To explain the essence of the hunger strike, we must understand three essential elements on which the success of this method of political struggle depends.
In the first place - how the Government, which actually represents the address to which the requests are addressed, treats the demands and possible consequences of starvation. It can be flexible, lenient or decisive, and this changes during the strike because the longer the hunger strike lasts, the pressure increases, so on the one hand there is a desire to show firmness and steadfastness, while on the other hand the threats to the health and life of the strikers are increasing.
In the second place today, we can put the media. More specifically, how they relate to requests and how they form public opinion. In our country, these are primarily tabloids that are classified according to the political orientation of the strikers, most often with ridicule, relativization or dramatization of even the announcement of the strike. In Serbia, it can be said that the media are for the most part actually a part of the government, which in this way takes additional account of its critics or strikers.
In third place, but probably the most important element is the actor, the one who starts the hunger strike. By how he behaves, whether he takes not only food but also liquid and whether he refuses infusion or forced feeding, we see his determination and the symbolic message of that decision, the importance given to this act, but also the criteria for fulfilling the requirements completely or with a compromise.
A hunger strike represents an act of an individual by excluding them from society, and at the same time appeals to the conscience of that same community through self-sacrifice that gives legitimacy to demands. In short, you are telling the world that you are willing to risk your health or your life for an idea or principle that transcends you personally.
The rule of the SNS symbolically began with a hunger and thirst strike that Toma Nikolić went on Easter 2011 and ended at the insistence of Patriarch Irinej. The occasion was the elections, Velja Ilić was also supposed to go on strike, but the doctor forbade him. This strike also had another feature, namely the styrofoam on which Toma was sitting before being transferred to the hospital.
Independent MP in national costume, doctor Miladin Ševarlić in May 2020 first started and then gave up a hunger strike on the steps of the National Assembly because his idea was stolen. In his words, he was suffocated by the media, because Boško Obradović from Dvera "appealed" to him against his will, and then SNS MPs Aleksandar Martinović and Sandra Božić. Ševarlić rebelled against the ignoring of Resolution 1244, but he became convinced that today's media are able to make an idea of self-sacrifice extremely quickly completely meaningless by imitating it.
The game of nonsense was especially visible during the historic announcement of the hunger strike by Aleksandar Vulin in April 2019. Then Vesić and Vulin preemptively announced and then urgently postponed the hunger strike so that the members of the "new DOS" would not break into the institutions and start the hunger strike. At the request of Supreme Commander Aleksandar Vučić, Vulin gave up, laughing at those he disappointed "because they rejoiced too soon at his quick and painful death".
Perhaps the most serious hunger strike was held by Marinika Tepić in December 2023 due to election theft, in the REC building. At the beginning, there were two other opposition MPs with her; she lasted 12 days, and then at the doctor's request she was hospitalized.
A similar strike was carried out these days by the teacher Marija Vasić in the prison in Novi Sad, where she was lying with five other defendants for allegedly subverting the state order, and the key evidence is a secretly made recording that was broadcast on TV tabloids before reaching the prosecutor's office. She endured six days of hunger and thirst strike, and then was released under house arrest.
The last, probably the most bizarre example is the announcement of a hunger strike announced by Miloš Pavlović, a sort of leader of the students who have been camping in Pionirski Park and in front of the Serbian Parliament since March. They presented three demands if all faculties do not start working by June 1.
They said: "We will starve until they pay attention to us."
Under two is: "Responsibility, moral, disciplinary and legal, for denying the right to education and movement".
The third demand is the most complex – to stop the insults, fascist methods, calling them mentally ill, calling for extermination, while they are legitimately and legally in the park in their city.
The problem with these requests is that we don't know who they are addressed to. The second, much bigger problem is the contradictions that are difficult to enumerate, because someone who blocks the center of Belgrade for months seeks responsibility for preventing the Constitutional right to free movement. This is particularly visible in the third request, which contains the desire that people love and appreciate them, that is, to stop insulting them. Unfortunately, those young people, because it is evident that not all students, as well as those who support them on a daily basis, from all state-controlled channels systematically insult the students in the blockade, treating them with incomparably more terrible insults and accusing them of terrorism. The mentioned "guys", as they call themselves, and that's what Aleksandar Vučić also likes to call them, are very, very noticeable, because they appear in the media every day, while you can see the representatives of students in the blockade on only a few cable channels, which the operators additionally matchbox by moving them at will.
I would add that at the moment it is almost impossible to say which of the higher education institutions is currently conducting classes, in what form and to what extent. This announced strike will be another example of the bizarre habit of Aleksandar Vučić, who, in the absence of a solution to the crisis, just copies and makes no sense what his critics are doing.
I guess that's why he's eating sardines at the moment.
