The one-year-anniversary of the train station crash in Novi Sad that sparked nation-wide protests is approaching.
Over the months, police violence has only worsened as President Aleksandar Vučić refuses to back down.
Though the first protests last year saw students taking to the streets demanding justice for incriminated classmates arrested for participating in the blockades, the movement has expanded beyond students.
The longer the protests, the more violent the Serbian state has become. Civil war seems a probable outcome as Vučić refuses to advance the timeline for an election.
Most will remember the culmination of Vučić’s barbarism when his officials decided to use a sound cannon amid the eleven minute of silence in Belgrade during the country’s most-attended protest, which was estimated to have reached at least half-a-million in the Serbian capital.
Deemed illegal by most international bodies, Vučić’s blood thirst did not stop there. He was warned by students that civil disobedience would follow if he failed to announce advanced elections this summer.
He did not. We have reached a week since the renewed wave of protests, which in this case have grown to become increasingly violent.
The police have already detained over a hundred people for attending the protests, leading to increased tensions between the two parties.
In retaliation, the SNS (Vučić’s party, in power for the last twelve years) offices have been vandalised by protestors in Novi Sad, 70km north of Belgrade.
While Vučić-led media deplored the “violence” of protestors, the local population alleged that police forces cracked the skull of a young girl.
This is not the first time Serbs have been subject to extreme police violence across the last months. The regimes’ forces have regularly resorted to teargas in an attempt to disperse protestors, while Vučić himself called protestors “terrorists which we must free Serbia from”. Last week, he insisted he was proud about his repression: “we send 3,000 policemen across Serbia every day”, promising bonuses to his loyalist policemen.
Expectedly, this has raised concerns across all Europe, with the EU Ambassador to Serbia requesting that “fundamentals rights, like the right to peaceful protests be upheld”.
The Serbian government, on their hand, has brushed all these critics away. President of National Assembly Ana Brnabić responded that the country continues to aspire for EU membership, while deploring “attacks against the Serbian police”, which she says “cannot be reduced to peaceful protests”.
Meanwhile, a sixteen-year-old child was violently battered by several policemen in the streets of Valjevo, 100km south of Belgrade.
On the other hand, the Kremlin has offered support to Serbia. The Russian Foreign Ministry responded by claiming that “we cannot remain unresponsive to what is happening in brotherly Serbia”.
In the meantime, Vučić’s forces continue to regularly use armored vehicles against protestors, with the exact number of injuries remaining unknown. In response, several protestors lit up several trash bins on fire.
None of this will stop, on the contrary. Earlier this week, Vučić accused the West of destabilizing Serbia: “Our country is in grave danger, they have jeopardized all our values, normal life, and every individual”.
His Minister of Interior, Ivica Dačić, promised to “arrest every single one of them”. He also has repeatedly denied reports of aggravated police violence, shifting blame on protestors for starting the clashes instead.
For older protestors, this year has been reminiscent of the year 2000, when Serbia forced Slobodan Milošević out. The major difference being that the latter backed down rather quickly, and gave up almost instantly.
In the case of Vučić, he has only doubled down as he continues to protect himself through the media and foreign partners (like the Kremlin), while claiming he is fighting terrorism.
This is much worse. Reports claimed last month that the Serbian government has been using spyware against activists or citizens who speak out against Vučić’s actions for nearly a decade, with equipment supplied by an Israeli company.
As such, targeted state violence towards individuals for speaking out against Vučić’s weak leadership has been a repetitive pattern.
This is now a much bigger issue than how it originally started, when a train crash in Novi Sad crushed sixteen people.
This is a question of a true resistance against Vučić’s wrongdoings, as he continues to double down on his actions.
Unfortunately, only time can tell how far he is willing to go. With limited international aid, it is only Vučić’s and his policemen against the rest of the nation.
He has tried employing police violence, forcing them to be as brutal as possible, in exchange for salary bonuses. None of this has stopped Serbs from continuing to protest against a violence state, which repeatedly dehumanizes them.
It is likely that Vučić will eventually back down, unless he will try to rig elections in his favour. In either case, students and the rest of Serbs have nothing to lose, and will go as far as needed until Vučić’s ousting.
Too many have been detained, criminalized, injured, or (in)directly killed by policy brutality to give up. As Vučić’s brutality knows no borders, the country’s future looks rather gloomy as civil war seems unavoidable at this point.
Featured image via Bobica10 / Shutterstock.
