A year has passed since the canopy collapsed in Novi Sad, killing 16 innocent people and maiming a young mother. Despite the time that has passed, justice is still nowhere in sight. The courts are barely reporting on the trials of the suspects of a crime that deeply shook Serbia. 

Since the collapse of the canopy that killed 16 people last November, Serbia has seen massive mobilisations, including the largest in the country’s history on 15 March. They have continued down to the present yet still no justice has been had for the victims. Patience has run out.

This July marks the 30th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre, in which Bosnian Serb military, police and paramilitary units killed around 8,000 Bosniak men, mostly civilians and prisoners of war. In terms of its scale and the number of victims, the Srebrenica massacre is one of the largest single crimes committed during the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This crime has become synonymous with the conflict itself and the series of war crimes that occurred during the civil war.

Saturday 28 June marked a new attempt by the masses to impose a solution to their eight-month-long confrontation with President Aleksandar Vučić. A mass demonstration of 150,000 people swept Belgrade. Chants of “Uhapsite Vučića!” (“Arrest Vučić!”) reverberated across streets and squares. Demands for early elections were also forcibly put forward. The struggle has been ongoing continuously since the collapse of the railway station canopy in Novi Sad on 1 November, which killed 16 people, and which exposed the systemic failure and corruption of the regime.

The students leading the ongoing protests across Serbia recently announced that they are demanding early parliamentary elections, in which the students will propose their own list of candidates. All opposition media outlets loudly reported this statement, and the masses expressed their support out of trust in the students. Some activists have gone as far as to say that anyone who is in favour of bringing down the regime of Aleksandar Vučić will support this demand.

On 3 and 4 May, members of the Revolucionarni Komunistički Savez (Revolutionary Communist League, RCL) met in Zagreb for this year’s congress. Delegates from Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Macedonia were present as members of the Yugoslav section of the Revolutionary Communist International (RCI). They were joined by guests from Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Italy, Britain, and Kosovo.

Since the collapse of the Novi Sad station canopy on 1 November 2024, which killed 16 people, occupations, blockades and protests led by students have been organised across Serbia. This calamity, caused by corruption, sparked a wave of indignation throughout the country. At the time of writing this article in April, over a million people across Serbia have taken part and voiced their support for the students’ demands. Demonstrations are being held throughout the country.

In Belgrade, Serbia, on 15 March, saw what was undoubtedly the largest protest in the history of Serbia. According to the Archive of Public Gatherings, it numbered around 300,000 people, with many estimating that it was even larger.

Since our previous article, events in Serbia have accelerated rapidly. The government hoped that the holidays and extended school winter break would lead to fatigue in the movement, but the students, who are occupying their universities, did not allow the movement to dissipate. A large protest was held in front of the offices of the Serbian secret services on 11 January as a response to threats. They continued their strategy of 15 minute road blockades demanding justice for the 15 people murdered by the fall of the concrete canopy of the reconstructed railway station in Novi Sad.

In November, a concrete canopy collapsed at the newly inaugurated train station in Novi Sad, killing 15. Since then, a huge protest movement has swept the country, condemning the criminal negligence of the authorities which led to this tragedy. This movement has continued to escalate, with a series of student occupations and calls for a general strike.

The collapse of the concrete canopy at the train station in Novi Sad on 1 November, in which 15 people were killed, was the straw that broke the camel’s back for many in Serbia. Among the victims, a large number of them young people and children, two are still in critical condition.

Recently, Serbia has once again been shaken by mass protests that brought tens of thousands to the streets. This is round two of the fight against Rio Tinto, a notorious multinational mining company that is trying to start operations in the west of the country. This is also the sixth time in the last eight years that mass protests against the regime of Aleksandar Vučić have been organised in Serbia.

Last month saw parliamentary elections in Croatia. They were held in the context of devouring inflation, corruption and scandals. Opposition parties from both the left and right of the political spectrum stormed into the campaign calling for anti-corruption measures and slogans against the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ). But no one offered a programme that could mobilise and unite the working class to fight against the shackles of capitalist wage slavery and worsening conditions.

For several months now, we have been bombarded with images about a supposedly imminent military escalation between Kosovo and Serbia. With the war in Ukraine as a backdrop, there is talk about old wounds potentially being reopened. However, in order to accurately assess the probability of such new conflicts in Southeast Europe, it is necessary to start with an analysis of the economic situation, and the interests of the ruling classes in the region, as well as the interests of imperialism. Note: this article was originally written in January 2023.

We republish here a very interesting letter written in 1915 by Serbian socialist Dušan Popović to Christian Rakovsky, the great Balkan internationalist. The letter was published by Nashe Slovo (Our Word), a daily Russian language socialist newspaper published in France during the First World War and edited by Leon Trotsky. We think it contains crucial lessons for the attitude of Marxists towards imperialist war, and the way in which imperialist powers use the rights of nations as a pretext for their real aims.