SERBIA: The Largest Protest & more – 18th Mar 2025

Dobar dan from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Serbia Update from the 18th of March twenty twenty-five. A quick summary of what's going down in Serbia.

On Saturday the 15th, several hundred thousand people flocked to Belgrade ahead of the largest protest ever in Serbia. This was another demonstration aligning with the student-led protests over the canopy collapse tragedy in the northern city of Novi Sad which killed fifteen people. Groups of students traveled to Belgrade on foot from different cities, including Novi Sad, Kragujevac and Nis, while other groups cycled.

Aside from getting justice for the victims, the protest aims to address the corruption in the country, which many believe caused the canopy to fall. Some independent counters estimate that the protest amassed more than 300,000 people, while some others believe there were over 800,000.

The demonstration ended abruptly once people from the Pioneer park, who were protesting against university blockades, threw concrete blocks at the crowd.

Even though there was a low number of incidents, about a hundred citizens who were at the Slavija square accused the police of using a military-grade sonic weapon on them. During the fifteen minutes of silence for the victims of the tragedy, attendees captured videos of a whooshing sound interrupting the vigil, causing panic and a brief stampede.

Protesters accused the police and the government of using a long-range acoustic device — a military-grade weapon capable of producing sound at levels that cause headaches and nausea. However, the police and the defense ministry denied the accusations.

After the largest-ever protest in the country, president Vucic held a government session at the Palace of Serbia on Sunday the 16th. He spoke about the unconfirmed resignation of prime minister Vucevic, and added that after it is official, the formation of a new government with a new prime minister will start. Recall that Vucevic resigned after three SNS members attacked two students with baseball bats, adding that he felt guilty due to the attackers being members of his party. Vucic noted that the formation’s deadline would be thirty days, and if it’s not respected, parliamentary elections would be held as early as June and not in twenty twenty-three as they should be.

Political analysts say that the ruling SNS party is getting the message from the mass protests fueled by public frustration with corruption, vote rigging, media darkness and poor living standards.

Earlier we mentioned the people gathered at Pioneer Park near the Assembly building, who called themselves Students 2.0 or Students who want to study. On Sunday the 16th, they were spotted leaving the park with bags, and boarding buses organized specifically for them. Students 2.0 has been camping for several days in the park, as a way to protest against the university blockades, demanding the universities to continue working.

However, questions have been raised about the authenticity of their protest, as news came out that a large number of students camping at the park were not actually students, but SNS members. Students 2.0 said they would not leave the park until university blockades ended. However, all of the people in the group might be SNS members, paid by the ruling party, aiming to disrupt Saturday’s protest and cause violence so that people would blame the students.

Opposition parties have been urging the EU bodies to investigate the canopy collapse tragedy ever since it occurred, and after Saturday’s protest, the European Public Prosecutor's Office, or EPPO, confirmed that they would launch an official investigation. The EPPO stated that they will focus on the potential misuse of EU funds in the reconstruction project of the railway station which took place last summer. The canopy of the railway station collapsed on the 1st of November, and so far, no one has been arrested for the tragedy.

Speaking of the collapse, students are not the only ones protesting and essentially striking by blocking their universities. Employees of all judicial bodies announced that they would be going on a general strike on Tuesday the 18th. The employees will stop working almost entirely, apart from the minimal work they have to do for urgent cases. The Judiciary Union said that the strike aims to support students who are protesting against the corruption in the country, adding that if the entire country stops, the government will have to fulfill the students’ demands.

The protesting students have four demands that the government needs to fulfill in order for the blockades to end. These include the publishing of all documents related to the Novi Sad railway station renovation, the prosecution of all people who were violent toward them, the release of all arrested students, and a twenty-percent increase to the budget of higher education.

On Friday the 14th, journalist teams from Croatia and Slovenia reported that the Serbian police denied their entrance into the country, apparently for no reason. The journalists said that they were traveling to Serbia to cover Saturday's protest. They said that the police saw their gear, identified them as press, and made them wait for two hours, after which they received a document ordering them to go back to their countries, saying they were a security risk.

Marko Gregorc, a journalist from Slovenia, said that it was clear that the authorities were trying to prevent the news of the protest from being broadcast to a global audience, promoting media darkness.

Next up, on Thursday the 13th, the Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability, or CRTA, an independent civil society organization, filed a criminal complaint against president Vucic. The complaint is a response to Vucic’s media address broadcast accusing the CRTA of receiving funds from abroad in order to fund organizations that aim to oust him.

The CRTA said that Vucic misused information from the organization’s official documentation which he obtained during a raid that the members of the Criminal Police Directorate carried out earlier this month. The CRTA says that Vucic is spreading false information, ruining citizens’ trust in independent organizations and NGOs.

On Wednesday the 12th, citizens all over the country paid respects in commemoration of Zoran Djindjic - the former prime minister who was killed in an organized attack in the early two thousands. The Outgoing prime minister and his cabinet laid a wreath at the entrance of the government headquarters - where Djindjic was murdered. Djindjic was killed by a sniper, in an organized assassination by the State Security Service’s Special Operations Unit. The Unit believed that Djindjic was going to hand them over to the Hague Tribunal so that they would answer for war crimes they had committed in the nineteen nineties. President Vucic was one of the members of the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party which sided with the murder organizers.

Citizens held vigils and drew comparisons between the past and the current state of affairs in the country, adding that Djindjic was a symbol of justice, murdered by those who profited off of corruption.

In some news about the economy, The State Statistical Office said on Thursday the 13th that the year-on-year inflation for the month of February stood at four and a half percent, which is one percent less than last year. Monthly inflation stood at less than one percent. Compared to the twenty twenty-four end-of-year inflation, the prices in February increased by one percent.

Closing this edition with some cultural news, the Novi Sad Fair will be hosting a book fair from Tuesday the 18th to Monday the 24th in the Fair’s hall 1. The event will feature books from both local and foreign authors, in various languages and different genres. The Book Fair will include significant discounts, gifts, and special book editions, and the entrance is free!

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

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

Did you know that you can send an episode as an MP3 file? You can download it directly from our website: www.rorshok.com/serbia. The link’s also in the show notes.

Do daljnjeg, zbogom!