Anger swirls in Serbia a year after the train station tragedy

A sea of ​​people streamed along the roads leading to the Novi Sad train station.

They came in their tens of thousands to honor the 16 people who died there this time last year on another unseasonably warm and sunny autumn day.

The victims were standing or sitting under a concrete canopy of the recently renovated facility when it collapsed. The two youngest were only six years old, the oldest – 77.

Regular protests rocked Serbia over the next 12 months. But on Saturday morning, the huge crowd took part in an event that put the emphasis on quiet celebration.

At 11:52 (10:52 GMT), the time of the disaster, they observed a 16-minute silence – one for each of the victims. Family members cried. A woman had to be physically supported by men wearing red berets of armed forces veterans.

After the silence, relatives presented flowers in front of the station.

Debris from the collapsed shed has been cleared, but otherwise the building appears to have been untouched by the disaster.

Twisted metal sticking out of the walls and broken glass still provide evidence of the crash.

The Novi Sad station was supposed to be a symbol of Serbia’s progress, under the leadership of President Aleksandar Vucic’s Progressive Party. The country’s second city will be a key stop on the high-speed rail line, which will transport passengers from Belgrade to Budapest in less than three hours.

Vučić and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán jointly opened the renovated facility in 2022. Its angular form from the Yugoslav era was upgraded as part of the high-speed project.

But now, after another renovation and subsequent disaster, the station is a prime example of everything that is wrong with Serbia.

For the government’s flagship infrastructure project to prove deadly to its citizens was more than many could bear. They took to the streets carrying placards reading “corruption kills”.

The students quickly took the lead.

Anti-government demonstrations are not exactly new in Serbia, but unlike previous movements that disappeared, student-led anti-corruption protests continue.

“Every other protest movement was organized by political opposition parties and people in Serbia don’t trust them,” said Alexa, a 23-year-old management student at the University of Novi Sad.

“We are the most trusted group in the country – that’s why, even though we’ve made mistakes, people trust us.

Students shun opposition parties. After initially demanding accountability from the authorities, they are now calling for new elections.

They plan to field a slate of independent, expert candidates who could run a technocratic government. According to them, this would be the best way to rid Serbian institutions of nepotism and corruption, which they believe are responsible for the train station disaster.

In September, 13 people, including former Minister of Construction, Infrastructure and Transport Goran Vesic, were charged in a criminal case over the collapse.

A A European Parliament resolution last month called for full and transparent judicial procedures and an assessment “of potential corruption or negligence” – highlighting “the need to investigate more widely the extent to which corruption led to the lowering of safety standards and contributed to this tragedy”.

The government has denied allegations of corruption.

The protesting students’ approach has won the respect of some opposition leaders.

“They showed integrity and persistence,” says Biljana Djordjevic, MP and co-chair of the Left Green Front.

“The new generation found their way to be involved, that’s the difference this time. They’ve split between generations in families, we’ve always wanted them to be more vocal and now they are.”

Political scientist Sarjan Cviic of the Belgrade Center for Security Policy believes that the students have broken through in a way that opposition parties in Serbia simply cannot do anymore.

“Until last year, the regime effectively managed to make traditional politics abhorrent to the entire population,” he says.

“They failed to do that with the student movement, and the result is that the student movement has been able to break into the traditional electorate of the ruling party in a way that no one has been able to do before.”

Perhaps this explains President Vucic’s sudden change in tone. He generally took a hard line with the protesters, accusing them of attempting a “color revolution” – the kind of popular movements that were behind the pro-European protests that toppled governments in European countries in previous years.

These changes in the former Soviet republics in the early years of the 21st century pushed Georgia and Ukraine in a pro-European direction.

But in the run-up to the commemoration, Vucic apologized for his fiery rhetoric towards protesters, claiming he had “said some things that I now regret saying”.

The students responded dismissively. They told the president, “You have blood on your hands.”

This day may have been one of respect and remembrance. But the anger remains.