After the writer Vladimir Arsenijević was attacked on July 11 under the Branko bridge, just before the commemoration of the victims of the genocide in Srebrenica, the attackers left graffiti glorifying Ratko Mladić and the Republika Srpska Army. Although the attackers were identified, the prosecution qualified that event as a misdemeanor, which Arsenijević's lawyer publicly called a cover-up.
When the director Stevan Filipović was attacked on August 5, the police and the prosecutor's office launched an investigation, while Filipović himself suffered a concussion, a hematoma on his hip and a leg injury. Meanwhile, in Valjevo, a lawyer who represents citizens who were beaten during the protest was summoned to the prosecutor's office as a suspect for an attack on an official, while the criminal complaint filed by 27 victims against police officers has been waiting for an institutional response for eleven months.
These events cannot be equated, nor would it be serious to claim that the same structures are behind each of them. However, they can be viewed together if the question is raised - is it not the same principal? What is happening to a society in which violence is becoming an increasingly acceptable way of dealing with the politically undesirable, while institutions are more and more often scheduling exactly when they should be responsible, and citizens are becoming completely accustomed to this?
photo: instagram /crocodile_engaging_wordsTHE PERPETRATORS KNOW NOTHING, BUT THEY KNOW HOW TO BEAT: Beaten Vladimir Arsenijević
ANATOMY OF A FIST
On the night between August 5 and 6, Stevan Filipović found himself at the corner of Makedonska and Nušićeva in Belgrade, where, according to his own testimony, he photographed a group of men who wrote ugly and at the same time pro-regime graffiti on a protected building. The conflict soon turned into a physical attack, during which Filipović was knocked down and beaten. Medical findings showed that he suffered a concussion, a hematoma on his hip and a leg injury, and according to available information, the attack was recorded by surveillance cameras and seen by about fifteen witnesses.
The police and the prosecutor's office have opened an investigation, so further proceedings will show how the event will be qualified and who will be responsible for it. The President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, condemned the attack, but in the same reaction he also spoke about "those who push Serbia into conflicts", which added to the condemnation of violence, which again shifted attention to the political behavior of those who were exposed to it.
In the case of Filipović, the investigation is still ongoing, while in the case of Arsenijević, a decision on the qualification of the crime has already been made. What connects them is a question that emerges only when you look at what comes after the attack itself: how is it that we all know what will happen? Namely, institutions will not treat violence as a serious attack on a person, but will reduce it to an event that can be relativized and removed from the agenda.
There is a point in the collapse of a regime when violence ceases to be news and becomes the atmosphere. Society then begins to get used to what under normal circumstances would represent a serious disruption of public order and political life, so the beating of a director, an attack on a writer or police brutality towards protesters increasingly become another event that will fill the front pages for several days. Getting used to violence is perhaps the regime's most important political effect, because a society that stops expecting a reaction from institutions begins to accept violence as part of everyday life.
HOW VIOLENCE IS DONE "OUTSOURCING"
Political violence in Serbia already had its recognizable forms, from organized beating groups and pressure on voters to physical attacks on demonstrators, journalists and political opponents. In previous years, it was often possible to track who organizes a certain action, who appears on the ground and who enjoys the protection of political structures. Today, the mechanism is less simple, but that does not mean it is less effective.
The government does not have to issue an order to every single violent person in order to create an environment in which violence becomes more likely. It is enough that, through its media and political channels, it has been labeling certain people as enemies, traitors, foreign mercenaries or persons working against the state for quite some time. Such language in itself is not the same as physical attack, and it would be wrong to claim that anyone who targets someone in the media is directly ordering violence. The problem arises when the targeting is repeated, when the victims are presented in advance as legitimate objects of hatred, and when the institutions do not show after the attack that the perpetrator will really suffer the consequences.
Then part of the responsibility for the execution of violence can be left to those who will believe that they are defending the state, the nation or "decent Serbia", while the political and media actors who previously produced such a narrative can distance themselves from the attack. It is a form of political violence that no longer necessarily requires a centralized organization. It works by pushing the limit of what is permissible in public space and then checking it on the street.
The case of Stevan Filipović should perhaps not be interpreted in advance as evidence that the authorities ordered his attack. Moreover, he himself says that he does not believe how the attackers know who he is, they just saw the man filming them and resenting them. But the fact that Filipović was exposed to public targeting for years represents a relevant context for the question of how to create an atmosphere in which physical violence against a public figure no longer seems like an unthinkable event.
The same question arises in the case of Vladimir Arsenijević: is it even necessary for the government to order? What if the order was issued a long time ago, on the day when members of the Serbian Progressive Party attacked the students of the Faculty of Dramatic Arts, which was the immediate reason for the blockades that followed?
VALJEVO AS A MIRROR
Valjevo shows what happens when violence does not come only from the street, but when the institutional apparatus is also involved in it. Soon, the day after this issue of "Vremena" comes out, it will be a full year since the gruesome police brutality in that city. During the protest on August 14, 2025, the citizens of Valjevo claimed that they were exposed to police brutality, and 27 victims filed criminal charges against the police officers. Instead of the procedure quickly receiving a clear institutional epilogue, the application remained without proper progress for eleven months, until the Supreme Public Prosecutor's Office transferred it to the Prosecutor's Office for Organized Crime.
At the same time, the police did not wait so long when they had to file charges against the participants of the protest. Misdemeanor proceedings were initiated against nine citizens, while the police filed several criminal charges against protest participants. An even stronger paradox appeared when Nikola Mirkovic, a lawyer representing the beaten Valjevci, was summoned to the prosecution as a suspect for an attack on an official in connection with the same protest. Thus, the man who represents citizens who claim to have been victims of police violence found himself in a situation where he himself has to explain his relationship to the police.
This case does not in itself prove that the prosecution acted on a political order, but it shows how unequally distributed institutional capacity is when comparing the speed with which citizens are treated with the time it took to investigate the policemen's responsibility.
Another episode from Valjevo shows that the pressure was not limited to those who were on the street. Jana Aćimović Planojević, a lawyer who, together with nine other colleagues, represents 27 citizens who reported police violence, together with her family members, was exposed to intense media targeting and pressure. The President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, spoke publicly about her, while the attacks also spread to her family, and the gate at the entrance to her law office was damaged.
The Board of Directors of the Bar Association of Serbia twice made it impossible to hold a session where it was supposed to discuss the threat to the security of Jane Aćimović Planojević and the notification of international lawyers' organizations. On August 5, lawyer Vladimir Beljanski resigned from his position in the Board of Directors, stating that his remaining would mean accepting responsibility for silence.
Thus, the story of Valjevo spread beyond the relationship between the police and citizens. Citizens demanded responsibility for police violence, lawyers tried to provide them with legal protection, one of the lawyers became a suspect, another lawyer became the target of public targeting, and the professional body that should protect the legal profession failed to take a clear position.
If we want to understand how impunity works as a political mechanism, it is difficult to find a more concrete example.
IMPUNITY AS A POLITICAL RESOURCE
In every society there are bullies, extremists and people ready to use physical force to resolve conflicts. The difference between a functioning state and a state that loses its protective mechanisms does not arise because the former does not have a monopoly on force, but because its institutions must demonstrate that violence has consequences.
When the state quickly identifies the perpetrator, implements the process and imposes a sentence that fits the act, it reduces the likelihood that the violence will be repeated. When the procedure is absent, when a serious attack is qualified as a misdemeanor, or when the focus is shifted from the abuser to the victim, the institution sends the opposite message.
In the case of Vladimir Arsenijević, the attackers were identified, but the event was qualified as a misdemeanor. In Valjevo, 27 citizens waited eleven months for their complaint against the police officers to be seriously dealt with by the prosecutor's office, while proceedings were initiated against the citizens in the meantime, and their lawyer was called as a suspect. When it comes to Jana Aćimović Planojević, the pressure spread to the person who was trying to provide legal protection to citizens, while the institution whose main function is to protect the independence of the legal profession remained without a clear answer.
These cases show the consequences of a system in which citizens can no longer safely assume that institutions will side with those who have suffered violence. Impunity then becomes a political resource.
The one who believes that he will not be punished will resort to violence more easily, while the one who expects that after the report he may become a target will start to think whether it is even worth it to report the violence.
SILENT CUSTOMER
Violence that goes unpunished tends to spread, but it doesn't always have to spread by the same people repeating the same actions. It spreads as society accepts an ever-widening range of behaviors as something to be expected (though not accepted). If it is possible for public targeting to turn into a physical attack, and then to discuss what the victim said or whom he politically resented, the line moves. If the citizens who were beaten during the protest wait for months for the reaction of the institutions, while proceedings are initiated against them, the border is moved once again. If the lawyer who represents those citizens becomes a suspect, and the lawyer who represents the same people becomes the target of public targeting, while her professional institution fails to take a stand, the border moves even further.
photo: instagram /@sejtanov_radnik...
These events are only the most recent examples of violence by a regime that identifies itself with the state and the system. They are only apparently not related to each other, because they are different methods of attack, different perpetrators, victims and places of events. But they have one thing in common: the client. Of course, Aleksandar Vučić does not call individual thugs and thugs from Andrić's wreath, of course he does not send them a message like "Go and beat that Filipović". He doesn't have to anymore. He had 14 years to prepare the ground so that he did not have to issue direct orders.
But is all this a reason for pessimism? In the short term - how, but in the long run, one would not say. Namely, none, but none of these people, like many others before them, even thought of giving up or withdrawing from the fight against the dictatorship. Moreover, they seem to be encouraged even more by the moves of a collapsed regime with only bare power left.
And we, the media, and even the citizens, remember. A protest has been scheduled for August 14 in Valjevo on the occasion of one year since that terrible night. And then another anniversary follows: Novi Sad, Campus, September 5. Because none of the rebellious citizens have the intention, nor the luxury, to forget and forgive them.
