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For over four months, mass protests have been taking place across Serbia, sparked by students who began blocking university buildings. All student-organized events have been peaceful, although several separate protests have included incidents such as citizens throwing eggs at ruling party officials or attempting to enter municipal buildings. On the other hand, the Serbian government has consistently tried to discredit the entire student movement by portraying it as violent.
The regime’s two main strategies have been to fabricate incidents that are quickly exposed as fake news and, on the other hand, to spread narratives that suggest that the protests represent the terror of a minority seeking to “topple” the state.
“A lot of money has been spent to achieve these goals. Violence is everywhere—within institutions and on the streets. Terror has literally taken over Serbia”, President Aleksandar Vučić said in one of his 61 public addresses in March.
In order to tackle the “terror of the minority,” Vučić scheduled a rally for 12 April and called on his supporters to attend, aiming to “restore security to our home, bring children back to schools, and return Serbia to the path of success and victory”. In recent weeks, the ruling party has invested considerable resources into mobilizing its members to attend the rally on Saturday.
“The Time of Terror” and “The Age of Evil”
For months, authorities have maintained the narrative of an “aggressive minority” seeking to bring Serbia to a halt while claiming that the “majority of Serbia” supports stability and the country’s progress under Vučić’s leadership. The narrative is disseminated through a coordinated campaign by the government, pro-government media, and affiliated organizations.
For this purpose, the Center for Social Stability, an NGO founded by prominent members of the ruling party, has produced a series of documentaries that are being broadcast on TV stations with national coverage.
One of them, “The Time of Terror”, accuses students and participants in the protests of violent behaviour and of opposing the constitutional order. The documentary’s central claim is that a violent minority is terrorizing the peaceful majority, and it ends with a threatening warning.
“At the very end, it should not be forgotten that after the Jacobin dictatorship (during the French Revolution) and the Reign of Terror came the Thermidorian Reaction, and Maximilian Robespierre perished by the same guillotine – or rather, the sword – which himself had once wielded”, the narrator says near the film’s conclusion, accompanied by dramatic music and an animation of a guillotine.
These documentaries feature top government officials, such as the Speaker of the National Assembly Ana Brnabić and the outgoing Prime Minister Miloš Vučević, as interviewees.
The latest documentary in this series, titled “The Age of Evil,” describes an alleged media manipulation and how media outlets critical of the government are purportedly undermining the state of Serbia.
“I believe these are organizations that are consciously funded to destabilize the Republic of Serbia,” stated Speaker of the Assembly Ana Brnabić, speaking about independent media.
A poll conducted by CRTA in February, however, showed that 80% of citizens support the students’ demands. This widespread support was also visible during a massive protest held on March 15, where, according to the Public Assembly Archive, between 275,000 and 325,000 people took to the streets.
Protests continued across Serbia even after that date. According to CRTA, at least 1,697 protests took place in 378 different towns and cities throughout March.
Fabricated incidents and provocations
The narrative of violence and terror has not only been sustained by statements from government officials and pro-government media. The authorities have also produced a series of fabrications and false information portraying the students as violent, which were quickly debunked.
Days before the mass student protest on 15 March, President Vučić falsely claimed that students had assaulted a police officer during the blockade of the building of the Radio Television of Serbia. The video that appeared on social media a few hours after the incident clearly showed that the police officer in question had been attacked by another police officer, not by students.
Another fabricated story involved an alleged attack on Miloš Pavlović, the most visible student leading a group of students, many of whom are close to the ruling party, who oppose university blockades. President Vučić condemned the attack on Pavlović despite the video published on social networks showing that Pavlović was not attacked.
The alleged use of a sonic device during the 15 March protest is widely seen as a major attempt to incite chaos and violence at what was otherwise a peaceful gathering. To this day, Serbian citizens have not been informed who ordered the use of the weapon, what type of device was deployed, or what the motive behind it was.
Around 4,000 people who were caught in the panic on Kralja Milana Street reached out to a coalition of NGOs, by 20 March. In their testimonies, they described the panic that broke out at 7:11 p.m., just as a moment of silence was being observed for victims of the recent tragedy in Novi Sad.
Major unrest was avoided only because the student organizers of the protest immediately called off the event as soon as the weapon was deployed, and the crowd dispersed peacefully.
On 22 March, pro-government tabloids reported that in Odžaci, a municipality in northern Serbia, a “protest leader”, a taxi driver 75 years old, shot a man who was defending the municipality building from demonstrators. The articles suggested that the protests were escalating into a civil war.
A day after the attack, it was revealed that the taxi driver was not the attacker, and the actual shooter was not a leader of the student movement either.