Something is rotten in the state of Serbia
19 February 2025
Brutal racialized police violence is a symptom of a sick state, and the culture of violence nurtured by the Serbian regime has created a climate of impunity for abusers in uniform. Too often, Roma bear the brunt of such violence. Protestors on the streets now are demanding a fundamental transformation of the relations between citizens and state, an end to corruption, and the reinstatement of the rule of law.
Towards this end, a complete overhaul of the way people in general and minorities in particular are policed is indispensable. A recent ERRC report, Ruthless and Racist: Policing Roma in the Balkans, uncovered the extent of police violence and discrimination against Roma, and outlined what must be done for justice to prevail in Serbia.
In the face of the greatest challenge to Serbia’s ruling party to date, President Aleksandar Vučić has taken to warning of ‘mounting rage’ from his own supporters, and dark mutterings about obscure outside forces orchestrating the unrest. The regime is clearly rattled by the massive student-led protests, sparked by outrage after the Novi Sad train station disaster which claimed 15 lives last November, that have since attracted huge amounts of public support from every walk of life.
Far from diminishing, the street mobilizations demanding transparency and accountability, have become more dogged and unrelenting, and less likely to be appeased by piecemeal concessions. Some might say, and many more hope, that this unrest, the largest student-led mobilization in Europe since 1968, will mark the beginning of the end for Vučić, the end of 13 years of authoritarian misrule, characterized by “creeping state capture, brazen corruption and a culture of violence”.
For some time before the current crisis, Freedom House has regularly ranked Serbia as only ‘partly free’. Serbia’s freedom score continues to decline annually for reasons of democratic backsliding, which also include “a pattern of intimidation by police, private security groups, and paramilitary organizations against demonstrations disfavoured by the authorities; pervasive harassment and intimidation of opposition parties at every level.”
As for the corrosive levels of corruption that plague Serbia, investigative journalists with BIRN have found direct ties between organised crime and the state in major crime cases, involving money laundering, drug dealing, violence and murders: “In each case, the names of numerous police and security service officials, even politicians, are mentioned as having ties to the mafia in indictments, official evidence, police notes or in witness testimony to the courts …
Policing Roma
Clearly, the issue of police violence against Roma cannot be resolved in isolation from the wider crises of democratic backsliding and authoritarianism. But this issue has long been a ‘concern’ for international monitoring bodies. It occurs within a context of what hundreds of thousands of protestors in Belgrade first denounced in June 2023 as a “culture of violence” promoted by the government and its loyal media outlets; a historical track record of coordinated public violence against religious and ethnic minorities; and the legacy of para-militarised and ultra-violent policing in times of war and conflict.
In a 2022 report following its visit to Serbia, the Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT), called for action to address the serious problem of ill-treatment by the Serbian police. In addition to physical violence – which included “slaps, punches, kicks and truncheon blows to various parts of the body, the application of electro-shocks by handheld devices and car batteries and forcing detained persons to remain in stress positions for prolonged periods” – numerous remand prisoners claimed to have been racially abused due to their Romani or Albanian ethnic origin.
The ERRC, in a submission to UNCAT, asserted that “police brutality against Roma is endemic in Serbia, particularly against young Romani men and boys”; and detailed a number of cases of inhuman and degrading treatment of Roma at the hands of Serbian police in recent years.
Cases included evidence of police torturing Romani people to extract confessions (including asphyxiating a man with a plastic bag and holding a gun to his head), threatening to take children away from families, withholding food and water during interrogation, denying access to medical aid and legal counsel, as well as multiple accounts of groups of officers taking turns to beat defenceless Roma in interrogation cells. The police officers who perpetrate these human rights violations rarely if ever face any consequences for their actions.
Beyond ‘stabilitocracy’
Only time will tell if the current unrest is in fact ‘a tipping point’. On 17 February, the wily Vučić was received with state honours by fellow authoritarian Viktor Orbán in Budapest, and hailed as “the champion of the Balkans stability”. For its part, the European Commission, in contrast to the fulsome praise heaped on “the Georgian people fighting for democracy”, has maintained radio silence, and not uttered a word in support of the student protests in Serbia. Unlike Tbilisi, there are no blue EU flags flying in Belgrade or Novi Sad, and it is not hard to discern why.
It was only late last October, President von der Leyen visited Belgrade to congratulate ‘dear Aleksandar’ and his team for the great job done on their ‘excellent’ reform agenda, announced plans to move forward with EUR 1.5 billion under the Growth Plan, and declared that Serbia is one of the most advanced countries in the accession process and that ‘its actions follow its words.’ In the face of the current mass unrest, the EU’s preference for stabilitocracy rather than democracy, is revealed as shoddy and short-sighted, ethically unsound and strategically misconceived.
Should the protest movements prevail, hopes will be high for justice and the rule of law in Serbia. Unprecedented in scale, cohesive in their demands, and utterly democratic in their demeanour, the students constitute the most formidable challenge to the regime to date. The stakes are high, for the alternative is too grim to contemplate – a vicious and vengeful ‘gloves off’ campaign of political retribution, where the coercive apparatus of the party-state will act with minimum restraint, and concerns about human rights will be even further relegated to the margins.
