SERBIA: Police Brutality & more – 8th July 2025

Dobar dan from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Serbia Update from the 8th of July twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what's going down in Serbia.

After the mass protest in Belgrade on the 28th of June, students escalated the situation to widespread road blockades and called for civil disobedience due to the lack of resolution on their demands, which include snap parliamentary elections. Recall that the protests stem from last year’s railway station tragedy in the northern city of Novi Sad which killed sixteen people.

Since the 28th, police have been arresting dozens of students for protesting. Some arrests have even taken place on university campuses near the faculty buildings’ entrances, raising concerns over violations of university autonomy. Aside from the arrests, police have severely beaten and injured dozens of students for seemingly no reason other than protesting.

The use of excessive force by the police has prompted the UN Human Rights Office to address the Serbian police and call for restraint and the protection of free expression and peaceful assembly.

While the students are being arrested for peacefully protesting, four ruling party supporters accused of assaulting a student in January received a presidential pardon, exempting them from criminal prosecution.

The attack took place in Novi Sad in January, when four men came out of the office of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party and attacked a student posting promotional flyers for a protest, beating her with pipes and ultimately breaking her jaw. After the incident, the former prime minister Vucevic resigned, noting that he felt guilty that such a violent attack took place under his term and within his party. However, Vucic was not as remorseful, calling the four assailants heroes and lifting their arrest on Thursday the 3rd.

Such a decision sparked massive outrage among the public, mainly because the attack was filmed and the men confessed to their crimes, which questioned the independence and the work of the Ministry of Justice.

On Tuesday the 1st students and citizens in Novi Sad gathered to commemorate the victims of the canopy collapse tragedy exactly eight months after their deaths. After a sixteen-minute vigil in front of the railway station whose canopy collapsed, the crowd headed to the Boulevard of Freedom and blocked the area for vehicles. Protesters held speeches and a choir sang in memory of the victims. The attendees highlighted the lack of resolution in the case of the collapse, pointing out that no one has been charged for the canopy’s failure.

With there being no resolution to the canopy collapse case, the faculties remain blocked by the students. However, on Thursday the 3rd, Prime Minister Macut announced the government’s decision to allocate university admission quotas for the upcoming academic year, except for the Faculty of Philosophy, the Faculty of Dramatic Arts, and the Faculty of Applied Arts. Macut criticized these three due to their resistance to go back to holding lectures and exams, comparing them to other faculties, which have agreed to hold online classes, and thus finish the school year.

The quotas represent the number of students that a faculty can accept, with that number being determined annually before the start of the academic year. The lack of quotas means that the faculty cannot accept any new students, and that high schoolers cannot pick that faculty when enrolling into college, causing economic struggles for faculties and promoting brain drain.

Let’s go back to Belgrade’s mass protest on the 28th of June, where journalists and citizens spotted the men wanted for the deadly attack in the Pioneer Park, which is occupied by the regime-supporting group Students 2.0. The men are wanted in connection with the Banjska attack in Kosovo, which took place in twenty twenty-three and resulted in the death of a Kosovar police officer.

The Students 2.0 group has been blocking the Pioneer Park, located just across the Parliament building, for seven months now, demanding that the students unblock their faculties. Despite the group’s name, people blocking the park are rarely students. Journalists and opposition politicians have raised concerns about the presence of the men wanted for terrorism in Kosovo in the Students 2.0 park blockade.

As the Students 2.0 protest against students blocking faculties, President Vucic is boasting about the opening of a highway section connecting the western towns of Pakovrace and Pozega, despite construction difficulties. On Saturday the 5th, Vucic said that the new section is functional and completely safe, disregarding the concerns of many about its durability, accusing them of “wishing harm to their country”.

Civil engineers have raised questions about the missing technical inspection report - a document that ensures that the road is ready for use. However, since the government adopted amendments to a law on the 21st of June, the required documents were no longer needed.

The public is unsure about the road’s safety, mostly due to the canopy collapse tragedy, which was a result of negligence in safety procedures by those in charge of the railway station renovation.

The south-east part of Serbia is going through a surge in wildfires fueled by extreme heat and strong winds, burning dozens of houses and causing severe air pollution. On Monday the 7th, citizens in several south-east villages reported more than 200 fires, which left one person dead and at least fourteen injured.

Meanwhile, the national electricity distributor shut down its power lines in the affected areas to prevent further damage, leaving parts of south-eastern Serbia with no electricity. Emergency officials warned against burning dry grass, stubble or waste in open areas, urging citizens to call 193 if they see any new fires.

In other news, the media outlet Balkan Insight Research Network, or BIRN, published an article last week about Freedom of Information. They analyzed over 1,000 Freedom of Information, or the FOI, requests their journalists had filed in twenty twenty-four in the Western Balkan countries, and said that the full-response rate stood at around fifty-six percent, while the administrative silence resulted in around twenty-four percent. In Serbia, FOI requests are guaranteed by the FOI law, which allows any citizen to request access to information or documents a governmental body holds.

BIRN journalists reported excessive bureaucratic requirements and procedural delays in responding to the FOI requests in Serbia, on top of violence against journalists and legal intimidation.

On Monday the 7th, the White House announced new tariff rates in a press release, targeting fourteen countries, including Serbia. With this, the goods imported to the US from Serbia will face around thirty-five percent tariffs, which is one percent less than the initial plan. Still, US president Trump said that the new blanket tariffs are subject to change depending on the relations between the US and the affected countries.

Recall that in April, Trump imposed a ten percent baseline tariff on all exporters to the US, with higher duties on countries with high barriers on imports from the US.

Still in the economy, Serbia’s Statistics Office published a report last week on the total external trade in goods in the first five months of twenty twenty-five, and noted that it amounted to around four trillion dinars, which is around forty billion dollars. Compared to the same period last year, the trade surged by around ten percent. As for imports, the total amount was around two trillion dinars, about twenty billion dollars, which is an increase of around twelve percent compared to the same period last year.

Closing this edition with some cultural news, Novi Sad is currently hosting an exhibition with thirty reproductions of Museo del Prado’s most famous paintings from artists such as Diego Velázquez, Francisco de Goya, and El Greco. It is open until the end of July and the entrance is free of charge.

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

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

Don’t forget to hit that free subscribe button to stay tuned for what’s going on in Serbia.

Do daljnjeg, zbogom!