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BELGRADE — It seems as if all of Serbia converged on Belgrade.
Tens of thousands of protesters poured into the central streets of the Serbian capital on Saturday from all directions in an almost unbroken tide of umbrellas and placards. They defied the relentless rain and unseasonably humid March air hanging over the city in order to march in anti-government demonstrations that have been swelling for months and threatening Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić.
“Fear has changed sides in Serbia,” Dinko Gruhonjić, a university professor from Novi Sad and one of the early supporters of the protests, told POLITICO.
“The protests have shown that average citizens are not afraid anymore,” Gruhonjić said. “Now they see fear in the eyes of the government.”
The protests began last November after the canopy of the main railway station in Novi Sad, the center of Serbia’s lush northern region, crumbled on top of unsuspecting bystanders and killed 14 people on the spot.
The victims included young children aged 9 and 5. Another victim later succumbed to their injuries, while several others underwent amputations.
What began as 15-minute vigils — one minute for each life lost — has swelled into the largest protest movement in modern Serbian history, with the demonstrations growing bigger as the government has scrambled to deny responsibility despite evidence linking the collapse to recent renovations at the railway terminal.
“While people were aware of corruption and criminality in the government before, the fact that corruption can lead to us indiscriminately being killed is what has set this off,” Gruhonjić said.
In late November and December, university and high school students began boycotting classes in protest. Entire faculties suspended lectures, declaring them “occupied” as students took up residence on campus.
At one of the stages on Slavija Square on Saturday, a protester who remained unnamed— part of the movement’s deliberately leaderless approach — rallied the crowd with a chant: “Look how many of us are here! Your voice counts! Let’s wake up Serbia together!”
Saturday’s demonstration was mostly peaceful, but police arrested a man who rammed his car into protesters in a Belgrade suburb, injuring three people, the AP reported.
Optimism and a deep sense of collective identity filled the air on Saturday in Belgrade, as entire families arrived — some on foot — from more than a dozen cities and towns, proudly displaying their callused feet as a badge of determination.
While the government initially moved carefully in its response to the protests, avoiding overt crackdowns or harsh criticism, a series of scattered brawls and attacks on protesters over the past four months have heightened tensions. Protesters claim these escalations were instigated by masked and hooded provocateurs.
Several ministers from the ruling Serbian Progressive Party, along with Prime Minister Miloš Vučević, offered their resignations in response to the events, but also proceeded to accuse the protesters of plotting to overthrow the government.
Speaker of Parliament and former Prime Minister Ana Brnabić accused protesting students and professors in Belgrade of “instigating a coup d’état and civil war in the Republic of Serbia,” in a statement earlier this week.
President Vučić has said those responsible for the collapse of the awning in Novi Sad “will go to prison” and that it fell due to what will likely turn out to be “a professional error” and not corruption. But he also likened the protesters to a “color revolution” funded by international NGOs and even foreign governments — a sentiment often echoed by figures such as Viktor Orban in Hungary and Robert Fico in Slovakia, who have faced similarly large protests recently.
The most coveted spot in Belgrade — the main park between the parliament building and the presidency — has been taken over by pro-government students rallying under the slogan “Students want to study.”
For weeks, they have slept in tents, their presence heavily guarded by rows of armed gendarmes and encircled by anti-riot fences and tractors, the latter ostensibly a symbolic nod to the idea that they, too, represent average folk.
All around them, marching protesters chanted “Pump it!” — pumpaj in Serbian — the rallying cry of the movement, indicating no matter how many are stopped or arrested, new voices will rise in their place.
