Why are students protesting in Serbia?
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Today, students in Serbia are rewriting democracy. The student story is a real story, a story of truth and a story of change. We want a country where we will stay. We don't want to leave this country. And that's why we're doing all this. So how did Serbian youth turn outrage into an organized movement for change? I'm Kevin Hurtin, and this is The Take.

It all started with a tragedy. A railway station roof collapsed in Novi Sad, Serbia's second largest city. The collapse killed 15 people. Shoddy construction was suspected and a shady building contract with a Chinese consortium. Afterwards, people weren't just mourning. They were furious. Protests broke out and they kept growing and growing with a major rally scheduled for Saturday. And they're about more than just one disaster.

They are walking on foot for more than 150 kilometers from one city to another, spreading the message of people, come and join us and do whatever we are doing. Let's take over democracy into our own hands. My name is Angela Milivojevic and I am an investigative journalist from Serbia. I'm currently in London and I've been covering crime and corruption in Serbia for the last decade. Great. Well, Angela, welcome to The Take.

You've been following the protests in Serbia, and it's been over four months now since they started. Why do you think the railway station tragedy, which set all of this in motion, why did it resonate so strongly with the public there?

Well, this railway canopy accident or tragedy, I would call it, it was kind of like a catalyst, I would say, to Serbian people who kind of saw it as a symbol of decades of lack of accountability, corruption, shady government deals. And it kind of created this idea that government doesn't really work and is there for citizens.

that the government for the last decade or so has become something to serve a close group of people on power and people with money. And after a lot of years of trying to protest and trying to hold a government to account, this is just, I would say, just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to a lack of trust of the society towards politicians.

Take us from the moment that the roof collapsed here as fast as you can, like how this progressed over time. On the 1st of November, this canopy collapsed and 15 people died. And what this kind of sparked is first questions around how is this even possible? So this building was renovated and opened up for public just a few months before.

And Chinese companies were involved in this, many international companies involved. And people started asking questions, why? Why is this even a situation? And then protests started to happen in Novi Sad where this happened.

It doesn't matter if the end is near or not. We are here until the end. And we will stand there every second. Every student, every citizen of this country. We are here for them. And we are here to help them, to make this country a better place. I've been here since the beginning. I was there when it was the most frightening, but the fear was overcome and we're moving forward.

It's a little challenging, but what can we do? We are where we are. We're still fighting and cooperating, and that's all.

In 11:52, which is the time when the canopy fell, every day, 11:52, people go on the street and start giving respect for 15 minutes for people. But then because of the violent attacks that some of the protesters faced, students decided to block their faculties. And up until today, almost 80% of the faculties in Serbia are blocked. They're not working.

And this fire from Novi Sad has spread all over the country. So after four months, we have students blockading universities, farmers joining, teachers joining, high schools joining. And in a way, the whole society is on a standstill for four months.

Well, the government is clearly rattled. It's responded by announcing some high-profile resignations, including the prime minister and two other ministers. That is why, after this event that took place last night in Novi Sad, my irrevocable decision is to resign from the position of prime minister of the Republic of Serbia.

It also announced an anti-corruption campaign, but that didn't seem to calm things down much at all. At this stage, what are the protesters' demands exactly? Yeah, exactly. As you say, government's decisions so far have not satisfied the students because what government is trying to do is to kind of calm down the general disaffection with what they are doing.

And students are asking simple things. They are asking for people who were involved in the reconstruction to be investigated and prosecuted. They are asking for the documents around all this whole project to be published again, because it's a bizarre thing that we actually don't really know what is in this contract. We don't know who was contracted. We don't know the money. We don't know the local contractors.

And in a way, students are asking for transparency within this project. And they're also asking the change of the system, institutions to start doing and working what they are supposed to do.

Yeah. I mean, for people who may not follow Serbian politics, what can you tell us about this kind of the state of the democracy under the ruling SNS party? It's called Serbian Progressive Party, but they're very much on the right side of the political spectrum, I know. What is SNS's reputation and why is it so unpopular at the moment?

Yeah, you said that really well. They are, SNS or Serbian Progressive Party is on the right. So for listeners who don't really know, a current president of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, is a strongman of Serbia. And he has been a key political figure for last 13, 14 years in Serbia. But he rose to the power and he came to Serbian political power.

I guess, agenda in the 90s during the wars in Yugoslavia. And many people remember war in Bosnia, Croatia and in Kosovo. And back then he was a really young politician and he started as this minister of information during Milosevic's

ruling party. And during NATO bombing, he was a minister of information, notoriously controversial because many older colleagues of mine who are journalists remember they had to go and meet with him and ask him for permission to publish the next edition next day. That level of control

So this young politician from the 90s kind of came to power in 2012. And in a way, this party kind of started really strong. They kind of polished this controversial, radical right wing, I guess, image that they had. And they started talking about European Union, opening up the democracy in Serbia and so on.

And through economy, this was kind of what this was happening. Vucic was bringing a lot of international investments, but somehow we ended up a lot with Chinese investments, investments from Saudi Arabia. All of them

really untransparent. We never really knew what was happening there. And many people in Serbia kind of decided that that's enough for them. You know, economic development was enough for them and they were ready to overlook this kind of autocratic elements to Vucic power because of the economy. But on the other side, they were not really happy with the chaotic and somehow disoriented opposition. And they were kind of like, okay, well, this is what we have.

Unfortunately, in the last years, the Vucic government has faced a lot of protests, a lot of dissatisfaction with the way that they are dealing with certain politics and certain policies that they are trying to adopt. And at the moment, the Vucic party is not supported by majority of citizens. Polls are showing that more than 50% of people would vote against them now. So they are losing the legitimacy to be on power, even though they are saying

seemingly not going away anytime soon. Our president is saying that he's not going to give up on his presidency anytime soon and that he's going to stay on power and fight what he calls colored revolution in Serbia and blames foreign nations interfering in Serbian politics often. More with Angela after the break. This week on True Crime Reports. It's July 2020. We're in the port town of Salerno in Italy.

Police have just raided a cargo ship and made an unprecedented discovery. The ship is transporting machinery and paper cylinders. But when police crack them open, inside they find bags and bags stuffed with tiny white pills. 84 million of them.

The pills are a very dangerous, highly addictive drug called Captagon. And this hoard is worth more than $1 billion. It's a drug you may not have heard of, but it's been wreaking havoc across the Middle East. True Crime Reports, a new global crime show from Al Jazeera. Subscribe and listen wherever you get your podcasts.

so angela so we're at a real standoff period because the president is backing down the protesters aren't backing down i think one of the thing that stands out to me is just how effective these protests have been i mean they're really organized and for the most part really popular with the public considering how long they've been going on now how has this movement managed to be so effective in your opinion

Well, students, I think I would say they have quite an amazing way that they organize themselves and really well decentralized decision-making protests. What they call this, they call this, let's go back to direct democracy. They organize something called plenary sessions. These are kind of like

a student's assemblies where every faculty has its own assembly. They come together, they bring questions, decisions, and they vote, and everyone has a chance to participate.

They say that representational democracy that we had for years in Serbia has failed people, that it became corrupt, that Vucic control over judiciary, police, media, but also public policies and public servants has brought this representational democracy into his favor.

And what they are asking for people to do is let's go back to basic, let's go back to this Athens idea of democracy. Let's come together in these groups and decide for our local community what is the best. What these students also have done really well is that they don't have a leader, which has been something really important. And I think that is why citizens have come to this idea that we don't want one person to be glorified, to be the one who has all the power.

What students do is basically what they, in their faculty, for example, Faculty of Political Sciences is what I studied when I was a young student. What they do there, they have this amphitheater and they all come together in the evenings.

And during the day they send this, I guess, ideas. What are we going to do today? What are we going to do tomorrow? And they send ideas and these plenary sessions, they all come together and they start discussing and they start voting. And there is no idea or no suggestion that is going to be discarded as a stupid or not relevant. And what they are also going to do, they are going to try to come together and not only discuss

over-vote each other, but also understand and try to make kind of a diplomatic solution to some specific topic.

For example, when they decided to go and visit their student fellows in central Serbia, which is a city called Kragujevac, they all voted, should we go? How are we going to go? And they all voted around, how are we going to organize this travel? And what was absolutely amazing was the way that they brought citizens into this battle so

So citizens started bringing them food, bringing them shelter, bringing them blankets because it's really cold in Serbia still, supporting them on this journey. So I think this kind of created this idea of direct democracy that I can suggest an idea and this idea will be heard about from everyone and we will decide together. And this energy, I think, is why so many people are supporting the students.

Yeah, I mean, I read 80% of Serbian citizens support their demands. But the government is, you know, fighting back in their own way. I've heard that there's been some dirty tricks. There have been attempts to disrupt those protests. Can you tell us about those?

Yes. Well, in last week or so, we have seen this kind of group of counter protesters. So these are supposed to be students who want to go back to universities. So they want to start learning. They call themselves students who want to learn.

But it kind of created like this comedy show in a way on social media, especially because people find photos of these people and they see, oh, this is not a student. This is a person who is 29 years old and he works in a municipality. This is SNS activist. This is my neighbor. So it created kind of this idea that this is a mimic of a real student protest. And in a way, making fun of students and their demands.

So I think this government tactic is, it's not really working, I would say, based on how people are reacting on social media.

Hundreds of student protesters blocked the state television station RTS building in Belgrade on Monday, accusing it of bias. I know the relationship between the media and the state is a big part of this story. You're an investigative journalist in Serbia. You cover organized crime and you cover corruption. Just how difficult has it been reporting this story and getting answers from the government?

Well, this story has been incredibly difficult from a point of view of getting any information. As I said, one of the key elements of student demands is transparency when it comes to who got the money from this contract, for example. And when we ask the government to show us the documents, they say, well, this is part of the international agreement and it's a state secret.

So every single time we are trying to find more and more information, government is holding back. They are trying to tell us, well, we will be transparent, but then they don't publish anything or they try to plan some documents which are not really the real information. Even though Serbia has, for example, freedom of information law and access to public documents, we have seen complete shutdown from many institutions deciding not to

give us the documents. Also, many state officials or many people involved in the project completely lack any kind of idea to talk to media, to explain their role, to try to organize what is happening. So I would say that this has been quite a difficult period for any journalist to report. Daily journalism has been quite intensive because we see so many

protest every single day. But on the back of investigations, it's quite hard to get any kind of information from governments. And we rely on sources. We rely on people who are brave enough to come to us.

So, Angela, a large rally is planned for this Saturday. The protest's student leaders are calling for peaceful demonstrations, and President Aleksandar Vucic has warned of violence. This is not stopping. I wonder what do you think is the end game here? Is it merely the ruling SNS ceding power to an opposition party, or do you think something far more transformational could be in the offing as this thing finally ends?

Well, this Saturday is going to be an important day, I would say, because the president has already announced that potentially there will be some clashes with police and there is a lot of police presence in the city anyway. We can see them everywhere in Belgrade and many other cities. I would say that what students are asking, even though it's directed and connected with this canopy accident, is

What they are asking is for institutions to start working, for institutions to be free to start working and prosecuting. The government needs to change, but not only the government, the system needs to change. A system in which every time a political party comes to power, they don't see that they will ever be accountable.

They don't fear that they will be prosecuted. They don't will be arrested if they do something wrong. And I think students, in a way, even though they are not directing their demands into Vucic or his party, they are implying that

We will have a change after this government is gone. And when a system has changed so much that anyone who comes after is not going to do the same. And this is something that we keep seeing repeating in Serbian election cycles. A new political party comes and then they stay on power for 10 years. They do the same and then over and over again. And one other thing that students, I think, have brought to the idea is this

idea of trying to have a transitional government, which might happen during the next few months. This will be in a government of experts, of people from Serbia who are not politically connected to anyone and who can create solutions

an atmosphere in which free elections can be held. Because as I mentioned before, elections up until now have not been really free. There was a lot of pressure on voters. So creating this atmosphere in which elections can be held and institutions will be able to work is something that is an endgame, I think, for students. But I don't think this is going to happen on Saturday. I think Saturday is going to be the time when the power of people will be shown in Belgrade.

And I think this is the first time that this government is going to have to face the fact that they don't have a legitimacy anymore to stay on power. I mean, four months ago, you could never even have imagined something like that happening. Now it's within the realm of possibility. Exactly. And I think that's why the student protest is so powerful, just because a few months ago, the way that grant on power by SNS was so strong, you would never be

able to imagine a local politician or a local person being so vocal against SNS and saying, I want my community back. I want control over my community back. And this kind of empowerment is quite amazing to see, to be honest, because

As a journalist trying to cover different topics, we often face this idea that people are afraid to speak up. And this kind of, I see this change. I see the change in the people's, the way that they express their opinions. And it's kind of like freedom of speech has been brought back to the society in a way.

Wow. And finally, what does this mean for the region? Serbia is such an important player in this part of the world, and this isn't the first round of student protests. They played a big role in the 1990s as well, I know. How do you think Serbia transforms the Balkans?

Well, I think, as you say, Serbia is quite important, not only because of what happened in the 90s, but also at the moment, it's one of the biggest economies in the Western Balkans. It has quite important role to play when it comes to its accession to the EU. And in a way, what Serbian students are doing has sparked kind of like a change and desire to

try to do that the same thing in other countries. For example, students in Bosnia are organizing as well because they also have the same problems, corruption, a lack of accountability, politicians that constantly, you see them getting richer and richer and people being poorer and poorer. And I feel like this spark of this student energy is kind of going up, not only within Serbian cities, but in the region. In Croatia as well, we've seen people

people of Croatia coming together and sending support for Serbian students. And this is so important because of this fragile relationship between Serbia and its neighbors because of the 90s.

There is constantly this idea of love and hate relationship and students seem to be uniting us back again with our neighbors. It seems like Croatians and Serbians can come together, Croatians and Serbians and Bosnians can come together and fight the fight for rule of law, anti-corruption and forget about what divided us in the 90s and kind of seems like a...

Students are going to do something that politicians have been failing to do for, let's say, 30 years now. Wow. The wind of change in Serbia. Angela, thank you so much for coming on The Take today. Thank you so much.

And that's The Take. This episode was produced by Sari Al-Khalili, Sonia Bagat, and Amy Walters. With Ashish Malhotra, Chloe K. Lee, Chana Shokir, Melanie Marich, Remus Al-Hawari, Philip Llanos, Spencer Klein, and me, Kevin Hurtin. It was edited by Noor Wazwaz. Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our video editors are Hisham Abusalah and Mohanad Al-Melhem.

Alexander Locke is the take's executive producer. And Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera's head of audio. We'll be back.