Regime attack on higher education

21May 2025. Ivanka Popović

How Seselj's Law 2.0 is being prepared

The President of the Conference of Universities of Serbia and Rector of the University of Belgrade, Vladan Đokić, was faced with the act of practically defending the university by himself against 19 other members of the Working Group, for whom there are justified doubts that they will defend the party's interest, not the academic interest, even though there are people among them who know the difference very well. We cannot know what will be found in the new Law, although there is already a lot of speculation about it. It remains to be seen whether the Government will appoint rectors and deans, how renegade faculties will be punished under the tutelage of performance indicators and whether vouchers will be distributed.

Interview: Vladimir Horovic, lawyer

21May 2025. Nedim Sejdinovic

Serbia must not become Pinochet's Chile

Accused activists in Novi Sad are being blackmailed and directed to confess to something they did not do, in order to possibly be acquitted or settle with the prosecution regarding the amount of the sentence. Detention, therefore, in this case serves as a means of conditioning and blackmail. If you are offered a way out of detention through confession — that is not free will. And that is legally inadmissible

Court of Appeal in Novi Sad: Compromise and illegal decision

21May 2025. NS

Three activists under house arrest, three remain in Klisa

"The decision is unfair, regardless of the fact that in the case of three activists, the decision on the extension of detention was changed, and for the others it was sent back for a new decision. The unfairness consists in the fact that the Court of Appeal had to cancel the detention without banning all detainees from leaving the apartment. In addition, it did not correctly determine the existence of grounds for the measure of banning movement and communication," Vladimir Horovic tells "Vreme"

Amendments to the Law on Higher Education

21May 2025. Ivan Milenkovic

What will happen to "useless" disciplines

There are many ways in which philosophy can be harnessed to the wagons of the whole society: it is cheap to educate philosophers, we would get new jobs, and society would, in the long run, feel the healing effects of thinking. In addition, as a discipline that teaches how to think, philosophy educates free citizens with backbone and integrity - the two new ministers in the reconstructed government, for education and information, philosophers by training, are the exceptions that confirm the rule

Nenad Gladić – Lepi Brka, Kosjerić

21May 2025. Marija L. Jankovic

Elections as a mob

"Students have a control package in our coalition. They direct us, and their word has moral weight. When it gets stuck, they are the ones who speak - let's get serious, we have come too far to stumble over foolishness. This is how, day by day, the first pre-election campaign in Serbia, jointly run by students, local opposition parties and citizens, works," Nenad Gladić, spokesman for the "United for Kosjerić" election list, told "Vreme".

Aleksandar Vučić's speech in Niš

21May 2025. Jovana Gligorijevic

The threats of a man offended to the core

After more than a decade in power, Aleksandar Vučić for the first time no longer dictates political processes but reacts to them. And that's bad, in every sense: neither does he tolerate well, nor does he cope well. His speech in Niš shows this very clearly

Niš, two together

21May 2025. Ana Adamovic

Student protest and SNS counter rally with hoods

On the same day in the same city, only half a kilometer away, those who rule and those who resist gathered. A folk singer sang to some of them, the image and occasion of those who invited him, while the others remained silent for 16 minutes. Some were eating free burgers and attacking journalists, while others were banging pots and pans. On May 17, Nis was a city divided into two realities, loyalty to the regime and civil disobedience

The General Staff Affair

21May 2025. Sonja Ciric

Attempted theft of cultural property

Goran Vasić, acting director of the Republic Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments, admitted that he falsified the letter on the basis of which the General Staff's status as a cultural monument was revoked. It is not known whether he revealed on whose orders he committed the crime. The laws require that all negotiations and discussions about turning the General Staff into a hotel be stopped immediately until the Vasić case is concluded and the truth is established.

Bosnia and Herzegovina

21May 2025. Tanja Topic

He seems to be running away from them, they want to arrest him

Security and police agencies are supposedly arresting Milorad Dodik, and they are begging God to run away from them as much as possible. Similarly, some politicians in Banja Luka and Sarajevo are calling for Dodik's flight out of the country. In the meantime, the president of Republika Srpska flies freely, travels, crosses borders where no one stops him and threatens to respond with fire to the attempted arrest by the armed special forces guarding him, because it is their "constitutional obligation".

Organ transplantation

21May 2025. Jovana Đurđić

What does Serbia lack for an efficient system?

What are the problems of the local legal framework when it comes to the transplantation process? What would the changes in the law bring? Why are the citizens of Serbia in the most unfavorable position in the region when it comes to going abroad for transplants? What can we learn from the more than successful examples of Croatia and Spain

Extraordinary session of the High Prosecution Council

15May 2025. Tijana Stanic

Prosecutors without protection from Vučić's pressures

According to the Commissioner for Independence of the High Council of Prosecutors, pressure on prosecutors in Serbia comes from various sources, but it seems not from the office of President Aleksandar Vučić. "The avoidance of Commissioner Milan Tkalac to explicitly state his position when it comes to the statements of the President of the Republic is professionally unacceptable," the President of the Association of Prosecutors of Serbia, Lidija Komlen Nikolić, told Vreme. What can the president say without it being understood as interfering with the independence of the judiciary

Local elections in Zaječar and Kosjerić

15May 2025. Slobodan Georgijev

Students and others in the campaign

The progressive government is fighting hand and foot to win in two different places, because they would not dare to look at Aleksandar Vučić if they lose. On the other hand, the rest of Serbia is rooting for them to start from Zaječar and Kosjerić, so that they "go in order" across the country and thus see the backs of those who have been governing in every place, every street and every village for 13 years.

REM, second Public Call

15May 2025. Sasa Mirkovic

Either we're all together or we're whitewashing for nothing

All the members of this body have never been changed. The election of Council members has never taken place in such a heated socio-political atmosphere. Brussels has never been so interested in the course and outcome of this process. Hence so much nervousness, passion and established illegalities for which no one has yet been held accountable

Construction time bombs

15May 2025. Nedim Sejdinovic

Life under a canopy

Disrespect for the law and high level of corruption in Serbia are rapidly taking an even greater toll. Let's list some cases: part of the ceiling at the Cardiology Clinic in Niš fell, and the ceiling at the Railway Station in Ćuprija also rattled. Previously, a pedestrian crossing bridge near the village of Vlahovo collapsed and a part of the wall at the school in Pećinci collapsed (two girls were slightly injured). There are also collapses of the concrete structure of the overpass on the high-speed Požarevac-Veliko Gradište highway, ceiling collapses at a school in Užice, in Saranov near Rača, at the Institute for Public Health in Kragujevac and at the "Maja" kindergarten in New Belgrade. So, all that from November 1 last year until today. It's not enough

“From my village to Brussels”

15May 2025. Jovana Gligorijevic

How students ran into the EU

While the student marathoners, after 18 days of relay running and 2000 kilometers covered, are talking to EU parliamentarians in Brussels, Vučić is meeting with the president of the European Council. In the background of these two events, the government's evident influence on the judiciary is reflected in two decisions: the extension of the detention of activists from Novi Sad and the requalification of the offense of the woman who hit a student with a car

Research: Autism in Serbia

15May 2025. Milica Srejić

There is money for the dolphinarium, but not for personal attendants

When asked what the system provided to people with autism and their families, the parents we talked to said out loud - the system is nothing, but the individuals from the system are a lot, it depends on who was lucky. What are the obstacles parents of children with autism face? Why are there not enough personal followers? Finally, how many children with autism in Serbia are counted by the Registry of Children with Developmental Disabilities

Organ donation and transplantation (2)

15May 2025. Filip Mirilović

Why the social environment is important

The lack of public education and the absence of a clear strategy for normalizing the conversation about donation make it difficult to change attitudes about organ transplantation. In many cases, families simply do not know what their deceased member's attitude would have been, because they never discussed it. Death is still quite taboo, death is not discussed. This is precisely why most people do not express their views on donation during their lifetime, which makes the decision even more difficult for families when they are faced with a loss.

Personal attitude

15May 2025. Branislav Cvetkovic

BOS research: Talking, not advocating

Young people in Serbia, aware of their capabilities, knowledge and ingenuity in leading the fight for justice, shook the foundations of the system that anesthetized its citizens (their parents), narrowed the spaces for them to talk, divided them into "citizens" and students in the blockade and directly confronted them. But how did they manage to shake the foundations of the system? Precisely thanks to the attitude that their every action exudes: Is there anything we can't do?

New issue of Vremena

14May 2025. NR

Shaky ceilings: Something will fall on someone's head

It is difficult to even count how many ceilings have collapsed and what else has collapsed in Serbia just from the fall of the canopy to today... The reasons, say the interlocutors of "Vremen", are in the system imposed by politics, in the cocktail of noise, urgency and corruption

Student request for calling extraordinary parliamentary elections

07May 2025. Nedim Sejdinovic

Serbia's historic chance

The students' decision to submit a request to the regime for the dissolution of the state parliament and the calling of extraordinary republican elections did not fall from Mars. This option has been vigorously discussed at plenums for a long time, and the matter was cut short when it became clear to everyone, but absolutely everyone, that the government not only does not want to fulfill the students' demands, but responds to the political crisis with ever stronger repression and increasingly dirty propaganda. And when no one could dispute the fact that the regime is the generator of all social and political anomalies, and that thanks to it the Novi Sad canopy hangs over the head of every citizen of this country

Student movement

07May 2025. Slobodan Georgijev

Can the impossible become possible?

The call for elections is a call to the regime, and it remains to be seen whether there will also be a student call to everyone else for a social agreement on how to oppose the regime in future elections. They can be announced unexpectedly quickly, and may not be there before some "regular appointment" unless there is extremely strong pressure on the street.

Aleksandar Vučić's parallel universe

07May 2025. Jovana Gligorijevic

Paratrooper in Florida and other shenanigans

Maybe the correct version is that Aleksandar Vučić got sick and that's why he returned to the country. But the whole thing still leaves a lot of open questions. To begin with, why did the president of our country go to a donor evening intended for the internal political goals of another country? Why did he go to an event where you can't get in unless you donate money? And who called him? If this soap opera is seen as an isolated event, outside of the domestic context, it really is something that escapes common sense.

Interview: Veran Matić

07May 2025. Jelena Jorgacevic

Injustice is built into the system

Without understanding the evil that has been done in our immediate history in the last three, four decades, it would be partial and hypocritical. It's too late for what happened six months ago, everything now is compensation. If we do not come to a serious confrontation with the past, with a strong program of creating a non-violent society, the changes will have a short life. And in that change, the parents of the murdered children could be ambassadors of the normalization process of this society. They are ready for that role and it would be good if the students also included them in their debates, to understand what happened and what are the ways of coping

Research: Youth and the nineties

07May 2025. Sanja Pavlovic

Years that were banished from schools and the public

"Honestly, I don't know if we would be here today if the war and the disintegration of Yugoslavia hadn't happened in the 1990s," one of the students at the protests told "Vreme". "Everything is connected. Because since the nineties, you have hatred between different nations, war and the like. Now you have hatred and also a kind of war, but within the same people, the Serbian people. We are talking about the government and us."

Interview: architect prof. Branislav Mitrović

07May 2025. Sonja Ciric

Forest and urban in the same space

"Changing existing practices in Belgrade is necessary. The key to solving urban issues today is the demand to overcome the gap between urban and non-urban, built and unbuilt, which has long burdened the entire area of ​​urban-architectural research and practice"

Organ donation and transplantation

07May 2025. Katarina Stevanović

The path of an organ

Although the lists number about 2000 patients waiting for a new organ, the number of consents obtained for donation and transplantation, which are carried out annually in Serbia, is far from sufficient to reduce the waiting lists. Those who are on the lists wait for the "most important call" every day, and often lose hope. Someone who has experienced brain death through organ donation, in a way, continues to live in the body of the person to whom the organ was transplanted, but in Serbia the story of transplantation and organ donation is still accompanied by stigma