"Being against the regime is now a matter of elementary home and civic education. This is no longer a matter of power struggle. This is a fight for freedom and the preservation of the essential substance of normality in our society"
As we begin our conversation with Democratic Party MP Srđan Milivojević, a kilometer from the National Assembly, students gather in front of the University of Belgrade building. In addition to the Rectorate, the blockade begins at several faculties - the Faculty of Philology, Philosophy and Mathematics are occupied. Almost in parallel, students block the building of the University in Novi Sad, and a few hours later, students of the Faculty of Political Sciences announce that they will join the action, as do the Faculty of Architecture and Physical Chemistry. The Faculty of Dramatic Arts has been blocked for a week.
Student blockades are only one in a series of expressions of civil rebellion. More than a month has passed since the canopy fell at the recently reconstructed Railway Station in Novi Sad. 15 people died and two were seriously injured. A tragedy of unprecedented proportions deeply shook citizens throughout Serbia. However, the initial shock at the loss of life soon turned to anger.
The desire for justice and finding those responsible for the death of fifteen people brought people to the streets. Even after more than thirty days, that desire does not subside - on the contrary, it is getting stronger. A red - bloody - fist appeared on public areas and buildings as a symbolic representation of the (chain of) guilt of those responsible for the fall of the canopy. It also reminded some of the days of the struggle against Slobodan Milošević's regime, when the clenched fist of the Resistance was the symbol of rebellion.
The interlocutor of "Vremen" was one of those who, 25 years ago, sought justice in the streets of Otpor.
"WEATHER" The archive of public meetings is blocked on the 29th. November counted the largest number of academics since the nineties. Many say that they are students "woke up". Is that so? Can the student revolt be compared to that of two and a half decades ago??
SRĐAN MILIVOJEVIĆ: The fight against the regime has never been transferred to the streets in this way. On the street there is a high school, a university, politicians, organizations and movements. And they all have one single demand – this regime must go. I am not a supporter of any comparison between the nineties and now. The nineties were the essence of evil. Today we live in a time of farce, which is sometimes more dangerous than the original. Nevertheless, I am extremely pleased with the large number of young people who stood up to defend their dignity, normality and decent life. I am satisfied when I see people who are determined to fight. Not to finish college, get a passport and leave here, but to fight. It is incomprehensible to me that the government is dealing with students as it did in 1999 and 2000. Then the Otpor student movement appeared, which Slobodan Milošević recognized as a serious danger. The resistance spread very quickly among the school youth, and there were mass arrests and attacks on school-aged children. People must stand up to defend them. I cannot allow anyone to call children names.
Recently, the case of student and activist Mile Pajić and her friend, who were dragged into cars by plainclothes policemen and taken to an unknown location, became public..
Aleksandar Vučić has an unlimited arsenal of evil at his disposal. He will not hesitate to use anything from that arsenal of evil when his power is truly threatened. Now his power is seriously shaken, and that's why he reaches out to thugs and hooligans. But he is ready for much more.
For example?
I was recently at the "Stop, Serbia" protest in front of the Special Court building in Belgrade. Even though I survived everything with Milosevic, I was fascinated by the fact that when a student came out with a paper with a red fist on it with the names of the victims in the fall of the canopy, a member of the Gendarmerie came to him with a heckler, holding his finger on the trigger. He invited the student to come with him. I ran after them to the guardhouse where the gendarme said that the paper threatened the security of the Special Court. Three or four citizens also came and asked the gendarmes why they were touching the child. Then two more arrived and that was it - three of them with hecklers on us four citizens.
As for the two female students, Mila Pajić and Dorotea Antić, they were kidnapped on the street in Novi Sad. A group of people dressed as hooligans approached them and put them in the back seat of the car. They could have been kidnapped, their lives and physical integrity could have been threatened. Often, BIA members only show identification that says BIA, but not all of them have the authority to detain people. Citizens do not know that. When a citizen hears BIA, he first thinks that he has done something. By the time he regains consciousness, he is already in Klisa, 30 days of detention. These are terrible things.
Is this the first time we see such terrible things in these 12 years?
It's not the first time, we just forget. In 2017, we saw a video calling for the murder of Oliver Ivanovic, which happened four months later. Before that, we witnessed the destruction in Savamala, when the legal order was also destroyed - people called the police, but they did not intervene. This is where we come to the key point - the regime has surrounded itself with stuntmen. These are people who take responsibility for everything that happens, even when they didn't do it. Someone took responsibility for driving a car at the toll booth in Doljevac. There are people, like Veljko Belivuk, who said - I, at the expense of Aleksandar Vučić, demolished in Savamala. We do not know who ordered Omer Mehić's helicopter to take off.
The regime no longer hesitates to use evil against citizens. The scene from July 2020, people being beaten, ten of them each beating a man who is on the ground... No one ever answered. The Protector of Citizens did not speak.
This time, at the blockades, citizens directly clash with each other.
We are already seeing that for the first time. It is about the gradational ascension of evil. Inhumanity has been released from the chain and shows its true beastly face. There are people who sit at SNS gatherings and then act as extras - concerned citizens who can't get through, driving their mother to work... But the dam has broken at SNS and people see where it's leading. At the same time, it broke at the bottom, where for 12 years silt, mud and mud have been collecting. Now the mud is splashing in all directions and no one will even go near it. They give everything about each other now, out of fear. Marinika Tepić did not dream of a conversation with Damir Zobenica in which he gives instructions on how the SNS assault squads will attack the people. It was sent by someone to whom the order was addressed. People see that Goran Vesić is not in prison. That Jelena Tanasković and Anita Dimoski are under house arrest. The said stuntmen begin to end up in prison.
The government also gives certain concessions - resignations of ministers, and then some arrests, which is also a certain novelty. Why? Do you think there is a will to do something behind it, or are these moves made out of fear, with the aim of alleviating citizens' dissatisfaction at the moment?
The arrest of Goran Vesić is a cheap show with very expensive consequences for the regime. They tried to amnesty Vesić from criminal responsibility for some time in the future. When this regime is changed, new evidence of the Novi Sad crime will appear. In the request to initiate an investigation against Vesić, they listed everything alive that exists and does not exist. Then they said there was no reason to doubt that he did it. And then who did it? Is it possible that someone in the hierarchy below the minister is responsible, and the minister did not know what was going on? Where is Tomislav Momirović? Where is Miloš Vucevic? Where is Ana Brnabić? The regime has no answer to those questions, so now we pray to God to ask them as quietly as possible. But the people on the street don't give up. They have no answer to painting the square red. Winter time is coming, you will start meeting people who wear only one red glove on the street. People are angry after a long time. However, if there is no one to articulate that dissatisfaction, we enter a dangerous situation where anger can turn into anarchy.
Can the red fist have the strength that the clenched fist of the Resistance once had?
It can have much more power. People are slowly realizing that there are not only 15 victims in the demolition of Potemkin villages. There are also 65 killed in the floods. A family died in a traffic accident near Ušće, when a father and three children and a neighbor died. Slobodan Tanasković, guard from Savamala. Stanimir Brajković, a pensioner, was mistreated and killed in the prison on the Padinska Skela without any responsibility. Stanika Gligorijević. Omer Mehić with his crew. A sergeant was killed on the Pešter plateau during a marketing-propaganda military exercise. There are dozens and dozens of victims. I think that every city in Serbia will receive a boulevard of memory for the victims of Aleksandar Vučić's regime as part of the red hands actions, which extends much further than the last 12 years.
There is a certain fear among the public that the current protests could end up as protests "Serbia against violence". What can the opposition do to conserve energy??
We need to have a plan that citizens will be familiar with. For the first time, in addition to seeing angry people, I have the impression that people are proud to be right there on the street and that they will not back down from the batterers. Being against the regime is now a matter of elementary home and civic education. This is no longer a matter of power struggle. This is a fight for freedom and the preservation of the essential substance of normality in our society. We need to restore faith to the common man that it is worth being honest. It is worth it that, when you see someone harassing a girl at the bus stop, you intervene, and not for people to turn their heads the other way. If someone sees that two men with hoods and phantoms are detaining a guy, he should stand in their way, as Goran Ješić did, and not run away for fear that they will also detain him. People must be restored to believe that there are people in politics who are ready to show by personal example that they will not allow evil to prevail.
How?
There are indeed people in the opposition who can appear before the citizens, who are ready to take a shield from the police, like Dragana Rakić, and to break the police shield like Nebojša Novaković, and to push themselves with the police and enter the court building. There are people like Borislav Novaković, Marinika Tepić, who are ready to push with the police all the time. There are local councilors from Novi Sad, provincial deputies, people who left politics, such as Goran Ješić, and now the situation is bringing them back. The problem of our society is that people have lost trust in political parties and have no way to organize themselves, they do not see a well-organized force that is ready to oppose them. Neither movements nor organizations that were created in one way or another can stand at the head of the column, no matter how much they want to. And Otpor was an integrative force that united the opposition, but Zoran Đinđić became the head of the opposition column in 1996. It is inevitable that there must be a good political force that will restore the faith of the citizens.
You think it could be the Democratic Party again?
I believe in the idea of the Democratic Party. It is no longer important to create the largest opposition party, but an alternative to Aleksandar Vučić, someone who can bring down the regime. Some things have to change. Whenever the Democratic Party, as the leading progressive force of our society, was strong, whenever it had a good program and support among the voters, then Serbia did a great job and went in the right direction. In order for that to happen, the Democratic Party must never build a bridge with evil again in its future.
Two years ago, you resigned from your position in the presidency of the Democratic Party, with the explanation that you want to dedicate yourself to the role of deputy. You are now a candidate for party president. What has changed in the meantime?
I am recognized among citizens as someone who is determined and willing to fight against the regime on the street as I did during the Resistance. At the same time, I believe that I also did a good parliamentary job in the parliament because I am the MP of the opposition who spoke the most times. But that is no longer enough. Parliament becomes an institution that no longer works. The last session of the Assembly was anything but a session. There is no announcement of the next session, and we are in regular session. Now it is necessary to fight on the street. After these elections there will be no winners and losers, we all remain in the Democratic Party. My goal is not to beat Miodrag Gavrilović and Zoran Lutovac, but to beat Aleksandar Vučić. I am convinced that there are many victories ahead of us that will be won only by rushing. On December 14, I am running for office to lead that onslaught in front of the Democratic Party.
Less than two days of blockade - that's how long it took to see how weak and powerless the public media service is, both from the outside and from the inside. At the moment of writing this text, it is the eighth day of the blockade, and the sixth that RTS is not broadcasting its program. They also seem to be facing a strike inside the house. And the essence of blocking RTS is not in what it publishes, but in what it keeps silent
In the months after the fall of the canopy in Novi Sad, the flames of rebellion spread throughout Serbia. The first protests started in Novi Sad right after the tragedy. The authorities responded with arrests, police cordons and intimidation, but instead of calming down the protesters, new protests followed.
The rector of the University of Belgrade, Vladan Đokić, has been the target of top state officials and regime tabloids for months, who label him as an insidious instigator of student protests, an opportunist, "the face of evil" and "the leader of the criminal octopus." How and why a rector became "state enemy number one"
"I'm standing in the cordon, and my daughter is shouting at me 'aw, aw, killers'. What should I do? If they ordered me - I would throw down my baton and bulletproof vest and stand on the side of my child," a police officer from the south of Serbia, who works as needed in the Belgrade Police Brigade, told "Vreme"
The recent formation of the Đura Macuta government is part of the regime's revenge and cynicism. This can be seen most in the "black troika" of new ministers appointed to deal with the parts of society that are the leaders and symbols of the big rebellion that lasted for several months, the cause of which was the fall of the canopy in Novi Sad, which claimed 16 human lives. Education, universities, unsolicited media and parts of the judiciary that refuse to listen to orders, either publicly, with announcements, or hiding behind legal procedures, should be dismantled. Those who will have no problem doing everything they are told, even reinforcing the orders with their own inventions, are chosen for this.
Who mentions the extraordinary elections when the rating of the party in power is falling, and according to all surveys, Vučić is not the most important political factor in the country, but the students?
The brutal beating of students and citizens in Novi Sad shows that the regime is not only ready to take revenge - it is actually carrying it out
If in reality the principle of balance is violated - the way the incompetent regime violated the relationship between the concrete elements at the Novi Sad Railway Station - reality will behave like a canopy: it will fail to obey
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