SERBIA: Students Support Hrka & more – 11th Nov 2025

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

On Thursday the 6th, students from twenty-four high schools left their classes to gather in front of the parliament building in support of Dijana Hrka, mother of late Stefan Hrka, who was one of the victims of the railway station disaster in November last year. Thursday marked the fifth day of Hrka’s hunger strike, which she said was her own way of challenging the government to find justice for her son and the fifteen other victims of the tragedy. High school students said that Hrka must not be alone in her fight for justice.

Recall that last year, a faulty canopy at the northern city of Novi Sad’s railway station collapsed and killed sixteen people. The tragedy sparked mass student protests, the largest Serbia has ever seen, in a fight for justice and accountability.

On the previous day, on Wednesday the 5th, thousands of supporters of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party, or SNS, rallied in Belgrade to back president Vucic, marking the largest pro-SNS rally ever. Attendees held Serbian flags and chanted slogans in support of Vucic, while playing and singing nationalist songs. SNS members were also present at the rally, with Ana Brnabic, the parliament speaker who is also one of Vucic’s closest allies, praising the crowd for their support of the SNS.

Ahead of the rally, local media outlets reported that a large portion of attendees came from more rural places in Serbia with transportation provided by the SNS.

Speaking of Vucic, last week he announced that the Serbian security services had launched a search for two unidentified snipers. Without specifying who they were targeting, Vucic was adamant that he knew who had paid them and for what. He went on to vaguely hint that the two could be trying to bring him down in the wake of protests against his rule, saying “this is their only way, but they cannot defeat me.”

So far, the police have arrested several people in connection to the case, some of which were outside of Serbia, but are yet to charge them.

In other news, on Friday the 7th, MPs adopted a special law on redeveloping the former Yugoslav Army General Headquarters in Belgrade, a socialist-era building that was partly destroyed in the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in nineteen ninety-nine. The law, called Lex Specialis, aims to speed up the implementation of a renovation project funded by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his company, with plans to turn the landmark into a hotel.

Opposition MPs and architectural experts heavily criticized the law implementation, highlighting that the government adopted Lex Specialis for the renovation of the Novi Sad railway station too, whose canopy ended up killing sixteen people just months after. They said that a law that enables the government to bypass normal procedures, especially regarding safety, is a recipe for another tragedy.

In his promotion of the Yugoslav Army General Headquarters redevelopment plan on national television, President Vucic made sure to attack all of those who are stalling the project. He accused the country’s top corruption and organized crime prosecutors of being a corrupt gang.

In response, the prosecutors accused Vucic of abusing his powers on national television by going on a tirade against them, labelling his words as offensive and untrue. They added that Vucic had overstepped a boundary and his own rights as the president by talking about the prosecutors in such a way.

Recall that in a recent European Parliament resolution on Serbia, they condemned the governmental pressure on the judiciary and its lack of autonomy under Vucic’s power.

On that note about the EU, Marta Kos, its Enlargement Commissioner, presented a report on the progress of EU candidate countries on Tuesday the 4th. When it came to Serbia, Kos underlined that the implementation of reforms has slowed down significantly. She said that Serbia especially needs to work on reversing the backsliding on freedom of expression and academia, as well as ensuring better electoral conditions.

Kos also targeted the ruling officials for their recurring hostile rhetoric against the EU, which is also usually accompanied by false statements and misinformation.

She praised other candidate countries like Montenegro, Albania, Moldova and Ukraine for their progress in their path to the EU.

There is one thing that the entire Western Balkan region is performing poorly at, and that is the monitoring of drug and human trafficking and migrant smuggling. An NGO published its twenty twenty-five Organised Crime Index report last week, detailing how each country contributes to these crimes. They said that Albania is both a source and transit country for human trafficking, and that Kosovo and North Macedonia have limited border controls, which let trafficked persons and goods enter Serbia. Bosnia and Montenegro are also complicit.

As for Serbia, the report underlines that human trafficking remains widespread, and that the country is both a source, transit and destination country. The report explains how the victims end up in Western Europe, being forced to work in construction, hospitality, agriculture, and in private households. They added that the most vulnerable groups are ethnic minorities, such as Roma women and children.

In addition to the pressures from the EU, Vucic is also receiving criticism from Russia. Last week, we reported that Vucic told EU countries that Serbia has plenty of arms and that it is interested in selling them some, knowing that some could end up in Ukraine. When asked about the possibility of Serbian arms ending up in Ukraine, Vucic simply said that it is not his concern where the buyers send the arms.

In response, Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman addressed Vucic and said that Russia expects Serbia to follow through with the commitments it has made on arms exports, especially those ensuring that Serbian arms do not end up in Ukraine.

In an update to a story we have been covering for a while now, the Serbian minister of energy announced that the Russian stake owners of the US-sanctioned state-owned energy company NIS are ready to sell their shares to third parties in order to lift the sanctions. The two Russian owners had already sent the US a statement, informing them of their will to reduce Russian ownership of NIS, which the Serbian government has formally supported.

In some news about the economy, the Republic Geodetic Authority reported on Thursday the 6th that the apartment prices in Serbia have increased by around six percent year-on-year. They said that there has also been a nine-percent increase in apartment contracts, with a total of 12,600 new ones made from April to June alone.

The housing crisis has been on the rise in Serbia in the past decade, with residents’ salaries often being too low for them to afford housing. The ministry of construction even said that only the wealthiest ten percent can rent or buy housing without experiencing financial strain.

When it comes to the environment, the south of the country has already begun experiencing air pollution as the weather starts to cool down. In the southern cities of Nis, Vranje and Pirot, the air is already categorized as highly polluted, with the number of harmful particles being triple what is safe.

The World Health Organization flagged air pollution as the reason why Serbia’s rate of premature death is the highest in Europe. They noted that pollution is mostly driven by the burning of fossil fuels during the heating period.

On a brighter note, from the 12th to the 14th of November, Belgrade will host its annual Art Meets Science event at the Center for Society and Technology. The event will feature exhibitions of art pieces inspired by science and technology, alongside discussions about how the current age of the internet affects society. Admission is free.

For more information about the Art Meets Science event, check out the link in the show notes!

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

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