The repressive regime finally, after seven months, showed its true, old and authentic face. Bare force, artificially induced with the help of an ambulance, lies of the police director, smashed heads of peaceful citizens, arrests... These are the events that marked yesterday. That is what this society is fighting against. A society that pushed young people to the front lines and now measures their every word and every move, forgetting what is on the other side.
Is there really a division?
We, as a society, can now stop speakers' time and complain that speeches are boring. No one is forbidding us, but is it useful and what kind of good does it produce? We can also blame the students for being too far to the right, that the choice of speaker was controversial, that the principle of "ideological minimum" was violated... And we can even be right here. But before we conclude that we are right, we have to ask ourselves what we get out of it. Also, being right about one detail can mean we are wrong about the whole picture.
The broader picture (although it is not the whole picture) is as follows: the students scheduled the protest on Vidovdan and decided to make full use of the symbolism of that holiday, the Kosovar myth and national consciousness. These are all concepts that are quite distant to this author, but not hostile.
The question to think about is: why did we forget the cycling to Strasbourg, the marathon to Brussels, unity with the students of the State University in Novi Pazar... Why didn't we listen to DUNP student Emina Spahić, who just a week ago said in the Impression of the Week that Vidovday does not have the same symbolism for her as it does for the majority of the people in Serbia, but that she now expects this date to acquire wider social symbolism?
Also, an even bigger question is: are we really talking about two irreconcilable ideologies? What if this generation of leaders of the rebellion has a new reading of our old divisions, what if they reconciled them and we didn't notice?
How are things?
Let's stop now with the questions and take a look at the answers, that is, what there is no doubt about. And there is no doubt that the repressive regime used bare force against the students on Saturday, by artificially causing the police to start beating them.
We saw the video: the ambulance wants to pass. The protesters let him through, but not the cordon. Instead of letting the vehicle pass, the police start savagely beating completely peaceful people. That's how it started.
We also saw police director Dragan Vasiljević lying, we apologize if the expression bothers anyone. He brazenly lied that the demonstrators did not want to miss the emergency services, and that the police did not use "chemical means" against the people.
And let's not get lost in details like "the students took off their vests and left us alone", because the students stayed there, got batons, swallowed tear gas... This taking off of the vests from last night is not the one from March 15. Last night, taking off the policemen's vests was a symbolic act of equality with the citizens. By taking off their vests, they told us: now we are no longer "students and people", now we are all equal, together.
The legacy of the Vidovdan protest
If something is clear after the protest on June 28, it is that there are no more three parties: the government-students-citizens. There are two left: citizens rebelling against the crazed government and the government, that is, one man who brought out the Gendarmerie to defend a park. That is the most important thing and we must not forget it: from the empire of Aleksandar Vučić, only Čaciland remained, with a few hundred loyalists.
That's what he defended last night, that's why young people were beaten by the police last night. Who cares about Milo Lompar as a speaker, just remember: on June 28, 2025, heads were bleeding under batons because Aleksandar Vučić "defended" the filthy, smelly fair that Pionirski Park turned into.
Who is bothered by the general tone of yesterday's "See you on Vidovdan" protest, remember: we don't have other students that you will like more. This is the only opportunity to get rid of the repressive regime, there will be no other.
