Serbs, mostly students, have been protesting in the streets for four months. It is time they were heard. As someone who has spent two decades roaming the Balkans, I would never have imagined that Serbian civil society would still have the strength to mount such resistance to the highly authoritarian and long-lasting rule of President Aleksandar Vučić. Never would I have thought that Serbian students could rally an entire nation behind them. On 1 November 2024, the roof of the recently renovated Novi Sad railway station collapsed, killing 15 people. Protests have since multiplied, with demands for full transparency over the tragedy and, more broadly, denunciations of government corruption. With Serbs being no strangers to protests, the simmering anger could have boiled over a hundred times and spread like wildfire – whether in the wake of demonstrations against the government control of the media, the opening of lithium mines in western Serbia, or against the megalomanic Belgrade Waterfront project that wiped out part of the city on the banks of the Sava. Yet it is the railway station tragedy that has villagers from the remotest corners of Serbia offering food and drink in support of the student demonstrators as they travel from town to town. Read more. | 