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MOVING TO FRONT FROM FRIDAY, JANUARY 24
Here. University students are centrally involved, and one was injured recently when a car rammed student protesters. The University of Belgrade has issued a strong statement. Comments are open for those who have more information.
Thanks for drawing attention to this. Long story short: after the fall of Milosevic in 2000, Serbia had a decade or so of proper liberal democracy (imperfect, of course, but it was a free country). Then in 2012, on the heels of the global economic crisis, Milosevic's former nationalist allies won the presidential election and it was all downhill from there. Soon the media was under complete control of the ruling party, with the state television and several private national networks working as government mouthpieces and helping build a truly sickening personality cult around the current president (who was once Milosevic's information minister): he's on television non-stop, all day every day, while every opposition figure is systematically demonized. There is not a single free TV station with a national reach in the country. All this was, of course, combined with authoritarian rule and a clientelist system that reaches into every aspect of society: want a low-level government job? Join the Party. Want to contract with the government? Join the Party. Want funding for the movie you are making? Join the Party. Want help for your NGO? Join the Party. (Think about Trump's worst impulses but a thousand times worse). As a consequence, institutions (including the judiciary) are completely destroyed, government money is being pumped into the pockets of party loyalists on an unprecedented scale, and there are thousands of incompetent and corrupt people in all sorts of positions of power. Numerous ministers were caught with plagiarised PhDs, and the ranks of middle and even high-ranking officials are full of people with recently obtained degrees from various diploma mills. Which brings me to the causes of a current crisis: as a consequence of this widespread corruption and incompetence a part of a newly refurbished train station building in a major city collapsed killing, I think, 18 people, including children and horrifically maiming many more. This caused a huge outcry, especially as the government quickly tried to hide evidence of its responsibility, claiming that the part of the building that collapsed was not refurbished at all, which was an obvious lie (there are videos of the actual work being done on the internet). The most likely scenario is that they simply gave the job to someone incompetent but loyal and that the job wasn't properly supervised because they hollowed out whatever government service was responsible for oversight. Anyway, that was the straw that broke the camel's back. Huge, widespread protests ensued, soon centering on the universities which were traditionally the main source of resistance to authoritarian rule in Serbia (I was a part of the protest movement against Milosevic in the late 1990s, and I remember the protests of early 1990s when I was a kid). As far as I can see two things matter about the current protest: the students are self-organized and mostly running the show independently from the largely marginalized opposition parties; both schools and universities have effectively stopped working, with the rest of society following (there was a general strike yesterday); the protests are non-ideological in the sense that they are not organized around a left/right axis, but rather include a broad coalition of people, from very liberal to very conservative, who are sick of the personality cult and the lack of accountability and would just like to see institutions do their job. The second thing is the unprecedented scale of the protests–this level of social disruption across the country is second only to the October 2000 revolution that toppled Milosevic. This is way different from anything we've seen in decades. Will it matter in the end? I don't know. Those ruling the country as evil, ruthless, and experienced, and at this point they are also probably afraid because they know that if the system falls many of them will end up in prison where they belong, all of which means that they will try to hold to power with all their might (they have already sent masked thugs to attack the protesters, among other things). The trouble is that EU and US don't care very much–they allowed Serbia's descent into authoritarianism to happen on their watch despite the country being a candidate for EU membership. Why? probably because of the larger geopolitical calculus. They obviously decided that they are going to tolerate this horrible regime as long as it doesn't make too much fuss around the issue of Kosovo (the majority-Albanian province that broke away but most Serbs still consider a part of the country) and they are also worried that the regime might pivot toward Russia (Serbs are traditionally fiercely pro-Russian for various cultural and historical reasons). Basically – they are OK with Serbia being turned into an insanely corrupt banana republic with no institutions as long as there is relative regional stability. And, let me add, this is unlikely to change under Trump, as the regime has already been making overtures to the new administration (rumor has it that a prime location in downtown Belgrade is earmarked for a Kushner-related project). So, I am really heartened by what I am seeing–a strong, smart, widespread protest movement just pleading for normalcy–but I also know the Serbian regime too well and I worry that they won't ever leave power peacefully. Hope I am wrong.
Thank you very much for sharing this, Brian!
As a person born in Serbia and who left 12 years ago because of the terrible situation (that has become much worse since them), I wholeheartedly support the demands of Serbia's students.
These events were triggered by one in many tragically events that happened in the country (a newly renovated building collapsed killing 15 people). The students are only asking for a bare minimum: for the state institutions to start doing their job and put an end to corruption and crime.
Vladimir
Dear Brian, thank you for your post. I was writing a comment for the blog when I received an interview by John Keane: https://radar.nova.rs/politika/dzon-kin-intervju-vucic-sns-studenti/. It is in Serbian but should be easily translatable. It gives a good big-picture overview.
Students with the strong backing of professors and the university administration protest in all universities in Serbia and most faculties. This includes the University of Belgrade, the University of Novi Sad, the University of Niš, and the University of Kragujevac, along with most smaller and privately owned institutions. The protests have grown ever more numerous in the last two months, with 100,000+ protestants at events and the government changing strategies quickly to defuse the situation. The only thing they are not even considering is giving up on even an inch of the power accrued in the previous 13 years of running this spin dictatorship in favor of straightforward requests related to accountability and the rule of law. In this sense, the situation is dire, and the statement from the University is appropriate, having in mind numerous incidents of student protestants being attacked and even hit by cars driven by goons of the ruling party.
P.S. sorry for the spelling errors.
Still, there is something I don’t understand. SNS, the governing party, has nearly 50% support according to the polls. This doesn’t give the impression of a country that is about to change system….
The ruling party certainly retains support of significant segments of the population – there should be no illusions about that – and I don't pretend to know what will happen next. They may well consolidate power again. However, it's worth noting that Serbia hasn't been a free country in a long time, truly free elections haven't been held in more than a decade (people were sometimes required to take a picture of their ballot to show that they've voted for SNS or else they could get in trouble!), and there is an effective media monopoly of the ruling party, so I am not sure how seriously any conventional measures of public opinion should be taken in that context. The fact that the prime minister was forced to resign says something – it's by far the greatest concession that the regime was forced to make in 10+ years.
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