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
Unis Resist Border Controls (UK)
Women to Women collective / kolektiv Žene ženama (Croatia)
Zagreb grad-utočište | Zagreb Solidarity City
INDIVIDUALS
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Professor Bojana Ćulum Ilić, University of Rijeka
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Professor Christine Neufeld, Eastern Michigan University
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Professor Ivan Landripet, University of Zagreb
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Professor Ksenija Klasnić, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb
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Professor Leslie Bary, University of Louisiana at Lafayette
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Professor Martina Domines, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Zagreb
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Professor Mila Čuljak, Akademija primjenjenih umjetnosti u Rijeci
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Professor Miranda Novak, University of Zagreb, Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation Sciences
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Professor Tomislav Gomerčić
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Professor Vineeta Singh, Assistant Professor Virginia Commonwealth University
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Cyrille Cartier
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Dr Alexandrina Vanke, Senior Research Fellow
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Dr Antje Postema, University of California, Berkeley
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Dr Darko Vinketa
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Dr David J. Bailey, University of Birmingham
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Dr Dina Vozab, University of Zagreb
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Dr Emina Buzinkic, Free Palestine Initiative
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Dr Ivan Tranfić, Institute for Social Research in Zagreb
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Dr Jelena Brankovic, Senior Researcher, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
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Dr Jessica Hatrick, Teaching Fellow, University of Nottingham, Ningbo China
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Dr Karlo Kralj, Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb
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Dr Magda Sindicic, University of Zagreb Faculty of Veterinary Medicine
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Dr Maja Gergorić, Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb
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Dr Marko Turk, Senior Researcher
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Dr Nandini Sikand, Professor of Film and Media Studies, Lafayette College
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Dr Omer Aijazi, Assistant Professor, University of Manchester
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Dr Paul Stubbs, The Institute of Economics, Zagreb (retired)
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Dr Ružica Ljubičić, TPO Fondacija
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Dr Sladjana Lazić, Assistant Professor, University of Innsbruck (Austria)
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Dr Tjasa Kancler, Professor, University of Barcelona
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Dr Órla Meadhbh Murray, Assistant Professor of Criminology and Sociology, Northumbria University Newcastle
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Izvor Rukavina, Lecturer,Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb
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James Dawson, Assistant Professor, Coventry University
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Lana Bobić, IN BONA FIDE
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Marta Baradić, Doctoral candidate, Central European University (CEU)
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Maša Nađali, Sociopatija-student sociology association
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Miss Milena Jakičević, Independent researcher
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Miss Đurđica Degač, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb
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Mr Danny Millum, Sussex University College Union (UCU)
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Mr Javor Sluga, Študenti za svobodno Palestino
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Mr Nikola Škarić, Member of Free Palestine Initiative Croatia
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Mr Vitalie Sprinceana, Center for Policies, Initiatives and research PLATFORMA
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Mrs Mia Rupčić, Giacc-Italy (Global Infrastructure Anti-Corruption Centre)
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Mrs Mirna Varga, Assistant/PhD candidate – Social work study centre, Faculty of law – University of Zagreb
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Mrs Nidžara Ahmetašević, Independent organiser
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Mrs Silvija Dogan
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Ms Jill Pope, Doctoral researcher, University of Melbourne/Central European University
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Ms Marion Dawson, Freelance Support Worker for Disabled Students
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Ms Sanaz Raji, Visiting Researcher and ISRF Fellow, Northumbria University, Northumbria University
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Ms Yasmin Musse, Durham University
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Mx Mak Maslać, Editor
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Mx Mirta Maslać, Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu
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Safaa Salem, Engineer, Živi Ateleja DK
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Selma Banich
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Snežana Petrović, Movement and grassroots organisation