SERBIA: Canopy Collapse Suspects & more – 24th June 2025

Dobar dan from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Serbia Update from the 24th of June twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what's going down in Serbia.

On Wednesday the 18th, the Court of Appeals in the northern city of Novi Sad lifted the detention of five suspects in the case of the railway station canopy collapse and placed them under house arrest. This decision comes less than twenty days after the Novi Sad Higher Court replaced the detention of five more suspects who were in police custody with house arrest. All of the defendants in the case are facing charges of improper and negligent performance of construction work, which are serious crimes against public safety. Despite the weight of their charges, all of the suspects are either free or under house arrest.

Recall that on the 1st of November twenty twenty-four, a canopy on the Novi Sad railway station’s building collapsed and killed sixteen people - only four months after its renovation. The incident triggered the largest student protests Serbia has ever seen, demanding accountability from the government.

On the following day, on Thursday the 19th, law and medicine students filed criminal charges against President Vucic. They are accusing him of exceeding his authority upon visiting the patients who have suffered injuries in a fire incident in Kocani, North Macedonia, in mid-March. During his visit, Vucic also brought in interviewers and a camera crew, who broadcast Vucic, but also the patients, on live television.

Students from all universities, as well as some medical workers, condemned Vucic’s decision to film the patients without their consent, accusing him of entering the ICU without any approval. Law and medicine students said that they are taking the matter into their own hands, adding that Vucic’s use of patients to score political points is not just shameful, but also illegal.

Speaking of the government’s law-breaking practices, on Wednesday the 18th, the international audio research NGO Earshot published a paper about the sound heard during the mass protest that took place on the 15th of March in Belgrade. Earshot reconstructed the sound by taking in more than 3,000 written statements and interviews with eyewitnesses.

Recall that during a silent vigil for the victims of the Novi Sad tragedy, a stampede erupted in the crowd due to a vehicle-like sound, which many have guessed was from a sonic device used for military purposes to scare off large multitudes. Earshot said that protest participants were very likely subjects of a targeted attack using directed acoustic weapons.

In the wake of accusations from the protesters, the Serbian government dismissed all allegations of acoustic weapon use, threatening them with arrests for spreading misinformation. The European Court of Human Rights is also conducting an investigation into the incident.

On that note about weapons, President Vucic announced on Monday the 23rd that Serbia has stopped all exports of arms to Israel since its attack on Iran last week. He said that the halt of arms exports is in Serbia’s best interest. This decision happened a few days after Iran stated it would consider all countries supplying Israel with arms and weapons as legitimate targets due to their compliance with Israel’s aggression against Iran.

During Monday’s press conference, Vucic bragged about how Serbia was the only European country that kept supplying Israel with ammunition after its attack on Palestine, stating that Serbia respects and likes Jewish people and Israel. Most Serbian citizens criticized Vucic’s statements, stating that they are strongly against Israel’s genocide in Palestine.

The European Commission handed out the first portion of the budget for Serbia from the EU Growth Plan for the Western Balkans, transferring more than sixty million dollars in favorable loans to the state’s budget. Apart from that, Serbia is expecting sixty million dollars in grants and loans from the EU through the Western Balkans Investment Framework, aimed at improving infrastructure across the country. The combination of these funds, 120 million dollars, makes up only seven percent of the total financial support the EU has allocated to Serbia under the Western Balkans growth plan.

On Thursday the 19th, the Serbian government appointed Dragoslav Bokan, a film director and former paramilitary unit leader, as the president of the National Theatre’s Board of Directors. The employees at the Theatre voiced shock and concern after the decision, calling on the authorities to revoke it and appoint a new president. They cited his criminal record of robbery and his position as the head of the notorious paramilitary unit called the White Eagles, who were accused of committing war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and national violence.

Bokan is an avid supporter of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party. He makes regular guest appearances on the pro-regime media outlets, and also harbors some nationalist views.

In some news about the economy, the Central Bank said on Wednesday the 18th that the net foreign direct investments, or FDIs, in the first quarter of twenty twenty-five have slowed down by eighty percent, compared to the same period last year. So far this year, Serbia has attracted around 440 million dollars, down from two billion in twenty twenty-four. They said that the political instability in the country is the main cause of the FDI decline this year, blaming the student-led protests and the faculty blockades.

Still in the economy, the State Statistical Office published a twenty twenty-four report last week about the number of poverty-stricken families. The report notes that 20% of households with only one income were at risk of poverty. The most vulnerable group was the elderly, predominantly those living in the south, where pensions are the lowest in the country. The at-risk-of-poverty rate among this group was around twenty-four percent.

Meanwhile, on Friday the 20th, the state-owned energy company NIS requested that the US postpone the deadline for the sanctions the country had planned to impose on the company due to its large Russian ownership. The US has requested that NIS reduce Russia’s share to less than half, and has moved the deadline three times, with the current one being the 28th of June, when they plan to impose sanctions. NIS is still focused on shifting the majority of the ownership from Russian to Serbian companies, but has not yet managed to decrease the Russian share enough to avoid sanctions. NIS is asking the US to give it ninety more days to work on the issue.

Recall that in January, the US threatened NIS with sanctions due to it being majority owned by Russian companies. The US noted that these Russian companies were using the financial gain of NIS to fund Russia in the war in Ukraine. Since then, the US has granted three delays in imposing sanctions on the request of NIS, all of which were backed by the Serbian government.

In some news about culture, the famous music magazine DJ MAG published the results of the world’s largest survey, where people had to rank festivals that they had attended from best to worst, creating a list of the top 100 festivals in the world. 29th on the list was EXIT, one of the largest electronic music festivals in Europe, and certainly the largest one in Serbia. At the 49th place was Lovefest, a festival of electronic music held in Vrnjacka Banja in central Serbia, outperforming large global events such as Glitch, Ava, and Tomorrowland Winter.

On top of the list was the Tomorrowland festival in Belgium, and at the bottom was Sónar Lisboa in Portugal.

On that note about festivals, Belgrade will hold its annual literary festival named KROKODIL, which means crocodile in Serbian, from the 27th to the 29th of June. The organizers said that the main program will feature authors from Sweden and Poland, as well as two local authors who will read some of their poems. Tickets are available online, and they retail for 1,000 dinars, which is around ten dollars, but pensioners and students can buy them for 800 dinars (around eight dollars).

For more information about the KROKODIL festival, check out the link in the show notes!

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

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