Over the past two months, students in Serbia have been at the forefront of nationwide protests and institutional occupations, bringing higher education in the country to a standstill.
The protests have attracted much media attention in the country and the region, although Western media have so far been slow to pick up on the events.
Although some international commentators have rushed to declare the protests as “anti-Putin” or “pro-EU,” such qualifications are far from reality. In a way, these protests are not even directed against Serbia’s ruling regime, as some claim.
Rather, they are a powerful expression of outrage by the nation’s youth, led by students, rallying against entrenched corruption, institutionalized abuses of power, and the pervasive violence that has gripped society for over a decade.
Students taking the lead
The protests initially began as peaceful tributes to the victims of a railway station canopy collapse in the city of Novi Sad, which claimed 15 lives and left two others severely injured. At first, weekly 15-minute vigils were held across the country.
Soon, they grew into larger protests, blaming the authorities for negligence and corruption in the recent reconstruction of the station and demanding a transparent investigation into the causes of the collapse.
On November 22, outside the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade, an organized group affiliated with the ruling party physically attacked students and professors during the vigil. In protest, students occupied the faculty, inspiring their colleagues all over the country to do the same.
By mid-December, most higher education institutions in Serbia were occupied.
The occupation—which students define as a complete cessation of all compulsory lectures, exams, and preliminary academic obligations within the faculty—will last until the following key demands are met:
- Publication of all documentation related to the Novi Sad Railway Station reconstruction, whose canopy collapse has raised suspicions of high-level corruption and government involvement.
- Identification of individuals responsible for physically attacking students and professors during peaceful vigils, followed by the initiation of criminal proceedings against them.
- Dropping criminal charges against students arrested or detained during protests and suspension of ongoing proceedings.
- A 20 per cent increase in the budget for (currently underfunded) higher education, which should go toward reducing tuition fees, improving the student welfare system, and improving the overall quality of education.
So far, students have garnered widespread support for these demands, including from a majority of academic staff and an expanding array of groups outside academia, among which are school teachers, high school students, workers’ unions, farmers, artists, activists, lawyers, athletes, opposition leaders, businesses, students abroad, and the Serbian diaspora.
After a series of protests, which have taken place not only in larger cities but also in more than 100 towns, tens of thousands of people across the country joined the student call for a “general strike” last Friday. Rivers of people marching on boulevards, streets, squares, and bridges, flooded social media, united in a simple ask: “Meet the demands.”
And yet, until now, none of the demands have been met. Instead, the regime has tried to weaken the protests by intimidating students, threatening their parents, discrediting professors, undermining the university’s authority, and going against anyone joining them.
Despite these pressures, students have demonstrated remarkable tenacity and determination, along with a formidable capacity for organization, discipline, and unity—which still puzzles many observers of these events.
Inside student occupations
Currently, Serbia has nearly 250,000 students. Around 70 per cent of them attend one of the 80 faculties within large public universities, while the rest are spread across smaller specialized and private institutions. At present, almost all 80 public university faculties are occupied, along with many smaller institutions, including private ones.
The occupation (Serbian: “blokada”) is not just halting lectures and exams. It involves a physical blockade of faculty buildings, to allow for the autonomy of the work happening “on the inside” and prevent external interference. Students take shifts and control access to buildings, allowing entry only to those they invite.
To maintain the occupation, many students in Serbia have effectively moved into their faculties, transforming them into temporary homes complete with dormitories, kitchens, eating areas, and other essential facilities.
But faculty occupations are not leisurely retreats. They are serious acts of civil disobedience and political engagement. The occupied faculties serve as hubs for discussions, decision-making, and action planning, all conducted through direct democracy in the form of “student plenums.”
A plenum is a forum of sorts, where every student has an equal right to speak and vote, with participation open to all faculty students. Recording or sharing photos of plenums publicly is strictly prohibited.
How do students manage? While students in Serbia normally rely on parental support, these days they also depend on donations of food and essentials like blankets, mattresses, cleaning supplies, and other necessities. The broader community—including local businesses, restaurants, farmers, activists, unions, parents, alumni, and ordinary citizens—has shown remarkable solidarity with them. “Cooking for students,” to name one example, has become a recognized and widely appreciated form of citizen activism in these protests.
Students do not have leaders but insist on plenums as the main sites of decision-making. So far, their organization and coordination across faculties have been nothing short of extraordinary, reminding everyone of the power of unity and camaraderie. Apart from being efficient in coordinating actions, they have shown exceptional solidarity among themselves.
From swiftly responding if, for example, one of them has been made a target of the regime’s tabloids to sharing basic supplies and ensuring that no student group is left behind.
But the occupations haven’t interrupted learning and education. On the contrary, at their faculties, students maintain structured daily schedules. Alongside plenums and housekeeping, they, for example, invite professors and other public figures to give talks, learn skills such as debating or crocheting, organize workshops, host theatre plays, read poetry, discuss books, watch movies—and prepare for the next day’s street action.
Onto the streets
Shortly after students began occupying faculty buildings, peaceful vigils became a daily occurrence in many places. Every day at 11:52 AM, the time of the canopy collapse, people would step off the sidewalk onto the street, halting traffic and joining the silent protest. In smaller towns, this might involve 20 people; in larger cities, multiple intersections would host gatherings, often with bigger crowds.
Students would always take part in the vigils, sometimes leading others. They would leave their faculty buildings together, go to the nearest designated spot, spend 15 minutes in silence, some holding placards, and then go back to their faculties.
This has taken place every day for more than two months now. In addition to the daily vigils, marches have been organized, by students or some other group. They usually have a theme and an institution they address, such as a ministry, a court, or a government agency.
And yet, since the protests began, none of the students participating have been invited to speak on the state-owned RTS (Radio Television of Serbia) about their reasons for protesting. (In Serbia, television channels with national coverage, including RTS, are known for marginalizing and often even ignoring political opposition and critical voices.)
In response, students marched also to RTS, demanding to be seen and heard. Although students extensively rely on social media and digital tools, as one would expect, they seem well aware that this is not enough to reach all the other citizens.
On another occasion, students marched to the chief state prosecutor’s office, delivering 1,000 identical protest letters. Outside the building, they read aloud parts of her oath as a state prosecutor, emphasizing her failure to address their demands and “do her job.” The witty, pointed messages found on student banners and placards (whose understanding often requires familiarity with Serbian, Cyrillic script, and the local political context) are probably the best expression of creativity and humor that animate these protests.
Because students are very careful not to allow anyone to co-opt the protests or present them for something they are not, no national flags or symbols—apart from Serbian—are allowed in the streets, not even the EU flag. This does not mean that students are against the European Union or some other country. Rather, it means that they are focused on sending a clear message about what the protests are about while minimizing the room for manipulation and sidetracking.
The dark side
Unfortunately, the protests are not always peaceful. Protesters have been verbally and physically assaulted by individuals linked to the ruling party, often posing as random passersby. In some cases, these assaults have included driving vehicles through crowds and injuring participants.
In one particularly severe incident, a car struck a female student during a vigil, carrying her on the roof before she fell to the ground. Something similar happened last Friday. Fortunately, no student has so far suffered life-threatening injuries.
One life has, however, been lost: that of a dog named Dona, a regular and much-loved participant in the protests in Novi Sad, who was cruelly run over by a vehicle last Friday.
Despite the regime’s attempts to intimidate citizens, such incidents have only galvanized public support.
On December 22, students led one of Serbia’s largest-ever protests, gathering approximately 100,000 people at Slavija Square in Belgrade. The silent vigil during this event left many astonished by its powerful coordination, with one remarking, “a hundred thousand people fell silent with such force, simultaneously, without a centralized command system, a leader, or a sound system.”
The protests have continued into January, spreading nationwide to even the smallest towns. 15-minute vigils in solidarity have also taken place abroad, in places like New York, London, and Berlin. In the country, many elementary and secondary schools have organized work stoppages, with pupils and teachers joining students in the streets in growing numbers; the National Bar Association declared a week-long strike; theatres have canceled shows.
With each day, more people and groups join, making the street marches ever larger. The pressure on the government and the judiciary is mounting. Most schools and hundreds of companies and businesses joined the general strike on January 25. On January 27, students, together with farmers and citizens, blocked one of the largest junctions in Belgrade for 24 hours.
Why, then, haven’t they met student demands yet? Many explain that by doing so they would expose systemic corruption and implicate key politicians responsible for it. This would not only reveal the regime’s vulnerability to popular pressure but could also threaten its survival.
Until the demands are met
Student occupations have brought higher education in Serbia to a halt. However, these protests are clearly not just about higher education – they are about the role students, staff, and institutions play in them, which attests to the power of higher education as an institution, its historical legacy, and the principles it stands for.
This is especially critical in moments such as these when political institutions fail to not only uphold the rule of law but directly endanger the lives of citizens.
But in many ways, neither are these protests only about Serbia. We can see them also as part of a larger struggle for justice and freedom, which is historical and transnational in character.
It is also timely. When politicians in power—wherever they are—become a direct threat to justice and freedom, bringing entire countries to a standstill is not only justified but also a duty. Until the demands are met.
“This does not mean that students are against the European Union or some other country. Rather, it means that they are focused on sending a clear message about what the protests are about while minimizing the room for manipulation and sidetracking.” – hahahahahahahaha sure they destroyed EU flag at a protest because they love EU hahaahahahaha
Wow, bots are quick these days.
Once again, by this account, students form the cutting edge of struggle against government corruption & failure to respond to understandable requests for change, in this case requests for transparent investigation into an event many believe to be not only tragic but the result of corruption. The description given here of how students and their supporters have organized themselves sounds very much like the way WE organized ourselves back in the 1960s against the US government’s war to block Vietnamese independence & gain access to its people & natural resources for multinational corporations.
We too occupied university buildings in the manner described here, self-organized democratically, refusing any hierarchical political leadership. We also organized across campuses learning from each other, sharing information & experience of struggle. That US capitalist media has been silent about these struggles in Serbia is of no surprise to us at all. They learned THEN, that reporting on struggles in one place could provoke / circulate struggles elsewhere, either thru sympathy or because of common conditions. During the Cambodian invasion of 1970 students in the US shut down over a 100 campuses but there was a total blackout by the news media fearful of further circulating the struggle even further. As a result we had to set up our own autonomous information circuits via telephone (no Internet or social media then) & mail (sharing local reports on local actions).
So, today so-called “news media” in the US is silent about almost all struggles everywhere, all around the world. Most notorious at the moment is its silence, its refusal to report, on the Zionist genocide in Palestine, but the same is true vis-à-vis all sorts of other struggles in other countries. Today WE have better, faster modes of communication to bypass & outflank efforts by governments & capitalist media to control information about what’s going on. I first realized this during the development of resistance to the US invasion of Kuwait that touched off the first Gulf War, then through my participation in circulating the struggles of the indigenous Zapatista rebels in Chiapas, Mexico. (See: https://la.utexas.edu/users/hcleaver/kczaps.html ), who have also known how to organize themselves democratically in struggle.
Ironically, I read this article because of a post by Polish students to Elon Musk’s “Twitter” (renamed “X”, but no one uses that title except sycophantic capitalist media), which he took over to facilitate the spread of DIS-information & outright lies. Thus, as the French Situationists demonstrated years ago, we can “détourne” institutions meant to control us into vehicles of our own struggles, in this case to circulate information about these struggles in Serbia hidden from Americans by subservient capitalist media. By so doing we can circulate those struggles & gain them support elsewhere. I will contribute by reposting these comments to Facebook & notices to Twitter & Bluesky (a recent alternative to Twitter).