The return of radical violence

There is an old, ominous saying that says: "As the cradle rocks you, so the hoe buries you". There are various interpretations, and the most common is that those who are born poor will spend their whole life that way, even if they become rich along the way. Quite simply, his mentality remains poor. However, it is not necessarily about poverty. Radicalism can also be taken as that mentality in which someone's cradle was rocked. Here, for example, is the Serbian Progressive Party and Aleksandar Vučić...

We devoted the entire past issue of "Vremen" to the increased repression of the regime against its opponents. It's no surprise that none of the writers of the previous issue had any doubts that the regime would only get worse. And that came true. It happened, however, that the period between the two issues of our weekly was marked by events that irresistibly remind us of the era when Aleksandar Vučić was a young lion and the main attacker in Vojislav Šešelj's Serbian Radical Party.

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YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE

Arien Stojanović Ivković graduated from the Faculty of Medicine in Belgrade, got a job and married a Serbian citizen with whom she has a small child. In twelve years of living in Serbia, she had no problems with her stay. And then on the morning of April 8, an inspector from the Directorate for Foreigners called her and invited her to come to the police premises, assuring her that everything was fine with her stay. Several inspectors waited for her at the police station, including the one she spoke with. On the spot, she was handed a decision canceling her previously approved temporary stay and prohibiting her from entering Serbia for one year, i.e. until April 8 of the following year.

She adds that the work visa she had for work in Serbia also ceased to be valid as a result. In the explanation, it is succinctly stated that "the body responsible for the protection of the security of the Republic of Serbia submitted an assessment that the stay of the Croatian citizen Ivković Stojanović Arien represents an unacceptable security risk". For making such a decision, the Ministry of Internal Affairs referred to Article 66 paragraph 1 of the Law on Foreigners, which stipulates that a foreigner can have his temporary residence permit revoked and be prohibited from entering the country if it is subsequently found out that "there are one or more prescribed reasons for refusing a request for temporary residence".

Arien Stojanović Ivković told the media that she leads a rather monotonous life in Serbia: house, work and the occasional protest. And precisely in those protests, as well as in her posts on Instagram, where as a doctor she expressed her displeasure that the President of Serbia entered the intensive care unit of the Clinical Center of Serbia without authorization, she sees the reason for her expulsion.

Arien isn't the only one. In the past week alone, five such cases occurred, said Hidajet Biščević, the Croatian ambassador in Belgrade, in an interview with the BBC in Serbian: "The decision that he must leave Serbia within seven days was also delivered to the representative of the Chamber of Commerce, that is, the official representative of a Croatian institution", said Biščević, who later told the Beta agency that fifteen Croatian citizens had been expelled from Serbia in the last three months.

Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković said on Tuesday, April 15, that expulsions of Croatian citizens from Serbia are not isolated cases and expressed the expectation that such practice will stop. "We expect it to stop," Plenković told reporters regarding the latest cases of expulsion of Croatian citizens on the grounds that they represent a "security risk" for Serbia. The Croatian Prime Minister said that 16 people have been expelled so far, and that another 16 of them have not been released to Serbia.

photo: imre sabo

REPLAY OF HRTKOVAC

Technically, with these moves, the government in Serbia got closer to the number of people from Hrtkovci, a local community in the municipality of Ruma, who were on the radical list of undesirables. On May 6, 1992, Šešelj read out the names of 17 local Croats, whom he claimed were members of the "National Guard Corps" and that they "agreed with the persecution of Serbs from Croatia." That event marked the persecution of the non-Serb population from Srem. Exactly how many people were expelled is not known even today. The International Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia accused Vojislav Šešelj of expulsion. In its indictment, the prosecution provided a list of 722 people who allegedly left Hrtkovci, but Vojislav Šešelj was acquitted of these charges.

Five years later, in 1997, the Barbalić family from Zemun went on vacation. On the way back, in their apartment, where the third generation of Barbalićs live, they found Ljiljana Mijoković (now Mihajlović), then a close associate of Vojislav Šešelj. She still lives in that apartment today, and the court farce and agony of the Barbalić family continues.

Therefore, this regime did not suppress the radicalism in itself. Every non-Serb is still an enemy. However, new generations bring with them new rebellions, so fate intended for the disguised radicals that on the very day of their mindless acting of the largest gathering in the history of Serbia, students of Serbian, Bosniak and many other nationalities gather and embrace each other in Novi Pazar, while at the same time 80 male and female students ride bicycles across Europe and spread the spirit of the local rebellion. This is not 1992 for them. There are no sanctions, there is the Internet, the world is in the palm of your hand and it is no longer so easy to quarrel with people and make them hate each other, so that the political vampires of the nineties can get the blood they feed on.

This, however, does not change the fate of Arien Stojanović Ivković: at the moment of writing this text, the deadline for her to move out of Serbia and to be separated from her husband and young daughter is expiring.

photo: print screen

THEY'RE BREAKING THE TEETH AGAIN

It is increasingly difficult to count and count who has been physically attacked and how in the last five months because he does not support the regime of Aleksandar Vučić. That is why it is perhaps easier to explain the extent of the riots of the regime only on a "sample", that is, on one day, April 12, when the progressive rally was taking place in Belgrade.

The deputy editor-in-chief of 021, Zoran Strika, was physically attacked while reporting on the citizens' departure for Aleksandar Vučić's rally in Belgrade. Strika was attacked because he was filming an incident that happened around 12.30:XNUMX p.m., on the quay, when two young men knocked him to the ground and started hitting a man from Novi Sad who was filming the rally on his phone. They stole his phone and threw it into the Danube. At the same time, another young man noticed that Strika was filming the incident, ran into him and physically attacked him, holding him by the arm and neck, trying to snatch his phone. Strika said he was a journalist and since the thug wouldn't let him go, he called the director of the Provincial Fund for European Affairs and Development, Ognje Dopuđ, who was nearby, telling him to get rid of the people who attacked him. Although Dopuđa did not react, the young man walked away.

Around the same time on Saturday, a father and son - Aca and Bane Jevtić - were beaten in front of a bar in the village of Krćevac, on the way out of Topola. Namely, Bane Jevtić told the people who went to the rally in Belgrade to "Pump, pump". Soon the bones of his face and nose were broken and he was hospitalized in the Clinical Center in Kragujevac.

"I was returning with my father from some work and we stopped at a restaurant to have a drink, on the way out of Topola. There were a couple of cars parked and buses arriving, I know a lot of people personally. I shouted 'pump, pump,' and started to enter the restaurant," Aca Jevtić told N1, describing how the attack happened.

Jevtić says that one of the group began to curse him and hit him in the head, and that he picked up a stone to defend himself. When he saw the assailant walking away, he threw a stone and headed towards his father, and that's when he saw several men beating him.

"When I turned around, he was hit by two or three people, he has facial and nose bone fractures, bruises. I can't understand it, he was trying to calm down the situation as calmly as possible," the younger Jevtić told N1 and added that he and his father were called to the police to give a statement, while the attackers returned to the bus and continued their journey to Belgrade.

The president of the "Ljubav vera nada" movement, Nemanja Šarović, who was reporting for TV KTV from the meeting of the Serbian Progressive Party in front of the Serbian Parliament, was surrounded by sympathizers of the ruling party and then physically attacked. TV KTV announced that in addition to sympathizers of the Serbian Progressive Party and security guards, officials of that party and directors of public companies also participated in the attack on the journalistic team of this Zrenjanin television station.

Five members of the KTV received serious and minor injuries from the blows of SNS activists and officials.

"We spent the whole night on Saturday in the Emergency Center. As a result of the blows, I was diagnosed with bruises in the area of ​​the left cheekbone, right conjunctiva and jaw joint, while technician Milorad Malešev had three teeth knocked out. The owner of the television, Danijelo Radić, the cameraman Siniš Nikšić, and another technician who was hit in the head with a bottle, received minor injuries," said Šarović. He added that SNS activists and officials broke the camera and damaged other KTV equipment: "We were beaten by the director of 'City Cleanliness' Marko Popadić, the mayors of Kruševac and Ćuprija, the director of the PIO Fund Relja Ognjenović and other party and state officials. Despite the medical documentation and the videos that clearly show everything, the police and the prosecutor's office have no intention of conducting an investigation and prosecuting the people who caused us serious injuries."

In Šarović's case, the situation is further complicated since he was a member of the Serbian Radical Party until 2020.

photo: Draško gagović

AND OF COURSE, ARRESTS

Peščanika columnist Dejan Ilić stated on TV Nova S on March 29, 2025: "You have a choice - either you will open the door for those people to take refuge, and the transitional government is the one who opens the door, or you will accept the fact that blood will flow in the streets, that we will lose I don't know how many lives and we don't know whose lives, in order to get rid of them". On the order of the public prosecutor of the Third Basic Public Prosecutor's Office in Belgrade, the police officers of PS Novi Beograd issued a decision to detain Dejan Ilic due to the well-founded suspicion that he committed the criminal offense of "causing panic and disorder". He was initially detained for 48 hours.

Fortunately, Ilić was soon released, but it is quite clear that this was a completely senseless and insane attempt at intimidation. Moreover, the chief public prosecutor of the Higher Public Prosecutor's Office in Belgrade, Nenad Stefanović, issued an arrest warrant for engineer Zoran Đajić on the same day because he wrote on the X network: "My position is clear - the people should vote for the death penalty for Vučić - I wouldn't want it to happen that someone later releases him from the insane asylum and starts gathering Nazis and criminals around him again. Serbs have a short memory, so just in case - the HALLOW stake comes up".

That announcement, let's be honest, was completely stupid, unnecessary and excessive, but... Journalists, and other public figures, no longer report the messages they receive if it says magically "should". The Prosecutor's Office rejects such reports because there is no "clearly stated intention to cause harm to others or endanger safety". And Nenad Stefanović, after the manhunt he launched against non-governmental organizations and the alleged check of their finances and connection with USAID, is going out of his way to show himself loyal to President Vučić, along the way trampling not only the prosecutor's office but the entire judiciary, which is already under pressure. Let's remember, namely, that the president of Serbia threatened that the prosecutors who do not work under his boss will be replaced.

A LITTLE REMINDER OF THE NINETEENTH

All in all, radicalism is back at the big door. Everything we had with them in the nineties is here again. We can also "tick" the rubrics. The persecution of the non-Serb population is here. Pressure on the media - present. Arrests of critics - done. Beating and breaking jaws - comprehensive.

Of course, in version 2.0 for the year 2025, all this is a little more "scattered" and more modern. But there's no reason it shouldn't end the same as last time. And last time, it is true, allegedly, today's president of Serbia cried and called the leaders of the rebellion to ask: "Are you going to arrest us too?" He escaped arrest then because he was not in the first echelon of the repressive apparatus. Now that is not the case.

photo: Jadranka Ilić / Tanjug, Slobodan Miljević / Tanjug / Government of the Republic of Serbia

A government for retaliation and revenge

On Tuesday, April 15, a session of the National Assembly was held at which the new Government of Serbia was formed. The essence of the exposé of the representative Đura Macut was based on the reason why Aleksandar Vučić chose him as his new head of the Government - because he is an expert and a university professor, and as such suitable to quell the rebellion at the universities.

Đuro Matsut said that "Serbia is tired of divisions and blockades": "No one has and must not have more rights than others and that is the only measure of value. The institutions of the system must function at full capacity and that is our basic task," said Matsut.

In other words: he will make an effort to unblock the faculties, which would suppress the revolt in society, of course, by not giving in to student demands. He also pointed out that education in Serbia must be reformed and that this is primarily necessary because the key factors in education are pupils and students. "It is necessary to know who is a pupil, who is a student, and who is a professor", emphasized Macut.

There is no doubt that this government will try to end the blockades by force. And this is also indicated by the election for the Minister of Education. Professor Dejan Vuk Stanković is known as a favorite political analyst of pro-regime newspapers.

"For years, numerous testimonies have been circulating among female students about harassment, comments of sexual content and inappropriate behavior of this professor", announced the plenum of students of the Faculty of Teacher Education, condemning the proposal that Stanković be appointed as Minister of Education.

After the announcement by the students, the confessions of former students of the Faculty of Teachers, who shared their disturbing experiences with Professor Stanković, began to appear on social networks. These confessions are not anonymous at all. Namely, women appear on Tiktok, both by name and face, and speak their experiences directly to the camera.

photo: marija janković

Public service at the service of the regime

Although it was supposed to be completed by the end of 2024, the process of electing REM Council members is still ongoing, so Serbia functions without a body that regulates the space of electronic media. This broke all legal deadlines, and this is the reason for another student blockade of RTS, which has been going on for 20 hours at the time of writing. Radio-television of Vojvodina was also blocked, and the director of this company issued a statement in an interesting radical manner, accusing the students and the media that broadcast their activities of terrorism.