System breakdown: Three simultaneous hunger strikes in Serbia

U Serbia at the moment, as many as four people are on hunger strike: MP of the ruling party Uglješa Mrdić, the mother of one of the victims of the falling canopy Diana Hrka and truck driver Milomir Jaćimović and his son. One could say: a regime hunger strike because the Prosecutor's Office for Organized Crime refuses to arrest people whom the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, thinks should be in prison, as a counterweight to the woman who is on hunger strike because she was overcome by despair due to her impotence in the fight against the system of the Serbian Progressive Party. This includes Jaćimović.

Each of these three hunger strikes individually, however, each in its own way bears the stamp of the collapse of the state system.

Although the hunger strike is the most extreme form of peaceful protest, one gets the impression that the Serbian public, with the exception of a few thousand citizens who somehow supported those on strike, is quite indifferent to those strikes. Or at least they don't express their sympathy and support publicly.

The exception is certainly the students, and above all the high school students, who rushed to support Diana Hrka in front of the National Assembly.

In Serbia, a hunger strike is a form of performance

Social psychologist Dragan Popadić tells "Vreme" that hunger strikes have a long tradition as a way of political struggle.

He states that there are countries where hunger strikes can last for a long time, for months, often with tragic consequences and leave deep traces in society, and he cites Ireland as an example. Turkey and India.

"With us, hunger strikes also have a long tradition, but rather as a form of performance, relatively short-lived, which should attract the attention of the public," says Popadić.

It reminds of the five-day strike of hunger and thirst Tomislav Nikolić, with the request to call for elections, and for April 2019, when the then Minister of Defense Alexander Vulin and the Deputy Mayor of Belgrade, Goran Vesić, announced that they would start a hunger strike because of, as they stated, the violence of the opposition on the streets of Belgrade.

The regime is worried about the attention a hunger strike can attract

"In these and many other cases, it is obvious that the hunger strike was not the result of the decision of desperate people, determined to, when all other means of struggle failed, show that for them the values ​​they are fighting for exceed the value of their own lives. The strikers were content with attracting the attention of the public and then, after a few days, on the advice of a doctor, they would stop the strike," Popadić points out.

He says that, as far as he knows, in numerous hunger strikes in Serbia, the publicly stated demand was never fulfilled, but that it seems to him that the real goal of the pre-performance was achieved and that the strikers were quite satisfied with it.

"When the demands of the hunger strikers were addressed to him, the ruling mode was always concerned about what kind of attention hunger strikes could attract from citizens, what kind of emotions they could arouse and what kind of reactions they could cause. That is why in the past he resorted to manipulative tactics of duplication and diversion of attention, tactics that he also uses when it comes to countering various civil protests," Popadić reminds.

Mrdić received a party assignment to play the role of a hunger striker

He states that this was the case when in May 2020 the people's deputies of the ruling majority, Sandra Božić and Aleksandar Martinović, went on a hunger strike in response to the hunger strike of Boško Obradović.

He adds that they are in June 2025 "students who want to learn" they announced a hunger strike when, as Vučić announced at the time, there were indications that they would students to go on a hunger strike during the blockade.

"Now the same tactics are being repeated. The hunger strike of Dijana Hrko, as well as that of Milomir Jaćimović and his son, must be understood as a protest by desperate people who have exhausted all means in the fight for justice, as a desperate appeal to both the authorities and the citizens. On the other hand, in my opinion, MP Mrdić has been given a party task to play the role of a hunger striker and thus enable the reports of his strike in the regime media to cover the tragic scenes we are witnessing".

"There were never any desired results"

The program director of the Center for Strategic Analysis, Darko Obradović, estimates for "Vreme" that the reason for the relatively weak support of citizens could be that, based on historical data, "we know that hunger strikes are a form of extreme political performance never achieved the desired results in Serbia".

He reminds that cases of hunger strikes in Serbia ended sooner or later with hospitalization and suspension, or suspension based on appeals to stop.

"The hunger strike in Serbia as a sociological phenomenon has been significantly devalued in previous years. Many hunger strikes in Serbia were stopped in a much shorter time than was the case with world practice when individuals used this method to primarily attract the attention of the world public in order to promote their demands," Obradović believes.

Vučić claims that he spoke with Dijana Hrk, she made no comment

"Gambling with your own health"

He warns that on the other hand, the bet with the hunger strike is a permanent violation health individual.

"I think that the hunger strike in Serbia has not had the strength it should have for a long time, which is to solve the dilemma of the institutions and the public regarding the demands of those who strike," says Obradović.

It indicates that three people in Serbia decided to go on a hunger strike in order to emphasize their demands for professional work in the theory of independent institution because they seek justice.

"From the point of view of the technology of political action, the identification of the rest of the public with that enterprise remains a questionable part. We should recall two more significant hunger strikes in the recent period - the strikes of Tomislav Nikolić and Marinike Tepić. "Both political figures had a significant number of their supporters who supported them, but their strikes did not produce a significant result," says Obradović.

That is why he assesses that at this moment the hunger strike should be seen as "gambling with one's own health" which has a "very limited result" in terms of initial demands and expected effects.

On the other hand, the professor of sociology from Novi Sad, Marija Vasić, accused of terrorism, went on a hunger and thirst strike and forced the authorities that kept her in custody to release her to house arrest, which was later also abolished, so she is now defending herself from freedom.

"I have no choice, I'm a dead man": Milomir Jaćimović started a hunger strike

"It's simple, without a public consensus on an issue, hunger strikes are not effective, and in the age of social networks it is increasingly a compromised activity. And most importantly, in the end, the decision to endanger one's own life is not always in accordance with the 'moral imperative', but rather a form of coercion that has always had a limited scope in Serbian political life," says Obradović.

He reminds that the danger lies in the fact that the whole cycle of hunger strikes started with MP Mrdić, then continued with Dijana Hrko, and on Monday, the car transporter joined Jacimovic, "a man whose demands are not related to the canopy case, but to his bureaucratic problems."

A part of the public would say not with "bureaucratic problems" - but with the repression and abuse of the authorities, which seized their buses because they transport passengers for free.

"All of this further complicates the situation and reduces the potential for social dialogue, because instead of a solution, one goes to extremes, and the solution is left to the public instead of the institutions," concludes Obradović.

Hrka "chained by sadness for the rest of his life"

Speaking about Dijana Hrka's strike, retired professor Čedomir Čupić told N1 that Dijana Hrka was "chained by sadness for the rest of her life" and assessed that she will never be able to overcome her sadness.

He emphasized that her hunger strike "supports life and gives some hope that what happened to her will not happen again."

"Unlike people who retreat in the face of injustice and only vegetate biologically, she has something deeply human to tell all citizens of Serbia from the aspect of what is sacred and the meaning of life, and it belongs to hope and faith in life, which are called into question here. She is now that little flame that achieves that," said Čupić.

On the ninth day of Diana Hrka's hunger strike, she claims that a cannon shot was fired

He assessed that Diana Hrka's act has the purpose of recovering values ​​and reminding people that values ​​are the only thing that maintains their humanity.

"This is an act where she, like a candle, in the huge chaos we are currently living in, illuminates the paths that should be followed in order to achieve values," said Čupić about Diana Hrka's hunger strike.

He assessed that what the government is doing is "horror".

"Those people seem to be in some madhouse, the music is playing while the woman is chained in pain, because it has lost its greatest value. There is no greater value than a child. Those people sing, loosely, and you can see that they do not belong to anything human, they only have a human creature, a form, but they have nothing that belongs to humans," Čupić concluded.

In the National Daily TV Pink on Sunday evening, attention was paid to the hunger strike of SNS deputy Mrdić, while the strike of Diana Hrka was not mentioned a single word.