By Fahrudin Kladničanin, an NGO activist from Novi Pazar
The problem is not that students do not have an opinion on everything, but that they have decided to have no opinion whatsoever on certain issues.
As long as the discussion revolved around corruption, the collapse of institutions, authoritarianism, and the lack of the rule of law, there was virtually no disagreement between the student movement and its most loyal allies. However, the moment national-identity issues were opened – Srebrenica, Kosovo, the wars of the 1990s, the culture of remembrance, and the relationship towards one’s own past – it became obvious that beneath the apparent unity lay serious disappointment among a section of the public that had until then unreservedly supported the students.
The problem is not that students do not have an opinion on everything, but that they have decided to have no opinion whatsoever on certain issues. The attack on the writer Vladimir Arsenijević was not seen by many as an isolated incident, but rather as a continuation of a pattern that has lasted for decades in Serbia – violence against those who speak publicly about war crimes and the genocide in Srebrenica, which is a clear attempt to silence the truth through intimidation and keep the state order of denial alive. Precisely because of this, the absence of a clear reaction from the student movement further deepened the disappointment of its most consistent supporters.
When it comes to the commemoration of 11 July, a faction of the students participating in the blockade of the State University of Novi Pazar spoke out. Their stance on the Srebrenica genocide has long been clear, unambiguous, and unquestionable. But the issue of Srebrenica has never been, nor should it ever be, an issue solely for the students of Novi Pazar. It is an issue for Serbian society, its institutions, universities, political elites, and the public – for everyone who for decades has faced the choice between truth and denial, responsibility and escaping from it.
The impression is that such an attitude from the student movement is not accidental, but represents a politically pragmatic choice. Avoiding a clear position on the Srebrenica genocide leaves the impression of an attempt to preserve as broad a societal consensus as possible, not to lose the support of a section of the public, and not to open another front where the student movement would become a target for the authorities, the nationalist opposition, and right-wing organisations. In other words, Srebrenica has been identified as a topic whose opening could carry a high political price – hence the silence.
It is precisely in this that the student movement, paradoxically, begins to resemble, in part, the political actors against whom it rebelled. Instead of consistently advocating universal principles, it accepts the logic of political expediency – on topics that could generate serious social resistance, it is better to remain silent than risk losing support. What can be identified in this remnant of the student movement is a kind of ethnisation of moral responsibility.
Not because the students of the State University were formally entrusted with the role of speaking about Srebrenica, but because it is almost imperceptibly taken for granted that it is their topic. As if they are expected to speak because they are Bosniaks, whilst others have the right to remain silent. The students of the State University had no greater obligation than their colleagues from Belgrade, Novi Sad, Niš, or Kragujevac to speak out regarding 11 July. Srebrenica is not, and must not be, a Bosniak obligation in Serbia. If the student movement invokes universal values, then the attitude towards war crimes, human dignity, and the culture of remembrance is a universal responsibility, not a matter of ethnic affiliation.
Because of this, the entire perception of the student movement as the bearer of a new political culture and value shift in Serbia is being questioned today. And this was not determined by Srebrenica, but culminated in the recent Vidovdan gathering in Kraljevo. This is being spoken about publicly – in the media, on social networks, within civil society organisations, but also among the people we have colloquially begun to call “student witnesses”.
These are university professors, intellectuals, journalists, activists, and public figures who for months, often at the cost of personal attacks, were the most consistent and vocal defenders of the student rebellion. And, as usually happens in a deeply polarised society, it was those who tried critically to examine certain moves by the student movement as early as a year ago who were proclaimed regime figures, mercenaries, or useful idiots of the authorities.
Today, the same pattern is repeating itself. Those who point to the ideological deflection of part of the student movement are once again accused of working on behalf of the authorities, this time even on the orders of Aleksandar Vučić; however, this can only be uttered by people trapped in a Manichaean political worldview, in which there are exclusively friends and enemies.
The irony is almost absurd in this case, because these are people who were among the first to stand by the students, defending them from propaganda attacks, police repression, and political discredit. Their only “sin” is that they refuse to turn their support into unconditional loyalty. In a society accustomed to partisan divisions and unreserved alignment, the very possibility of supporting someone whilst simultaneously retaining the right to criticise becomes almost incomprehensible. It is as if the elementary assumption of a democratic culture has vanished – that there are red lines that are not crossed, and that friendly criticism is not betrayal, but an expression of consistency with one’s own principles.
Their disappointment does not stem from abandoning the idea of social change, but from the question of whether the student movement – when it comes to facing the past and other national-identity topics – truly represents a value-driven step forward compared to the dominant political pattern in Serbia, or whether, under the pressure of political pragmatism and the need to preserve internal unity, it has begun to reproduce the very patterns many thought it would overcome. What is even more striking is that the remaining student witnesses are attempting ever more aggressively to defend what has become, politically and morally, difficult to defend.
Only now, as students from the State University in Novi Pazar speak more openly about their own experience within the student movement, do the tensions, suppressed divisions, and the sense of loneliness that long remained hidden behind the image of idealised togetherness become visible.
Their testimonies show that behind the photograph of the hijab and the šajkača, with or without a cockade, there was not merely romanticised harmony, but a series of dilemmas, pressures, and misunderstandings that went almost unmentioned for months. As time passed, it became increasingly clear that the illusion of unity could not permanently suppress deep differences over questions of identity, the past, and the political direction the movement should take.
It is no exaggeration to say that the Novi Pazar students became a kind of stepchild of the student rebellion. They were desirable as long as they represented the most beautiful picture of diversity, proof that Serbia could look different – leaving only the adage that “Pazar is still the world”. However, the moment diversity ceased to be a symbol and became a moral obligation, the romantic, somewhat Orientalised image of Novi Pazar began to crumble. The female students of DUNP [State University of Novi Pazar] have endured a media lynching over the past few weeks, and once again, not a single word from the other students.
If one adds to all this the Vidovdan symbolism, the Memorandum-style wailing that penetrated ever more visibly into the student movement’s backbone, as well as the movement’s gradual drift away from real social problems towards national myths and historical fantasies – often justified by invoking constitutional patriotism – it becomes clearer why a section of its most loyal supporters has begun to distance itself.
By accepting the thesis that any insistence on Serbia’s responsibility for the wars of the 1990s is actually an attempt to impose “Serbian guilt”, the student movement has, consciously, shown how deeply infected it is with the Lompar-esque virus of Serbian integralism, whose political vocabulary this remaining living remnant of the student movement has visibly adopted.
That is why topics that seemed no longer to hold the political interest of a new generation have returned to the public space. Few could have assumed, prior to the student protests, that students born decades after the wars of the 1990s would bring Kosovo, Vidovdan, Republika Srpska, Memorandum narratives, and disputes over “Serbian guilt” back to the fore.
Instead of making a generational break with that legacy, they have, to a significant extent, rendered it politically relevant once again.
In such an environment, the authorities received what they were lacking – an interlocutor on the terrain of national topics. It was the students who consciously returned Kosovo and many other topics to the very centre of the public and political domain – topics that I am almost certain were nowhere near the minds of the generation welcoming the new year in 2025 with demands for justice, accountability, and an orderly state.
Therefore, the statement by the current minister regarding the alleged “ethnic cleansing of Kosovo” does not come by chance either. It represents a logical continuation of a political contest in which there is no longer a debate over who will build a more functional state, but over who will be a more persuasive and vocal interpreter. Once the students opened that space, the authorities did what they have always done best – they accepted the game and will demonstrate that they know nationalism better than the students do.
And right here, in Danas, friends of the student movement warned on several occasions of these detours. They wrote critically, thoughtfully, and without malice, attempting to point out the risks carried by ever more pronounced flirting with bare nationalism. Borjanka Milatović and other authors did this not as opponents of the student rebellion, but as its sincere allies. In an atmosphere of moral self-assurance and generational messianism, any criticism was perceived as betrayal. As if youth itself had become a sufficient argument, and experience, knowledge, and well-intentioned criticism merely an unnecessary burden. History, however, stubbornly shows that no generation is immune to delusions. Nationalism will, I fear, devour this generation once again. Not because the young are less well-intentioned than their predecessors, but because no generation has ever managed to tame it – in the end, every single time, it tamed them. This generation could have resisted, but it is a matter of choice.
(Danas, 21.07.2026)