November 1, 2025, one year after a horrible tragedy that took 16 lives in Novi Sad, Serbia. One year since the citizens woke up and started seeking justice
The year 2025 in Serbia is marked as the year of student protests. Over the past 12 months, students and citizens have marched across the country, leaving hundreds of kilometers under their feet. Rain, wind, steep hills – nothing could stand in their way. In the meantime, the largest protests in Serbian history were held in nearly every city and village.
The prime minister resigned, and the government fell, but nothing substantial changed. A group of Serbian students cycled all the way to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. And the EU resolution has finally spoken about the police brutality, use of illegal sonic weapons, and the vast corruption incorporated into building the unsafe buildings, bridges, and canopies.
A year after the initial demands, students now have a single demand: early elections.
Facing the first anniversary of the tragedy, we started marching again. More than 3,000 people walked from Belgrade (a total of 72 km) just to attend the commemoration day in Novi Sad. Students and citizens have walked and cycled from cities all over Serbia. The longest route was 450 km long, and it led students from Novi Pazar, a city in the south of the country, all the way north to Novi Sad, on a march named “16 days for 16 victims”. In an attempt to reduce the number of people present in Novi Sad, the authorities have shut down the railway from Belgrade, as they did prior to every major protest over the past year.
Many students take a gap year, and one year might seem like it’s not a lot. However, the blockades of the Universities have taken a toll on the Serbian students. The regime’s response was intense and brutal – the academic year is now being “rescued” with intense exams held in September and October. Students have been sharing a lot about what this struggle means to them and why they believe that one year is a small sacrifice to make in order to achieve a sustainable long-term change. And we could write novels about it.
Besides beatings and arrests of professors and students, teachers in high schools have lost their jobs because of the public support they’ve given to the movement. The Fifth Gymnasium in Belgrade has been blocked for weeks because of student demands for their seventeen (!) teachers to get their jobs back. The National Theatre in Belgrade has been shut down for the first time in its 160-year history.
The regime in power has been ruling for 13 years. During that time, their corruption became rooted in every pore of our society: culture, education, schooling, and healthcare systems, public spaces, and every industry has been polluted by the autocratic octopus.
But let’s dive into the core of our geopolitical blind spot: lithium. The main reason why we fight this battle alone, as geopolitical orphans, is the Strategic Project by the European Union. Rio Tinto’s Jadar Project is threatening to pollute beyond repair a large agricultural area in Serbia, as well as the rivers that pass through Bosnia and Serbia, heading to Bulgaria and the Black Sea. But the north and west of the EU are willing to sacrifice the Western Balkans to get their “green” energy source. If this sounds like a colonisation project, that’s because it is.
Due to this strategy and promises of the Serbian regime that they will make this detrimental project happen, there is no real pressure on the Serbian authorities to take accountability for the damage their corrupt system is doing to its citizens. Do we expect anything from the newest “harsher than ever” resolution about the situation in Serbia? Not really, because the Jadar Project remains a part of the EU strategy.
The European Commission has integrated a colonising plan into your green energy strategy, without ever telling you that its core project not only happens outside of the EU borders, but it also threatens to pollute beyond those man-made borders.
This move goes against everything the EU claims to stand for – while claiming to “stand with democratic values” and expressing “concerns about the rule of law” in their X posts, the EU disables its 21st-century colonies from making their own decisions. And they are doing it in your name, making you an accomplice in the criminal affairs of their governments.
This is where all of you – European citizens – come in.
The European Commission made a decision on your behalf, undermining the values on which the EU was built. One by one, these decisions will keep benefiting some over many. And while you remain preoccupied with your colonial past, your colonial present is making the future.
Eventually, the pollution from papers issued in Brussels will come knocking on your door, and then you might ask what you could have done to prevent it. This is the moment when your action counts: start a petition, organise a protest, block your University. Demand for the Jadar Project to be removed from the EU’s Strategic priority. It had no right to be there in the first place.
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