The citizens of Serbia have become so accustomed to other people's suffering and become numb to it that they do not perceive the hunger strike as a desperate move of self-sacrifice, but as a marketing trick. Politicians who entered it calculatingly are responsible for that
Marija Vasić, activist and professor of sociology at "Jovan Jovanović Zmaj" Gymnasium, started hunger strike and thirst on May 13. Two days later, due to her poor health, she was transferred to the prison hospital in Belgrade.
She is the first person since 2011 and the case of the then president of the Serbian Progressive Party, Tomislav Nikolić, who decided on the most extreme form of strike - hunger strike. There were plenty of hunger strikes, but none of them ended fatally.
Such inflation of hunger strikes has led to the fact that this type of extreme protest is devalued in Serbian society, so the dissidents of those who are on hunger strike do not take these health-threatening forms of struggle seriously.
Citizens of Serbia, who since the nineties have been exposed to very unpleasant scenes on a daily basis through news broadcasts, which were not lacking due to the civil war in the disintegrated Yugoslavia, seem to have become so accustomed to other people's suffering that they have become numb. Today, it seems that Marija Vasić's hunger and thirst strike is not perceived by many as a desperate, life-threatening move, but as a marketing trick.
The history of hunger strikes in post-Yugoslav Serbia is long, and the 1993 strike of the then president of the Serbian Reconstruction Movement, Vuk Drašković, who fought against the regime of Slobodan Milošević, is usually taken as the "cornerstone" of such a way of political struggle.
Drašković, Šešelj and Nikolić
Drašković started his hunger strike in the hospital on July 1, 1993, where he was transferred after his arrest. He and his wife, Danica, were arrested and beaten on June 1 when the police clashed with protesters in front of the Serbian Parliament. They were exposed to cruel abuse in prison.
They were released on July 9 after the then president of Serbia, Slobodan Milošević, made a decision on abolition, and that decision was preceded by calls from world leaders to release the opposition leader and his wife.
The president of the Serbian Radical Party, Vojislav Šešelj, went on a hunger strike in 2006 while he was at the Hague Tribunal. That strike reportedly lasted 28 days, and Seselj ended it on December 9 after the court restored his right to defend himself and decided that the trial should start again when he fully recovers.
The already mentioned hunger and thirst strike of Tomislav Nikolić began on April 16, 2011, with the request that extraordinary parliamentary elections be called. Nikolić started the strike in the parliamentary club of the Serbian Parliament, and a day later he was transferred to a private hospital. The strike did not end even after the visit and appeal of the President of Serbia, Boris Tadić, but at the request of the then patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Irinej. Nikolić first ended his thirst strike on April 21, and three days later, symbolically, on Easter, he also stopped his hunger strike. His request to call early elections was not fulfilled then. Nevertheless, the starvation apparently paid off for Nikolić, because a year later he defeated Tadić in the presidential elections.
Progressive counterstrike
In May 2020, probably the most bizarre hunger strike in Serbian history took place, because those who at that moment, as well as today, were cutting Serbia's hat, i.e. representatives of the government, decided on this form of political struggle. It is not recorded that anywhere the government went on hunger strike because of the situation in the society that it itself created.
That hypocritical and pathetic happening so immanent to the understanding of politics in Serbia on May 10, 2020, was caused by the then independent MP Miladin Ševarlić, who went on a hunger strike, and the ruling majority refused to initiate a debate on Kosovo in the Serbian Parliament. He was soon joined by the opposition MP and recent president of the Dveri movement, Boško Obradović, who started a hunger strike on the steps of the Serbian Parliament.
As in everything else, the Serbian Progressive Party responded to that strike in the best way it can - by plagiarizing the hunger strike, so because of Obradović, the progressive stars Aleksandar Martinović and Sandra Božić joined the counter-strike on the same day. Then, on May 12, Ivan Kostić, the then deputy and current president of Dveri, went on a hunger strike.
Martinović and Božić stopped their strike on May 12, when the First Basic Public Prosecutor's Office in Belgrade announced that criminal charges had been filed against four people for that incident. Obradović and Kostić ended the strike on May 20, stating that they had fulfilled their goal by pointing out the "undemocratic situation in Serbia".
Marinika Tepić's strike
Before Marija Vasić, the hunger strike that has caused the most interest in the public in recent years was caused by the one on December 18, 2023, in the building where the Republican Election Commission is located, by MP Marinika Tepić of the Freedom and Justice Party. Three days later, she was joined by two other members of the coalition, Jelena Milošević and Danijela Grujić. They demanded the annulment of the extraordinary parliamentary and Belgrade elections that were held immediately before. It was initially announced that Miroslav Aleksić, one of the leaders of the opposition, would also go on hunger strike, but he later explained that he was on Christmas fasting.
The three of them went on strike until December 31, and Tepić was connected to an infusion because of the strike.
Marinka Tepić's self-sacrifice did not help. Even more massive protests by citizens due to evident and proven election theft were absent.
Non-political hunger strikes
Of the hunger strikes whose actors were non-political figures, the cases of LGBTI activist Andrej Obradović and journalist of Radio-television Vojvodina Darko Šper occupied special attention of the public.
Obradović started his hunger strike on April 11, 2024, in front of the Serbian Parliament with the explanation that no one invited him to make a statement regarding the criminal complaint filed by the "Da se zna" organization, of which he is a member, against police officers.
On February 26, 2024, the organization "Da se zna" accused police officers of abusing two LGBTI persons during a search of an apartment in Belgrade, due to a report that there were drugs in it. They described the case as the worst they have ever recorded, adding that the two people suffered physical injuries and psychological trauma. The strike was ended on April 17, when the First Basic Public Prosecutor's Office in Belgrade heard Obradović.
Darko Šper started his hunger strike on March 18, 2025, due to the unfulfilled demands of Radio-television Vojodina employees, among which was the request for the dismissal of the editor-in-chief of the First Program of RTV Nenad Ćaćić.
Šper asked Ćaćić to submit a proposal to the Management Board by March 19 to announce a competition for the selection of all seven editors-in-chief and directors of RTV programs, who have been in acting status for several years. Speer called off the strike on March 24 as the RTV union headquarters took on a further struggle to meet demands "by other methods, including lawsuits."
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A black picture and the breakdown of the rule of law subscribeThe archive of the weekly Vreme includes all our digital editions, since the very beginning of our work. All issues can be downloaded in PDF format, by purchasing the digital edition, or you can read all available texts from the selected issue.
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