute, or RERI, warned that the speed at which the government is building out venues for the upcoming EXPO twenty twenty-seven world exhibition violates building regulations. RERI accused the government of abusing spatial and urban planning procedures to speed up the building process. They explained that the Commission of spatial planning keeps postponing the meeting during which the plans need to be adopted or rejected, and it is also failing to notify the public about the meeting’s official date.

RERI suspects that the commission is doing this to avoid hearing the numerous shortcomings and violations of the law that the professional public has found in the plans, in order to adopt the plans more easily.

Now for some energy news: On Wednesday, the 19th, the state-owned energy company NIS submitted a request to the US Department of Treasury to remove the company from the sanctions list. NIS stated that it acknowledges the lengthy process of removing someone from the sanctions list, which is why it submitted another request to the US, asking them to postpone the deadline for implementing sanctions on NIS, scheduled for the 28th of March.

Recall that the US Department of Treasury announced sanctions against NIS because Russia owns most of it. NIS has managed to postpone the implementation of the sanctions once before by thirty days, from February to March.

On a more positive note, the Wellbeing Research Center at the University of Oxford published this year’s World Happiness Report on Thursday the 20th, and it reports that Serbia climbed up to the 31st spot. Serbia went up from last year’s 37th place out of 147. It scored best in areas of social support, and lowest in civil liberties. The happiest country in the world was Finland for the eighth year in a row, with Afghanistan at the bottom of the list.

Closing with some cultural news, the central city of Kragujevac will be hosting its tenth annual Wine Salon on the 28th and 29th of March. The event will feature wineries from all over the country, with the aim to connect professional buyers, collectors, and wine enthusiasts. Wine Salon traditionally features wine-making equipment, books and also food!

For more information about the Wine Salon, check out the link in the show notes!

Aaand that’s it for this week! Thank you for joining us!

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Do daljnjeg, zbogom!