Serbia: “The government’s “expecting violence” rhetoric is a clear warning sign… that they’re preparing to create it.”

A protest in Novi Sad one year after the disaster at the train station on November 2, 2025. Photo: Shutterstock

In November, Serbia marks one year since the Novi Sad railway station canopy collapse, and the subsequent student protests sparked by it. Today, despite growing international attention, concerns over the country’s human rights situation are deepening, and civil society warns about escalating repression as the government responds to dissent. The Human Rights House Foundation spoke with Jovana Spremo, Advocacy Director at the Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights (YUCOM), about this situation and more.

HUMAN RIGHTS HOUSE FOUNDATION: It has been one year since the protests triggered by the Novi Sad station collapse, which killed 16 people and seriously injured one more. What is the current state of the student movement that emerged from the disaster?

JOVANA SPREMO: The student movement has evolved significantly since the end of November last year. What began as a spontaneous call for justice and accountability over the tragic loss and killing of people as a result of the fall of the train station canopy has matured into a broader social movement. 

The demands of the movement have changed over this period, and they have adapted as the situation has developed, depending on the response from the government – or the lack thereof.

As of June this year, the students have compiled all their demands into a request for elections because they realized that without at least partly free elections, and the possibility of a change of government, there is no way that they can actually reach the level of accountability that they are calling for.

One thing that has not changed is the organization of the movement. There is still no leadership by design, and I must note that this style is unusual for this region. But, against all odds, it’s actually working, and the students are reaching people. 

The reason the student movement remains leaderless is that this is the easiest way for them to avoid being attacked by the government, which would very much like the movement to be silenced.

Some have compared these protests with the Otpor protests of the late 1990s and early 2000s, which led to the ousting of Milošević. Do you have any thoughts on this comparison? 

They have both been revolutionary, but I wouldn’t say they are similar, because the Otpor movement happened in a different era – it was a post-war movement. 

The Otpor movement was a joint movement including students, activists and the opposition, fighting the criminal regime of Slobodan Milošević. It was an inevitable movement because no one was free in society at that time.

The student movement in Serbia today has, in a way, an even bigger task because the situation is so different. Mobilizing people is harder than back then.

Serbians have enjoyed a degree of democracy since the 2000s, which is a success of the Otpor movement. And as a result, people today do not have the same huge existential problems that were faced back then – with the exception, of course, of socially vulnerable groups. Although there is a lot of underrepresentation in the country, it’s hard to mobilize half of the population to actually participate in this kind of revolutionary action. 

But today’s social movement is extremely important, and it’s actually waking up people who were not very interested in politics and who are now becoming very aware that everything is political. It seems like people are realizing just now, after more than 30 years of the multiparty system, that if they want to have the liberties and services that they are paying for with their paycheques, they actually need a responsible political option in power.

Can you give an overview of when excessive force against protesters began?

In the first five months since the protests began, the government didn’t know how to respond, and their strategy changed every few weeks. 

At first, the government tried to be friendly and appeal to the students. They offered very cheap apartments for youth, talked of better pensions, etc. 

So this was the first approach to dealing with the movement, but it didn’t work, and then the government became more vocally derisive and critical of the students. But it was, at least, peaceful until March 15th, which marked a change in the government’s response to the protests [through the use of a “sound cannon” that ultimately caused a stampede – editor’s note].

Together with five other civil society organizations (CSOs), YUCOM collected testimonies from the people affected. And since people had never experienced this kind of attack before, everyone realized that they were not alone and that this was an organized attack against them, citizens peacefully exercising their freedoms of assembly and expression. 

And since this caused a lot of international attention, as well as attention inside Serbia, the pressure mounted on the government to give a response.

Initially, the government emphatically denied possession of any such device, then, after a few days, they admitted that they did indeed have it and said “yes, we have the device, but it’s not capable of this kind of action.”

If there is no device, then how does the government explain the now famous video footage of protesters dispersing? According to the president, it was orchestrated and choreographed –standard practice within a “colour revolution”. 

At that moment, we realized that not only do the authorities actually have this sort of device, but perhaps they don’t properly know how to use it. Either they used it with intention against people, or they let someone who is not trained use it. In either scenario, someone must be held accountable, and the device appears to be in the possession of the police force. 

Organizations that collected the testimonies initiated a case before the European Court for Human Rights (ECHR), and it’s still ongoing. 

After that, the governmental repression really escalated from June 28th, when there were protests in Belgrade. That was the first time we had a huge clash between the police and protesters, and a lot of people were beaten, media representatives were attacked. There was a lot of unlawful use of force. This pattern of repression continued with every subsequent large protest.

In the Human Rights House Foundation’s spring coverage, your colleague Uroš Jovanović noted that the student movement had consciously distanced itself from civil society. Has this changed?

The distance remains as a safety measure, but in practice, there are some developments. When the student movement first set its rules, it was to protect itself from attacks. Originally, they had no leaders and a very loose structure. This was to avoid the stigma that civil society faces. They distanced themselves from the opposition, civil society, and any organized party or movement, though individuals from anywhere were welcome to join the protests. That approach made sense at the start of the protests.

After a year, that principle remains. I believe that by now, they’ve begun to recognize which part of civil society is legitimate and has relevant expertise. To answer the question clearly, there is no formal cooperation between the CSOs and the student movement, but they do rely on legitimate CSO research or findings.

You mentioned the stigma that civil society faces. Can you elaborate on that?

Civil society in Serbia faces enormous stigma because the propaganda machine from the 1990s was never switched off.

Civil society is broadly perceived as “foreign mercenaries or traitors” of the Serbian nation. This propaganda was targeting mainly those working on war crimes and dealing with the past during the 1990s, and that remained a widespread perception, since no government was very eager to remove this stigma. So the result is that the CSOs today are still massively portrayed as being against the Serbian people and society, which is clearly far from the truth. 

Civil society does not enjoy much trust among the broader public, but I tend to think this is changing — and it’s been changing rapidly, since March 15th. What motivates us as civil society now is that we see potential for change, and we see greater interest from the public in our work. 

Why do you do this work despite the risks and stigma? What motivates you?

As a student, I thought that I wanted to work within diplomacy, but I realized that the work of civil society is exactly where my heart was. You put your knowledge toward the values you believe in so that everyone can have equal access to the law and services that this country should have.

Civil society is accused of serving foreign interests, but our only interest is to serve people in Serbia, to recognize and respond to their needs. And even if citizens don’t understand it that way, we work for them. 

For our organization YUCOM, for example, our primary role is to provide free legal aid to citizens. We can do that only if we work in a good legal framework and if we have functioning institutions in Serbia, which are both very questionable lately. But we work within the framework of the Serbian constitution, where the rights of the citizens are guaranteed. The problem is that this is not applied to every citizen of Serbia equally, so we strive to change that. 

How would you characterize the current environment for civil society and human rights defenders in Serbia? What are the new pressures or persecution patterns you are seeing that might not have existed a year ago?

The situation now is quite different from last year, and it continues to deteriorate. Attacks on civil society have always existed, but since, perhaps 2020, they’ve worsened. We track them in our “map of incidents”, and early on, most attacks were smear campaigns, different kinds of smear campaigns from various politicians targeting critical voices from civil society. Then came the infamous list of 104 CSOs and individuals investigated by the Administration for the Prevention of Money Laundering. We warned the public that this was happening, and the investigations ultimately went nowhere, because of the strong international reactions of the misuse of the anti-money laundering legislation in this way.

With the rise of the environmental protests in Serbia (2020–23), misdemeanour charges began to rise as part of the strategy of the authorities, which includes intimidating “informative talks” and accusations of “undermining the constitutional order”. The criminal charges didn’t go through, but they were meant to intimidate. Many plea agreements were signed, which was precisely the deterrence tactic. 

Meanwhile, we had this “dialogue” with civil society with regards to the EU integration process, because the authorities are obliged to have civil society at the table. Government representatives would sit there pretending to be nice, while at the same time, environmental activists were being arrested, or these misdemeanour charges were being issued, and smear campaigns against civil society were running in the tabloids. 

Things escalated, and in late 2023, we had reason to believe that the government was using spyware to monitor civil society. In 2024, Amnesty International’s Digital Prison report revealed that this spyware had been planted on activists’ phones while they were detained in police custody, likely by the secret service. Again, Serbian CSOs, including YUCOM, filed criminal charges, but nothing has moved in these cases. A case was also opened by the ombudsman, but this is also not going anywhere, since this institution is also one captured by the state.

In February, armed police raided five NGOs — allegedly over USAID funds — they sent twenty armed policemen into the premises of five organizations, including our neighbours Civic Initiatives, also a member of Human Rights House Belgrade. They took a lot of documentation, but a formal investigation was never opened. Despite that, the president publicly referred to the seizure of these documents as a “pre-investigation”. 

The Human Rights House in Belgrade was vandalised in late October 2025. Photo: Human Rights House

So this is the environment that we’re working in. Just a few days ago, Human Rights House Belgrade was vandalized with graffiti calling us Ustaše, something they like to call us to paint us as being anti-Serbian, and “blokaderi”, a term for the student blockades.

After the February incidents and the relentless smear campaigns, we, the civil society groups gathered as part of the National Convention on EU (the official platform for civil society cooperation on EU integration), withdrew from all high-level official cooperation with the government, and most of the CSOs withdrew from the government’s working groups. 

For years, we’ve had this situation where the government slaps you with one hand and offers candy with the other. Now we’ve stopped playing along, since nothing we said at those tables was ever taken seriously.

What do you identify as the major risks or threats to the student movement – and to Serbian civil society more broadly – in the upcoming months?

It depends a lot on what happens in November. We’ve seen how previous large protests went — June 28th, the protests throughout August and September — with police openly attacking peaceful protesters. If that repeats, I think we’ll be entering the final stage of the government’s repression.

How that will look depends on their external goals and how the EU continues to deal with them. The EU’s tone has shifted slightly — they’re now addressing messages more to the Serbian people than saying that the government is actually what the country represents to them. A lot depends on whether Vučić will keep trying to pursue EU membership or will abandon it. But the EU has been useful for him, they used mechanisms from EU integration to misuse related funds. This is also part of Laura Kövesi’s investigation into the misuse of EU funds for railway projects.

I’m not an expert in these kinds of scenarios, but if November turns violent — used as a pretext for police brutality — I think it will show where the government stands. There’s uncertainty: at the October 1st assembly, there was almost no police presence, even after the violence in September. Still, the government’s “expecting violence” rhetoric is a clear warning sign — for us, that they’re preparing to create it.

What role do international actors — EU institutions, UN mechanisms, and the Council of Europe — currently play in supporting the civic space and human rights in Serbia?

Since December last year, we’ve had more communication with UN mechanisms than ever before. Serbia has drawn unusual attention from UN special procedures — including the Special Rapporteurs on human rights defenders, freedom of assembly and association, freedom of expression, torture, judicial independence, and education. There were six or seven official communications to the government, and two requests for country visits. The government acknowledged them but never set dates, so those visits won’t happen this year.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights also offered an independent investigation into the sonic device case — again, no response. Meanwhile, the European Court of Human Rights issued interim measures that led to a full case, and both the Council of Europe and the European Parliament rapporteurs reacted. The new European Parliament resolution on Serbia is particularly firm and detailed. I’d also say the new EU enlargement Commissioner is far more attentive to civil society and activist concerns than his predecessor.

A year ago, your colleagues (Dragoslava Barzut, a Public Policy Programme Manager; and Alma Mustajbašić, a researcher at Civic Initiatives) spoke about the lack of international attention on developments in Serbia, despite the EU’s obligations to monitor candidate countries. From your perspective in 2025, has this changed?

I see these as important symbolic gestures. The chances of the students winning the Sakharov Prize were never going to be too high compared to other awards, but I think it was a very good symbolic gesture to show the students that there is someone in the EU who actually thinks that what they did is highly appreciated in the course of fighting for freedom and democracy. 

It’s the same with their Nobel Prize candidacy: it’s not about winning, but about recognition. The gesture also mirrors their own symbolism — biking to Strasbourg and running to Brussels — presenting their case in the heart of the EU, not necessarily going into whether they are pro‑EU or not, but simply young people making a stand for democratic values.

International awareness of Serbia’s situation has grown noticeably since April or May and is now peaking, with the issue reaching the European Parliament. We’ll see how the institutions respond, but it’s already a major topic. We’ve spent months alerting international bodies, and now, after six months, we’re finally seeing stronger engagement and concrete recommendations on how the government should act.

How can international actors support the pro-democratic population in Serbia?

First of all, the approaches have to change. International actors need to stop addressing only the government of Serbia and start addressing certain messages to the Serbian people. This is so important because now is the moment when these actors are being watched by our citizens.

The second thing would definitely be continuing to invest in democratic forces — whether this would be among civil society, or in the political sphere. There are pro‑democracy opposition representatives who want to provide democratic solutions for the country. Of course, it is also worth investing in the student movement. 

And by investing, I don’t only mean money. Training, mobilization meetings, building trust and partnership or whatever can actually help them reach as many people as possible with their messages. This is the minimum that needs to be done, and there is no better time than now. 

This interview was first published by the Human Rights House Foundation

Jovana Spremo is Advocacy Director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights and manages the advocacy activities of the organization, with a special focus on the independence of the judiciary and human rights. She holds a BA in International Relations from the Faculty of Political Science of the University of Belgrade. Beyond this, she holds an interdisciplinary MA in International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights Law, as well as an LLM in European Integration, from the Law Faculty of the University of Belgrade. She is the coordinator of the Working Group for Chapter 23 of the National Convention on European Union.

The Human Rights House Foundation is an international non-governmental organization that establishes and supports Human Rights Houses – coalitions of local independent civil society organizations working to advance human rights at home and abroad. Today 80+ CSOs are united in the Network of Human Rights Houses, which are active across Eastern and Western Europe, the Balkans and the Caucasus.

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Balkans, human rights, police, protest, Serbia, Serbian politics, students