by SASA SAVANOVIC
The recent spurt of mass shootings has not only driven widespread protests against the Vu?i? government — but provoked a deeper reflection on “care, solidarity and interdependence” in the post-Yugoslav constellation.
The tragedy was incomprehensible: in less than 48 hours, a 13-year-old boy shot and killed eight of his schoolmates and a security guard while also wounding a teacher and another six children (of which one died on May 15th) in an elementary school in central Belgrade; and a 21-year-old man killed eight and wounded fourteen, mostly young people in villages around the town of Mladenovac.
In Serbia, where mass shootings are extremely rare (the last one happened in 2013) and school shootings (were) non-existent, the events have caused fear, distress, grief, and a million questions about how this could have happened, who is responsible and the steps that need to be taken now.
According to a research from 2018, Serbia, next to Montenegro, has the highest rate of small firearms owned per 100 people in Europe – 39.1 – with around 800 thousand legally-owned weapons, and an unknown number of unreported weapons left over from the Yugoslav wars.
Nationalistic, chauvinistic and misogynistic sentiments pervade the public sphere, while crime figures and celebrated war criminals regularly appear on TV shows, reality programs and tabloids1. Two parties in power, Vu?i?’s SNS and Miloševi?’s SPS, directly promote such figures and attitudes: two convicted war criminals are their prominent functionaries. The regime’s ties to criminal groups and its reliance on and instrumentalization of hooligans, stand out as another factor facilitating the overall normalization of violence in Serbian society.
The ruinous state of the public education system and the failure of relevant institutions to address the problem of rising violence in schools and its prevention can be seen as another contributing element. This can also be said about the police and judicial institutions: the Mladenovac shooter had a criminal record, including for the illegal possession of firearms. No less important is the general state of mental health: rising poverty and inequality, social and economic insecurity and precarity, deteriorating living conditions, and the traumatic legacy of wars, have certainly left their mark.
The tragedies, and the State’s answer to them, have stirred up grievances that surround Vu?i?’s leadership since he came into power in 2012. While the Minister of Education blamed the fatal influence of the “internet, video-games and Western values” and claimed that “the system did not fail”, the Chief of Belgrade Police publicly shared the list of children’s names the school shooter was planning to target, and the President disclosed protected personal information about him and his family, reading out loud two reports about his mental health.
This grief was soon transformed into dissatisfaction and protest. Spontaneous and, later on, more organized gatherings of “Serbia Against Violence” took place in Belgrade and other cities around the country, and a number of opposition parties, which positioned themselves as protest leaders, formulated a list of demands: the resignation of responsible public officials, and the cancellation of programs and suspension of publishers that continually promote violence, broadcast fake news and violate journalistic ethical code. Belgrade rallies on May 8th, May 12th and May 19th, gathered more people each time, culminating in the May 19th protest when some 60 to 150 thousand people marched the streets, blocking two key bridges and effectively disabling traffic throughout the city.
The regime’s reaction was twofold: on one hand, attempting to diffuse the power of the protest by letting it blow over on its own (in all protests the almost total absence of police was noticeable). And on the other, arranging a parallel show of force: soon after the first protest, Vu?i? announced his own “largest-ever” rally to take place on May 26th, and talked about his readiness to call for snap elections to confirm the legitimacy of his rule. His rally succeeded in gathering some 50 thousand people and was accompanied by hundreds of buses that drove his supporters from all across the country, parked around the city.
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