SOLIDARITY FROM ABOLITION ACTIVISTS & SCHOLARS TO SERBIA’S STUDENT BLOCKADES

As activists, artists  and scholars, we send our solidarity with Serbian students, educators and academics, workers, artists and activists who have been instrumental in launching blockades, both big and small throughout Serbia, calling attention to the systematic corruption of President Aleksandar Vučić and members of the Serbian Progressive Party. These protests followed as a result of a fatal collapse of a concrete canopy at Novi Sad Railway Station on 1 November 2024, that resulted in the deaths of 15 people with an additional two others severely injured. Protests in Serbia followed against the egregious government negligence and state corruption that led to this preventable tragedy.

The first student blockade happened at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts, University of Belgrade, following attacks on students during the 22 November silent tribute to the 15 lives taken at Novi Sad Railway Station. The student blockades have grown to all faculties at the University of Belgrade and Novi Sad, Niš, and other universities along with many other high school students, teachers and education unions supporting the students and their demands for accountability and justice. These demands include the following:

 1. Release all documentation concerning the reconstruction of the railway station in Novi Sad which is currently hidden.

2. Dismissal of charges against those arrested and detained at protests.

3. Submission of a criminal complaint by the Ministry of Interior (MUP) to competent public prosecutor’s office in Belgrade against persons physically attack students and professors and which, as they say, are known to the public according to media allegations as: Milija Koldžic, Aleksandar Jokić, Dušan Kostrić, Milena Aleksić and Ivan Stanišić.

4. Students demand immediate confirmation of the identity of these persons and their further processing. If some of these persons are determined to hold public offices, the students demand their dismissal.

5. Increases in allocated funds for state faculties by 20%.

What the student blockades are doing is abolition in practice against state violence. This is why we particularly send our solidarity as abolitionists because we know the very carceral structures that students involved in the blockade movement are operating under. These carceral structures operate through delegitimization of people’s voices while using the strategies of control, surveillance and discipline. Student organizers and those in solidarity are being tokenized and accused of public disorder, money laundering, and various other misdemeanours. These blockades are born from years of dissent in Serbia, exemplified by the on-going protests by environmental activists to stop Rio Tinto from extracting resources and causing ecological devastation in the Jadar Valley.  Along with this, Serbian activists are also resisting carceral state surveillance.  According to Amnesty International, the police and the Serbian Intelligence Agency (BIA) have detained activists and unlocked their mobile phones with software by the Israeli company Cellebrite, only to install spyware like NoviSpy. This spyware provides the BIA with all contacts on a phone, along with countless screenshots that reveal everything a person does or writes on their device. Even the BIA can switch on the microphone and camera from afar to eavesdrop and harass activists. While Israel has committed a 15 month+ genocide in Gaza and warfare in Lebanon and Syria, it also is helping  Vučić’s corrupt government to violently stifle activist and dissenting voices in Serbia.

The ongoing government-led campaign against activists neither began now, nor primarily against student activists. Serbian police regularly intercept the calls of all kinds of progressive activists through phone companies and create fabricated cases against activists in the media. This is done to create division and to sully progressive activists who, for example,  do not agree with the Vučić government’s corruption that is fuelling extractivist-colonial environmentalism in the Jadar Valley, where Rio Tinto seeks to mine for lithium. An example of this strategy was shared by a Serbian organiser who stated,

“My friend was accused of financing student protests through her association for girls, while others were accused of anti-state activities. Specifically, individuals of Croatian origin were targeted and accused of manipulating students into rebellion.”

It is not surprising that the Vučić government seeks to blame and pit different ethnic groups against each other as a smokescreen. After all, Vučić was cultivated by Serbian far-right nationalist and convicted war criminal, Vojislav Šešelj who’s vitriolic speeches contributed to and created the intellectual environment that led to the genocide of Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) in the 1990s.

The intrusive level of digital surveillance, especially done to gather incriminating evidence in order to blackmail and/or silence activists is just one of many methods used by the Vučić government to stop dissent. As abolitionists, we know that Vučić’s regime of digital surveillance doesn’t just stop at activists. Refugees are routinely assaulted by digital surveillance as chronicled by Border Violence Monitoring Group. This technology is used along with heavy police presence that commits violence, harassment and abuse in pushing back refugees, often separating family members as well. Serbian companies making drones and other surveillance equipment are also profiting from carceral border funding via the EU New Migration and Asylum Pact to stop refugees into the EU. Meanwhile, as No Name Kitchen has observed that refugee camps in Serbia are plagued by “…overcrowding, poor hygienic conditions and forms of police brutality […] the exclusionary geography of camps in Serbia allows for this violence to go undetected and unmonitored.”

The manner by which a government treats those marginalised by carceral borders trickles down to how it treats its citizenry. Already student activists are being harassed by BIA and forced into interrogation meetings. Meanwhile, as protests continue in Serbia, refugees, seeking safe passage, are also subjected to violent interrogation and push-backs by Serbian, Croatian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Romanian, North Macedonian, Greek or Turkish police aided by EU Frontex.

We are inspired by two young women from Novi Pazar, holding a sign stating, “Here’s there’s no yours vs. ours” as a commentary against those who seek to manipulate language, and create tensions and divisions within Serbian society. Their sign and political intervention also speaks of a hopeful possibility of a Serbia free from the harmful effects of carceral structures and the violence that it fosters, whether that is within the classroom or at the border.

GROUPS

Blocul Tineretului Muncitoresc (Romania)

Gradovi-utočišta | cities of refuge: Zagreb – Ogulin – Rijeka – Pazin

No Name Kitchen & Kuhinja bez imena

Platforma za radne uvjete u kulturi Za K.R.U.H. | Platform for working conditions in culture For B.R.E.A.D. (Croatia)

Unis Resist Border Controls (UK)

Women to Women collective / kolektiv Žene ženama (Croatia)

Zagreb grad-utočište | Zagreb Solidarity City

INDIVIDUALS

  1. Professor Bojana Ćulum Ilić, University of Rijeka

  2. Professor Christine Neufeld, Eastern Michigan University

  3. Professor Ivan Landripet, University of Zagreb

  4. Professor Ksenija Klasnić, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb

  5. Professor Leslie Bary, University of Louisiana at Lafayette

  6. Professor Martina Domines, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Zagreb

  7. Professor Mila Čuljak, Akademija primjenjenih umjetnosti u Rijeci

  8. Professor Miranda Novak, University of Zagreb, Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation Sciences

  9. Professor Tomislav Gomerčić

  10. Professor Vineeta Singh,  Assistant Professor Virginia Commonwealth University

  11. Cyrille Cartier

  12. Dr Alexandrina Vanke, Senior Research Fellow

  13. Dr Antje Postema, University of California, Berkeley

  14. Dr Darko Vinketa

  15. Dr David J. Bailey, University of Birmingham

  16. Dr Dina Vozab, University of Zagreb

  17. Dr Emina Buzinkic, Free Palestine Initiative

  18. Dr Ivan Tranfić, Institute for Social Research in Zagreb

  19. Dr Jelena Brankovic, Senior Researcher, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

  20. Dr Jessica Hatrick, Teaching Fellow, University of Nottingham, Ningbo China

  21. Dr Karlo Kralj, Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb

  22. Dr Magda Sindicic, University of Zagreb Faculty of Veterinary Medicine

  23. Dr Maja Gergorić, Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb

  24. Dr Marko Turk, Senior Researcher

  25. Dr Nandini Sikand, Professor of Film and Media Studies, Lafayette College

  26. Dr Omer Aijazi, Assistant Professor, University of Manchester

  27. Dr Paul Stubbs, The Institute of Economics, Zagreb (retired)

  28. Dr Ružica Ljubičić, TPO Fondacija

  29. Dr Sladjana Lazić, Assistant Professor, University of Innsbruck (Austria)

  30. Dr Tjasa Kancler, Professor, University of Barcelona

  31. Dr Órla Meadhbh Murray, Assistant Professor of Criminology and Sociology, Northumbria University Newcastle

  32. Izvor Rukavina, Lecturer,Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences,  University of Zagreb

  33. James Dawson, Assistant Professor, Coventry University

  34. Lana Bobić, IN BONA FIDE

  35. Marta Baradić, Doctoral candidate, Central European University (CEU)

  36. Maša Nađali, Sociopatija-student sociology association

  37. Miss Milena Jakičević, Independent researcher

  38. Miss Đurđica Degač, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb

  39. Mr Danny Millum, Sussex University College Union (UCU)

  40. Mr Javor Sluga, Študenti za svobodno Palestino

  41. Mr Nikola Škarić, Member of Free Palestine Initiative Croatia

  42. Mr Vitalie Sprinceana, Center for Policies, Initiatives and research PLATFORMA

  43. Mrs Mia Rupčić, Giacc-Italy (Global Infrastructure Anti-Corruption Centre)

  44. Mrs Mirna Varga, Assistant/PhD candidate – Social work study centre, Faculty of law – University of Zagreb

  45. Mrs Nidžara Ahmetašević, Independent organiser

  46. Mrs Silvija Dogan

  47. Ms Jill  Pope, Doctoral researcher, University of Melbourne/Central European University

  48. Ms Marion Dawson, Freelance Support Worker for Disabled Students

  49. Ms Sanaz Raji, Visiting Researcher and ISRF Fellow, Northumbria University, Northumbria University

  50. Ms Yasmin Musse, Durham University

  51. Mx Mak Maslać, Editor

  52. Mx Mirta Maslać, Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu

  53. Safaa Salem, Engineer,   Živi Ateleja DK

  54. Selma Banich

  55. Snežana Petrović, Movement and grassroots organisation