SERBIA: MPs Fight & more – 11th Mar 2025

Dobar dan from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Serbia Update from the 11th of March twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what's going down in Serbia.

On Tuesday, the 4th, MPs from the opposition and the ruling Serbian Progressive Party got into a brawl during the session at the National Assembly. The argument started because the MPs did not agree on the session agenda. The opposition requested to discuss the students’ demands after the canopy collapse tragedy, but the ruling majority voted to pass on the issue. To protest the vote, opposition MPs started blowing whistles and vuvuzelas while ruling MPs were talking, which escalated to the throwing of smoke bombs and a fistfight.

Tuesday’s assembly session was held in the midst of mass protests we covered in previous shows led by students, due to a collapse of a railway station canopy in the northern city of Novi Sad which killed fifteen people. Students demand that the government publish all documents related to the railway station renovation, prosecute those who were violent towards them during the blockades, free all arrested students, and increase the budget for higher education.

The protests continue, as students in Belgrade blocked the entrance to the Radio Television of Serbia, or RTS, building on Monday the 10th. They explained that one of the largest issues the student-led protests are facing is the lack of representation in the media, particularly RTS which has spread false information about students and their actions since the protests began. In the past few months, students have asked RTS repeatedly to report about the protests without any bias, but to no avail. During the blockade of the building’s entrance, RTS reporters accused the students of being a mob, adding that their intentions were to prevent the normal functioning of public institutions.

Minutes into the RTS blockade, gendarmerie troopers in riot gear swarmed the building’s entrance and used force against students who were peacefully protesting - marking the first official use of violence from the police on students.

On Friday the 7th, citizens all over the country participated in a general strike. The call for the strike comes right after the government penalized protesting teachers by cutting their February salaries, with some not receiving them at all. Only the teachers that held classes regularly and did not support the student protests received full salaries.

Aside from the students who called on the strike, numerous small and large businesses supported it, so they didn’t open shop on Friday and joined the protest on the streets. The Union of Science of Serbia, the extended rectors’ collegium of the University of Belgrade, and the Bar Associations of Belgrade and Vojvodina also supported the strike.

In the past few weeks, we mentioned the ongoing fight-against-corruption mission that president Vucic launched in the wake of anti-corruption protests in the country. On Wednesday the 5th, police arrested more than twenty people as part of the campaign in some cities. They have arrested eleven people from the Higher Public Prosecutor's Office in Belgrade on suspicion that they had abused their positions and engaged in money laundering. Five others were arrested in the central city of Kraljevo for tax fraud, with six more arrested in the northern city of Novi Sad on similar charges.

Recall that since the corruption-fight mission started, the police have arrested around a hundred individuals, including the former mayor of the southern city of Nis, and the former director of the state-owned electricity company Elektroprivreda Srbije.

Since we talked about Vucic, on Friday the 7th, he spoke over the phone with Russian President Putin. During the call, Vucic talked about the renewal of the gas agreement between the two countries, which expires on the 31st of May. Additionally, the two presidents discussed the looming US sanctions over Serbia’s energy company NIS because it is mostly owned by Russia.

The EU condemned the phone call, noting that any contact with Russia goes against their principles. They urged Serbia to align with the EU’s foreign policy, which includes imposing sanctions on Russia and refraining from any contact with the country.

Speaking of bilateral relations, Kosovo’s prime minister Albin Kurti accused Serbia of interfering in Kosovo’s parliamentary elections which took place in February. On Sunday the 9th, Kurti called out president Vucic and accused him of using intelligence services and organized crime groups to influence the win of Serbian List - a Serbian party in Kosovo. He said that Serbian officials participated in bribery, financial conditioning, blackmail, threats, and cyber-attacks, to secure votes for Serbian List.

Aside from Vucic, Kurti targeted Milan Radojcic, the former head of Serbian List who organized the deadly Banjska attack two years ago. Kurti said that Radojcic played a significant role in the election interference, mostly by pressuring Serbian voters in Kosovo.

Serbian List denied the accusations, calling them brutal lies.

In other news, the organizers of the international South East Europe Mobility Fair twenty twenty-five, or SEE Mobility twenty twenty-five, announced the fair’s cancelation due to potential safety risks. The SEE is an international fair of transport technology and services aimed at boosting trade and investments, alongside featuring innovations in the industry. The fair was scheduled for April.

However, Railway Cluster for Southeast Europe, the fair organizers, said that exhibitors from the EU expressed concerns for the safety of their representatives because Serbian officials have branded foreigners as enemies. They explained that during the student protests, ministers and even the president have accused foreign countries of orchestrating the demonstrations to weaken Serbia. They added that they will schedule the fair as soon as the protests end and the situation stabilizes.

Since we mentioned the EU, the Council of Europe published its twenty twenty-four Europe Press Freedom Report on Wednesday the 5th, discussing media freedom on the continent. The report noted that violence against journalists promoted by officials threatened media freedom in Serbia and that state propaganda is being used to undermine independent journalism in the country.

Aside from Serbia, the countries that lack media freedom the most in Europe are Russia, Turkey and Georgia, alongside Ukraine, which has the least media freedom out of all. On the other hand, the leading countries in media freedom include Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands.

While on the topic of pressure from the state, award-winning and Serbia’s most famous music festival EXIT expressed the potential need to move to another country. Born from a student movement in the nineties against the regime of then-president Slobodan Milosevic, Novi Sad’s EXIT has been a cultural staple in the modern history of Serbia, as well as one of the major economic boosters.

The festival organizers fully aligned themselves with the student protests, and voiced support for the fulfillment of their demands. However, they said that such a stance has caused the state to put pressure on the festival and threaten EXIT in order to silence the organizers, prompting them to consider moving the festival to another country.

In some economic updates, the Ministry of Finance announced last week that the public debt amounted to around four and a half trillion dinars, which is around forty billion dollars, in twenty twenty-four. Compared to twenty twenty-three, public debt has increased by around nine percent. The ministry noted that the debt was equivalent to around fifty percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

Let’s close this edition with some cultural news. BlokadniFEST, a student-organized film festival, started on Sunday the 9th and will take place until the 16th in Belgrade. The students called on other students to send in film requests, which the festival will feature. The idea for BlokadniFEST came after the international film festival FEST was postponed, with the government citing security risks stemming mainly from the protests.

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

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

If you have any feedback, send us an email at info@rorshok.com. We want to make our updates better for you!

Do daljnjeg, zbogom!