SERBIA: Students’ Relay Ultramarathon & more – 29th April 2025

Dobar dan from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Serbia Update from the 29th of April twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what's going down in Serbia.

On Friday the 25th, a group of twenty-one students started a relay ultramarathon to Brussels, Belgium, to address the European Parliament in person regarding the student-led protests and faculty blockades. The group of students participating in the ultramarathon will take around eighteen days to reach Brussels, just in time for a European Parliament session. They then intend to hand over letters to the European Parliament, the same ones that the cyclists who went to Strasbourg gave to the Council of Europe, describing the state of the rule of law, the lack of accountability, and the hostility towards students in Serbia.

The student relay marathon is just one of the many student-organized initiatives that aim to raise awareness of the political situation in the country. It stems from the canopy collapse tragedy in the northern city of Novi Sad, which killed sixteen people in November last year, for which no one was arrested.

In fact, the regime defenders keep using force on protesting students, as on Monday the 28th, a cordon of gendarmerie went to the premises of the Faculty of Sport and Physical Education in Novi Sad. The faculty's dean called the police and told them to break the blockade in any way they could, since he wanted to enter the building. The police attacked the crowd with batons and used pepper spray on students and other citizens who gathered in support, including journalists and veterans. After the incident, students in various cities organized a protest condemning police brutality against peaceful students and citizens.

As a result, two students sustained injuries, with one of them having to be taken to the ICU due to a brain hemorrhage. Citizens chanted Lower your shields, murderers! and Refuse orders!, asking the police to stop the violence. The dean said he wants to end the blockades and continue with the school year.

Speaking of blockades ending, students in Belgrade have announced the end of their blockade of Radio Television of Serbia, or RTS, after fourteen days. Recall that they were blocking its premises due to the RTS’ biased reporting, which was favoring the ruling Serbian Progressive Party. Students were demanding that the government announce a new contest to choose the board of the regulatory body for electronic media, REM, which will regulate what television channels broadcast.

On Monday the 28th, the government decided that there would be a contest for the new REM board candidates. The current REM board is not regulating what media outlets broadcast, allowing various forms of hate speech and misinformation to reach national television, as well as biased reporting, which is illegal on state-owned television channels, such as the RTS.

Meanwhile, the patriarch of the Serbian orthodox church, Porfirije, paid a visit to his Russian counterpart Kirill, alongside president Putin. During his visit, Porfirije said that Serbia is going through a “color revolution” - a term the Serbian president has used to describe the student-led protests. However, these demonstrations can’t be called a color revolution, because, while the term refers to often non-violent protests that aim to overthrow a government and are usually supported by the West, the students demonstrations don’t intend to topple the government, since its demands to end the blockades do not call for any changes in the executive.

After Porfirije’s visit to Russia, citizens in Serbia were appalled that a leader of the church repeated the words of president Vucic and picked a side between the students and the regime.

When it comes to the back and forth between the government and the student protests, media outlet NIN wrote about the government’s approach to end the blockades in a way that the students did not ask for. Instead of fulfilling the student demands, which include the publishing of all documents related to the recent railway station renovation in Novi Sad and the prosecution of those who are to blame for its failure, the government is looking into amending the education system.

NIN’s article states that the government is looking to shift the responsibilities regarding higher education from the Ministry of Education to the Ministry of Science and Technology. Such a change calls for adjustments to the law, which broadens the government’s options to end the blockades.

NIN also said that the president's proposal to reorganize university funding is problematic. Vucic wants to lower the budget for public universities, saying they do not want to work since they supported the blockades, and offer state funding to private faculties. This is an indirect punishment for public universities for having the autonomy to stand up for their students.

In another recent NIN article related to the political situation in Serbia, they featured an interview with Bojan Klačar, the Executive Director of the Centre for Free Elections and Democracy, or CESID for short. Klačar spoke about the possibility of extraordinary elections due to the lack of resolution regarding the student blockades. Still, these would not be trustworthy, as the electoral conditions in the country have not improved since the last parliamentary elections, which were marred by irregularities.

He said that the government did not adopt any of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe recommendations to secure fair elections. These included revising the voting registry and working on media darkness in the country.

On Sunday the 27th, Kosovo’s Special Prosecutor's Office filed a request to issue an arrest warrant against twenty Serbian men for war crimes. They said that the men are suspected of killing more than a hundred Albanian civilians in May nineteen ninety-nine, during the Yugoslavia-Kosovo war. The Prosecutor's Office stated that the police found the bodies that the group is suspected of murdering in a mass grave in Kosovo. One of the accused men is Milan Radojcic, who has an active indictment in Kosovo for a terrorist attack which took place in September twenty twenty-three in Banjska.

In an update to a story from previous shows, on Friday the 25th, the government sent a request to the Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, of the US Department of the Treasury to extend a special license which delays the application of sanctions against the state-owned NIS energy company. The Minister of Mining and Energy said that the licence Serbia received from the OFAC expired on Monday the 28th, preventing NIS from operating legally. The government is requesting that the OFAC extend the licence for ninety more days.

This is one in a series of many requests from the Serbian government to the US to postpone sanctions on NIS. Recall that the US announced in January that it would be sanctioning NIS due to its majorly Russian ownership.

Onto the economy, last week, the State’s statistical office published data on salaries for the month of February, and said that the average gross salary amounted to around 140,000 dinars, which is about 1,300 dollars. The median net salary amounted to 80,000 dinars, around 800 dollars. Compared to the same time last year, the salaries increased by about five percent in real terms. However, the inflation rate for February, at around five percent, eroded the benefits of the salary increases.

On Wednesday the 23rd, Marjan Marinkovic, the assistant director of the Belgrade City Library, announced that starting in May this year, the Library will introduce a free audiobook service for all users to celebrate World Book Day. Marinkovic explained that the introduction of technology into libraries is an overall positive, noting that the availability of free audio books alongside traditional ones provides access to reading for many.

Closing with some cultural news, the eastern city of Smederevo will be hosting its annual Knights and Legends festival from the 1st to the 3rd of May. The event features workshops on traditional crafts, a medieval bazaar with an exhibition of armor and weapons, as well as competitive knightly fights. Visitors will have the opportunity to experience and learn about medieval culture, including calligraphy, heraldry, court dance, and archery.

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!

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Do daljnjeg, zbogom!