In the first of our Spotlight on… interview series featuring those at the forefront of driving positive democratic change today, we’re focusing on the student-led protests in Serbia that have snowballed over the last 5 months into the biggest challenge to President Aleksandar Vučić increasingly-autocratic decade-long rule.
What started as anger over the deaths of 16 people killed when a concrete canopy at Novi Sad station collapsed in early November, has led to the resignation of the prime minister and hundreds of thousands of students and citizens taking to the streets to demand the government tackle rampant corruption.
Unhack Democracy co-founder Elliott Goat spoke to Aleksandar Milanović, a culture and media management student at the Belgrade Faculty of Dramatic Arts (FDU), and one of the organisers behind the blockade of university campuses in November that kickstarted the most wide-reaching and sustained protest movement in modern Serbian history.
Here we share five key lessons from our conversation with Aleksandar that civil society can learn from:
1: Keep your demands specific and achievable— and stick to them
Elliott: In December, FDU students agreed to four key demands: the release of all unredacted documents about the Novi Sad renovation project; the charging of officials who have attacked students and protesters; the end to prosecutions against demonstrators who have been arrested; and a 20% increase in education funding in Serbia.
How central have these been to your campaign?
Alexsander: From the very start of the protest we've had concrete demands that have remained fixed.
That's one of the strengths because one of the things with other protests that have happened over the last 10 years, [is] that they've kind of fizzled out because they kept adding more and more demands. I think that after time passed people weren't really sure what they were protesting about. [Our demands] haven't changed; they stay the same and I think that's what's unique about this whole movement. They're just so basic and simple.
“I think that's what has probably brought people together is that we just want justice, basically.”
2: Use humour and hope to activate apathetic and apolitical groups
E: FDU’s X account was voted the best in 2024 in Serbia while Instagram reels [like here] have been viewed millions of times, and even won awards. How important has messaging been for you?
A: I don't think there was any kind of core audience that we were addressing. But maybe we can say that we want to address people who have been uninterested or apolitical.
I think that is why our faculty in particular, and the kind of content we create, has been more resonant with people. It's because we actually go to school. We learn to create content and that's what we study at this faculty and so we're very good at it and we know how to make content that's attractive for social media.
E: Do you ever say anything negative about institutions or the governing party?
A: We do it in a kind of a jokey, joking way. That's probably what resonates with people, that everything, all the attacks that we get from the politicians or through the media get spun around and then turned into some kind of meme. I think that's been one of the strengths here also.
3: Organise internally to mobilise externally
E: From the very beginning the FDU set up a series of "working groups” covering different aspects of the blockade. Can you explain more about how that worked?
A: I think we have over ten of them now for various activities. So we have a work group for actions and protests. We have a work group for security, including security in the faculty and on protests. We have a media work group, we have a work group for internal activities, and we have what we call ‘home economics’, which is in charge of cleaning the faculty, food on the faculty, and donations that come in. We have a work group for communicating with other faculties and all of these work groups also exist on other faculties, not just on our own and so they communicate with each other when there's a big protest or something that requires some kind of collaborative action.
E: Can you talk a bit more about your internal decision-making process? Has this been replicated outside the faculty?
A: What the students have been focused on recently, apart from protests, is encouraging Serbia’s citizens to engage more directly in local politics by forming Citizen Councils or ‘Zbor’, to put pressure on their local institutions to resolve issues that are plaguing them. This is the same concept that we students have been using to organize ourselves, the student ‘Plenum’ where every student of a faculty is welcome and where all issues to do with the protests, blockades, and faculties are discussed openly and voted on.
4: The system is all young people know… so use that to build resilience and inspire others
E: This protest seems different in that it has been started and led by young people. How important is that?
A: I think just the fact that it's a student movement has been the biggest thing, because we've heard it over the last 10 years whenever any kind of protest happened: ‘where are the young people? Where are the students?’ But now, just the fact that these young people and kids have stepped up and are actually fighting very, very hard for justice and for a just society, I think that has really resonated with people.
E: So would you say most people are protesting for the first time? How has that shaped your strategy?
A: The people basically leading these protests are 20, 21 years old, and they've grown up in this system, and this system is all that they know. And so they know all of the strengths and weaknesses, and so the government, those in charge, can't throw anything at us because we've seen all of that before and we know how to respond or how not to respond.
“The end is when we say so”: After 4 months of protesting, FDU students released this creative (and funny) video which sends a powerful message of persistence.
5: Stay above politics and mobilise from the bottom up
E: Why have these protests been different to previous ones?
A: All of us over the last couple of years have been very disappointed, and disillusioned. There's been a lot of apathy about the possibility of change, of a better society.
I think we have definitely awakened something, some kind of hope, that there could be a change—because it has come from the bottom, from the students and from the young people. It hasn't come from the politicians, from the opposition. That's what made a difference.
E: Do you think part of the success is also because it hasn't been done by people who are normally political?
A: I think the fact that these protests have not been political or politically associated with anybody has been its biggest strength. And because we're not fighting for a change of the regime, not fighting to bring down Vučić. We're fighting for just the institutions basically to do their jobs, which they are supposed to do in any normal society.
I think it's safe to say that the student movement has become a major political force even though we've distanced ourselves from political parties and movements, and now there are discussions whether the students should provide a solution out of this political crisis.
And in conclusion: stay focused and keep going
E: What happens if your demands are met?
A: I don't know what the future is going to bring. If our demands are fulfilled, we will probably stop with the blockade and with the process, but it doesn't seem like that's going to happen because that will break this whole pyramid structure of this government, how they operate, and how they function. And so what has been happening is that they just keep throwing these distractions, somebody resigns, somebody is arrested, but nothing concretely as far as our demands are concerned.
E: How has the government reacted?
A: What we’re experiencing now is a big crackdown on protesters... intimidation, arrests and physical attacks, and even bigger pressure on universities and professors to try to break the student blockades. But, we students and professors are adamant that we will not stop with the blockades or protests until all our demands are met. So far, not a single demand has.
E: How have you managed to stay resilient in the face of huge pressure?
A: We have this word in Serbian, which is like doing something in spite of, in spite of the pressures actually put on you. We don't really see that we have any choice in the matter. We are going to keep fighting for as long as necessary. I mean, we say we're going to be in a blockade and protesting until our demands are fulfilled and we plan to do just that if it lasts for another week, if it lasts for another year.
Thanks for reading!
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