Author’s Note: The Fulda Gap was granted the privilege to interview a Serbian participant in the events described below. Some of what is described below is informed by the testimony of our source, whose identity we have kept confidential for their safety.
On April 3rd, 2017, thousands of people amassed in the streets of the Serbian cities of Belgrade, Novi Sad and Nis to display their opposition to the results of the Serbian elections which has brought Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic the present title of President-Elect of Serbia. Vucic’s apparent victory which was obtained with 55% of the vote in an election where the voter turnout has been estimated to be little more than half of Serbia’s total voting-age population — a statistic which reflects a broad sentiment of mistrust in the political process within Serbia.
Serbian comedian Luka Maksimović campaigned during the 2017 Serbian election as his alter-ego Ljubisa “Beli” Preletacevic. Despite his satirical presentation, Beli was a serious contender in the national election, at one point running second to Vecic, and winning victories in local elections for his satirical political party Sarmu Probo Nisi (You Haven’t Tasted the Cabbage Roll). Part of his campaign platform was the promise to “move the sea to Serbia so we can have a beach.”
Initially the demonstrations were characterized as student-led events, since university students in Novi Sad and Belgrade were the first to begin organizing the demonstrations, primarily using Facebook and other social media platforms to spontaneously organize and spread the word to Serbian citizens. However the demographics of the protests quickly grew to include people of diverse backgrounds in Serbia — workers unions, elderly and pensioners, members of the Serbian Armed Forces, police union members, and many others from across the spectrum of age group, occupation and politics in Serbia.
Aleksandar Vucic, pictured here with German Prime Minister Angela Merkel, has pursued a political doctrine that cultivates diplomatic and economic relationships with the EU, the Russian Federation, and the Arabian Gulf states.
Aleksandar Vucic has been a participant in Serbian politics for several decades, first joining the far-right and nationalist Serbian Radical Party in the early 1990s. From the years of 1998-2000 he served as Minister of Information under the government of Mirko Marjanović. Vucic has since shifted his political affiliation away from the SRP and overtly ultranationalist politics, and into the populist platform of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS). Following this shift he has held the positions of Minister of Defence, Deputy Prime Minister, Prime Minister and now President-elect of Serbia. Vucic has acted as a shrewd geopolitical negotiator, balancing Serbia between the competing interests of the European Union and Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Vucic assures the EU that Serbia will stay open to foreign investment while also maintaining a domestic policy of economic austerity, and this mutual understanding is maintained while also providing assurances to Putin that Serbia will not fully align with the interests of Western Europe by becoming part of NATO.
Aleksandar Vucic and Mohamed Alabbar of the United Arab Emirate’s Eagle Hills company toss the first bits of concrete onto the future site of the Belgrade Water Front luxury resort project in Belgrade in 2015. (AFP)
As is the case with nearly all cases of popular unrest, the roots of discontent long predate the actual outburst of protest. Serbia, like many European countries, has been effected by economic recession and pressures to adopt austerity measures that increase the hardship of those already living in economically-depressed circumstances, as many people living in the Balkans do. The Serbian Progressive Party has largely dominated the parliamentary politics of Serbia for the last decade in addition to having a substantial media influence through outlets such as Novi Sad’s Vojvodina TV. The political and media dominance of Vucic and the SNS also have translated into heavy influence in Serbia’s private sector, where they have brokered investments from foreign corporations in the United Arab Emirates, the United States and various places in Europe. The ties between the UAE and Vucic’s SNS are surprisingly deep and convoluted, and the partnership is a controversial one in Serbia, with thousands of Serbian citizens protesting the demolition of Belgrade waterfront properties in 2016 to clear space for a 3-billion dollar development program backed by the UAE which will include luxury hotels and shops, and offices and flats that will likely all be beyond the reach of working-class Serbian citizens.
Alexander Vucic meeting with Mohammed bin Zayed bin Sultan Al-Nahyan, Crown Prince of the United Arab Emirates.
Consequentially, the cost of living for Serbian people has increased, industrial labor conditions have worsened, and the dominant political party in Serbia is perceived as cornering all aspects of administration and media within the country while selling off property and industry to foreign investors, which produce little to no return for many Serbians who do not have some kind connection within the SNS party network.
Public demonstration against the Belgrade Water Front project in 2016
On March 22nd of 2017, shortly preceding the elections in Serbia, a worker at a railway-car factory in the town of Smederevska Palanka committed suicide at the work site. Many of the workers at the factory had not received their paychecks for 15 or 20 pay cycles, and were subsisting with no income and only a single hot meal at the factory per day. News of this event rapidly spread through Serbia and inflamed a deepening sense despair and frustration about the political and economic situation in the country. Although it was not quite as sensational, the significance of this event had may be compared in some ways to the public suicide of Tunisian laborer Mohamed Bouazizi in 2010, an event that acted as a catalyst for the mass demonstrations that forced the abdication of the autocratic ruler of Tunisia, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, which in turn ignited the widespread protests known as the Arab Spring which spread through the Middle East and North Africa in 2011.
A worker at the Goša factory in the city of Smederevska Palanka speaks to Serbian media about the suicide of one of the factory’s workers on March 22nd, 2017.
According to the account given to The Fulda Gap by a participant in the protests that we interviewed, organization was spontaneous, decentralized, and very rapidly spread through social media. The demographics of the people demonstrating throughout Serbia are diverse, and participants from across the political spectrum may be found within them. Although initially the protests were unified by a general sense of defiance against Vucic and the results of the election, by April 7th a platform of demands had been widely adopted which include increased transparency of media, direct elections for local government, cleanup of the electoral roll, revision of agreements with the International Monetary Fund, ending of austerity measures, protection of worker’s rights, and many other pressing issues.
Students and others who arrived on the streets on the second day of the protests were surprised to find men who declared themselves to be the “protest organizers” who passed out copious amounts of free alcohol and were attempting to create a chaotic, party-like atmosphere, and encouraging people arriving to the demonstration to begin vandalizing city property. Recognizing these men as likely planted provocateurs, the demonstrators rallied and began to march, gaining momentum in the process. So far, the demonstrations have been peaceful, and police have have not attempted to remove them with force, which has prompted Serbian protestors to state to journalists that comparisons with the tumultuous Euromaidan protests of Ukraine in 2014 are inaccurate. Regardless, Serbian citizens have reported indications that undercover surveillance is occurring within the protests, prompting speculation that the Serbian government is attempting to identify potential leaders and organizers of the demonstrations.
The video above was taken by a resident in the city of Novi Sad on April 7th. The city lights had been switched off, but the protestors held up their cell phones to illuminate the street, while also demonstrating their numbers that might have been otherwise concealed by the darkness.
Pictured here are some of the thousands that have filled the streets in Belgrade. Demonstrators have reported that a small number of right-wing ultra-nationalists have attempted to co-opt the demonstrations, with no success.
International coverage of what is happening in Serbia has been relatively sparse, and Serbian media itself is believed to be downplaying both the significance of the demonstrations and the numbers of people present in the streets. A prevalent feeling expressed among Serbians is that there is not much international interest or concern about what happens in Serbia, and that they have been stigmatized by the legacy of the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, and stereotyped as “Russia’s little brother” — an Orthodox Christian nation that is assumed to act in lock-step with Russian interest. Many Serbians also feel that the interest and investment of the Russian Federation in Serbian affairs is also pursued with exploitative self-interest, and that the Serbian nation is in an isolated position with few friends, benefactors, or sympathetic ears in the world.
On April 23 1999, NATO bombed the headquarters of Radio Television of Serbia. 16 people were killed and another 16 injured. The RTS building was designated as a military target by NATO during the Kosovo War, in addition to several other locations in the cities of Belgrade and Novi Sad. Aleksandar Vučić was the Serbian Minister of Information at the time.
Something that was expressed to The Fulda Gap during our interview was the strong belief that public action in Serbia must make progress before the repression of State control becomes strengthened. It is believed by many that the protests have only been as relatively peaceful as they have been because Vucic is “not yet a dictator”, and the SNS does not yet have fully-autocratic power in Serbia, and their political dominance has its limitations. But they recognize that the danger exists that if the protests lose momentum or allow themselves to submit to concessions too early, all potential gains may be lost, and the opportunity provided by the spontaneous power of these demonstrations may not be easily replicated in the future. In this sense, young Serbians are very conscious of the outcomes of the mass-protests of the last decade, and especially the lessons of the Arab Spring. As our source stated to us during the interview, “if you step out into the streets and you are shot for speaking the truth, than it is already too late.”
