I n December, when my mother texted that she and my brother had dropped off food for demonstrating students at the University of Arts in Belgrade, I was stunned. He usually sat in silence while others fumed over Serbia’s failure to shake off the leaders who got us “into shit” thirty-five years ago. My brother—my apolitical, bashful, forty-two-year-old brother—was now delivering boxes of baklava to a protest. Then I learned that his son was part of the blockade at his high school.
Since November 2024, university and high school students nationwide have been mobilizing. The trigger for this wave of dissent was the collapse of a poorly constructed canopy at the Novi Sad train station—which claimed fifteen lives. However, the students are driven by a broader purpose: to end the pervasive corruption that has plagued Serbia for decades. Election fraud, media control, and shady real estate deals are just a few examples of the current regime’s transgressions, spearheaded by President Aleksandar Vučić.
I landed in Belgrade a month later, and my parents greeted me with a kind of enthusiasm that I hadn’t seen in them in years. “The students are fearless,” my mother, seventy-one, said as we drove from the airport. My father, seventy-two, nodded in agreement, his hands steady on the wheel. They were boldly hopeful. But I was wary.
We witnessed many protests over the years—dissent flaring up, then fading away, changing nothing, while the already depleted reserves of hope dwindled further. Over strong Turkish (or Greek, depending on whom you ask) coffee that only he knows how to make properly, my father said, “Hey, journalist, you should write about this.” But I couldn’t see what was new—and I doubted anyone would care.
In the days after students called for a general strike on January 24, I heard the same unbridled enthusiasm from family friends I’ve only known as skeptics. When news broke of a planned twenty-four-hour blockade at a critical junction, obstructing entry to central Belgrade from one of its busiest highways, I told my parents I wanted to go. “Idemo,” they said. Let’s go.
It was a cool winter night on January 27, but Belgrade, worn as it was, pulsed with energy. Cheerful shouts and murmurs followed us as we weaved through narrow streets toward the wide Boulevard of Liberation. Battered buildings of eclectic styles—from Byzantine to postmodern—were illuminated by more than just streetlights as crowds waved their cellphone flashlights around. Then came the piercing chorus of plastic whistles.
Colourful whistles were everywhere—in mouths and hands, hanging around necks, and printed on T-shirts, badges, and stickers that were passed around all night. My parents and I each got one: pink, green, and yellow. Music blared from countless speakers as families with children and pets joined in, strolling and waving at groups of university students. The latter sprawled across the pavement, sitting beside propped-up tents, playing cards, board games, and chess.
A news crew asked one of the chess players if they’d welcome President Vučić, a self-proclaimed grand master, to the chess board. “He can come, but we don’t think he will,” the protester said, “because we play fair here.”
Vučić’s political career is rooted in ultranationalism and hooliganism. He supported, if not incited, the atrocities of the Yugoslav wars. Though he publicly renounced his past views in 2008 and broadcast his support for Serbia’s EU membership, his rise to power was fuelled by nothing else.
Professors accompanied their students to the blockade. “I am not leaving you alone tonight,” my parents and I overheard one of them say, and my eyes stung. Cooks and caterers set up makeshift kitchens to make heaps of food, from pizzas to paprikash, that the students shared among themselves. Thousands filled the boulevard in support. I felt elated and slightly disoriented, because it was Belgrade in January 2025 but it could have just as easily been Belgrade in January 1997.
M any often forget the degree and scope of civic, student-led dissent in Belgrade well before Vučić came to power. In the early 1990s, people rallied against the Yugoslav wars and the irreparable damage that tore the region apart—most notably the Bosnian genocide—orchestrated by then president Slobodan Milošević’s regime.
I was a little over two years old when my parents, who were part of the anti-war movement, took me to the streets for the very first time. Sitting on my father’s shoulders, I made noise alongside students, teachers, artists, and pacifists. But the outcry was overshadowed by aggression in the media and on the ground; Milošević brought out tanks to wipe out the protests. That’s when my parents decided it was time to leave the country.
About a year after the war ended and the Dayton Peace Accord was signed, in the winter of 1996/97, students, backed by opposition leaders, spilled into the streets, accusing Milošević of election fraud. Every day at 7:30 p.m.—when the state-controlled news aired—students gathered in the city centre, creating a deafening ruckus to drown out the misinformation. Their protest spread across neighbourhoods. Weary residents finally looked out their windows and stepped onto their balconies.
Even though we lived abroad by then, we would come back, whenever we could, to visit family and friends who had stayed behind. And we would take to the streets, too, as a family, whenever we could. I remember my mother leaning over the railing of our apartment balcony, enthusiastically banging her pots and pans and blowing into her whistle with all the air she held in her lungs. It was an orchestra of noise, and the enthusiasm was infectious. My brother and I—fifteen and eight at the time—gleefully joined her.
There was no shortage of creative, humorous acts of dissent back then. When the regime threatened university professors, the students held a seance, armed with candles and garlic to “exorcise the Devil.” And when Milošević organized a counter-rally, the students showed up with detergents and mops to wash away corruption and “decontaminate” the streets. He was eventually ousted in 2000, but the rot of his rule spread far, and too many of his supporters were still swimming in political waters. At that time, Vučić was Milošević’s minister of information, appointed in 1998.
After Milošević’s fall, Vučić remained in parliament as speaker. In 2012, his party won the parliamentary elections, and two years later, he became prime minister. He took office as president in 2017 and has remained there ever since. He has allegedly maintained his connection to soccer hooligans, looking to these gangs to do his dirty work.
Though socially meaningful, the 1996/97 protests didn’t manage to weed out hate and corruption. And so corruption spread. Now, twenty-eight years later, the students are out on the streets again—only this time, they might just succeed.
B acked by their families and teachers, this generation of students has been blocking their schools and university grounds and leading protest walks across key city locations. What drives them are practical concerns. They are speaking out against the government for failing at its most basic job—to respect the rule of law, heed expert advice, and make life safe for citizens. This is something that everybody, irrespective of their political leanings, agrees with: Serbia is a failed state.
“I don’t want to be ‘an auntie from America’ because of you!” reads one of the signs. “Engineers against the machine!” reads another. The signs also include a mix of caricatures of Vučić and his ministers, with the occasional “Mom, I’m okay!” popping up from the sea of people.
The students’ demands are simple: release all documentation pertaining to the construction of the train station in Novi Sad, launch a formal investigation into violations of safety codes and other regulations, and hold violators responsible. Additionally, they are asking the courts to order the arrests of those responsible for attacks on student protesters. (Since November, there have been several instances of cars ramming into crowds—the latest of which resulted in the hospitalization of several students with severe injuries.)
But there is one more widely recognized demand: the end of Vučić’s regime. When Vučić made a show of addressing the students on national television, the students responded simply: “You are not competent.”
O n January 31, my parents and I joined the crowd outside the Faculty of Law and waited for the daily fifteen minutes of silence in remembrance of the fifteen lives lost in Novi Sad. Around 11:40 a.m., students, in their reflective vests, made their way to the middle of the nearest intersection, stopping traffic. They shielded us, gently urging us to stay off the tram tracks.
Minutes later, the crowd spotted gangly teens and their teachers walking up the incline from a nearby high school to join the blockade. Everyone cheered and applauded. My mother blew her new whistle. My father took what felt like hundreds of photos (and roped a student into taking one of us). When the clock struck 11:52 a.m., we all stood in absolute silence. The only sounds were the chirps of a few oblivious birds, a dog barking in the distance, and the screeches of windows opening in nearby residential buildings.
Later that day, my parents and I watched on TV as the students from Belgrade made their way to Novi Sad on foot. Our screen displayed a touching scene: the eighty-kilometre road to the city was lined with people from nearby towns, villages, and hamlets, waving, weeping, and urging the students on. Farmers drove in on their tractors to support the younglings and protect them from harm. When the students stopped to rest before resuming their journey the following day, it was the farmers who made their meals and watched over them all night.
The morning after the blockade in Novi Sad, a troupe of taxi drivers drove the students back home to their families—for free.
In the past, the urban–rural divide was unbridgeable, and dissent was contained to a few key cities across Serbia. Jaded civilians would often criticize the demonstrations for being sloppy, orchestrated by a “disorganized opposition” and supported by idle and unserious folk. The regime would amplify this critique, adding that protesters were “financed by the West” and seeking to destabilize a “booming country” (Vučić called Serbia a regional “economic tiger” in an essay he penned for the World Economic Forum). Now, uprisings have been sprouting in over 200 towns across Serbia and beyond.
This time, the students are refusing to be politically claimed or labelled. And while their protest has nothing to do with nationalism, they wave the Serbian flag as a rebuttal to the regime accusing them of being “unpatriotic.”
Also moving is the overwhelming support from cities across the former Yugoslavia. Students in Ljubljana, Zagreb, Sarajevo, and places in between have shown solidarity with those in Belgrade, marking a turning point for the region—and helping to mend relationships that state leaders shredded.
It is impossible to contain emotions. My mother’s nostalgic heart longed for the region’s recovery, hoping that things might one day return to how they were before the Yugoslav wars. Disappointment fractured that hope, the cracks deepening each year. When my parents decided to move back to Belgrade over a decade ago, they told my brother and me not to follow. (My brother did follow—and my mother has complained of high cholesterol ever since.) I’ve rarely seen my mother cry, but now, each night, she smiles through the tears.
T here are many striking similarities between student-led dissent in Belgrade in the winter of 1996/97 and now. The protests are an unexpected surge of enthusiasm after a prolonged period of fatigue and political apathy; the students are undeterred by government-controlled airwaves and the looming threat of state-sanctioned violence; and the planning started in the classroom. However, there are also differences, the most significant of which is that these kids were born into societal collapse and political corruption—they have nothing left to lose.
Despite what they say about the new generations—that they are perpetually distracted, coddled by their parents and teachers, and brainwashed by social media—these students are pushing back in a way their parents and guardians couldn’t. They are peaceful and eloquent—something the regime has no response to—and they are unencumbered in their joy. They celebrate each other as they push. No birthday goes unnoticed, and newlyweds are cheered on. To be around them is to adore them. It’s no wonder people from all walks of life are joining in.
While there is a very long road ahead, the students have already succeeded; they breathed life back into a barren place and reminded us all why making noise is always, always worth it.
D uring the first week of February, public transit operators, office workers, pharmacists, and health care workers pledged their support for the students. On February 3, the legal system was suspended for thirty days in solidarity with their demands. On February 5, pensioners joined the movement, with signs that read: “The baby boomers are with you!” “We were students once, too!” and “Looking for a date, 65+.”
On my last day in Belgrade, my brother and I wandered through the old town, across cobbled streets, to the rundown buildings of the faculties of fine and applied arts, philology, and philosophy. Every window on every floor was plastered with protest signs. Through the glass, we saw students sitting in, maintaining the blockade, planning their next move. And for the first time in as long as I could remember, I wished I didn’t have to leave.
