As Serbia‘s anti-corruption protests enter their ninth month, they show no sign of abating, with protesters shifting their tactics from mass rallies to roadblocks and civil disobedience.
After a 140,000-strong protest in Belgrade’s Slavija Square last weekend, students who led the protests since November declared they would no longer spearhead the rallies. Instead, they invited other groups to take on the protest mantle and called for a campaign of civil disobedience against President Aleksandar Vucic’s leadership.
Since then, roadblocks have been popping up in cities across Serbia, with people deploying dustbins, chairs, and other improvised barriers to block junctions in major cities, including Belgrade, Novi Sad, and Nis. Local residents’ associations, known as “citizens’ assemblies,” have been heavily involved in the protests. As soon as the police dismantle one blockade, another one pops up somewhere else.
The police crackdown has triggered a backlash, with dozens of arrests and complaints of excessive police force. A number of students were treated in hospital, and parents protested in front of a central Belgrade police station until their children were released.
A striking range of voices has condemned the police conduct, including the journalists’ association, the opposition Centre Party, and Serbian Orthodox Church Archbishop Grigorije Duric. The EU has also decried the “acts of hatred and violence” and called for calm.
The protest movement started with a relatively simple purpose: to ensure accountability for last November’s disaster at Novi Sad railway station, when a concrete canopy collapsed, killing 16 people.
The outpouring of grief was instant, and the outrage swiftly followed, with many directing their anger at President Vucic. University students took leadership of the movement, demanding full transparency about the railway station project and the prosecution of those responsible for the disaster.
Despite months of protests, the movement has achieved little in terms of concrete results. However, the protests have now brought hundreds of thousands out into the streets and are galvanizing large sections of society.
One opposition leader, Srdjan Milivojevic of the centre-left Democratic Party, compared the moment to the early 2000s, when the student-led protests against President Slobodan Milosevic “became a people’s movement.”
The current situation is different, with President Vucic and his party remaining in a relatively comfortable position, with polls indicating that the SNS remains the most popular party. In the aftermath of the last big student-led rally, Mr. Vucic declared that “Serbia won” in the face of an attempt to “overthrow the state.”
The people blocking the roads in Serbia’s cities view it differently. They are asking for change through the ballot box, even if it is far from clear who would run against the SNS.
And the president insists there will be no elections before December next year. Now, it is perhaps a question of which side blinks first. With temperatures already pushing towards 40C, it could be a simmering summer in more ways than one.