It's the first time. female student, we'll call her Ivana, felt fear for herself and her colleagues after the Vidovdan protest, when the incidents with by the police. She doesn't remember, she tells "Vreme", that she used to be as scared as she was then for her friends, colleagues who were setting up the stage. The police started arresting them. "We were all terrified, especially those students who were exposed to the media, those who were in the photos, who were actively involved in the movement," says Ivana. "We didn't leave college for weeks." They weren't even allowed to go to the store. Colleagues brought them things over the fence behind the college, guards brought in food. They did not go to the front entrances because the police passed by every twenty minutes. Then the traffic officers also arrested them, so they were also afraid of them. "I felt as if the walls of the faculty were as thin as fleece paper and they would find us wherever we hid," he describes his experience. "Unbelievably, clan leaders and mobsters sit freely in Skadarlija and Belgrade on the water in broad daylight, while students hide in the basements of colleges."
Scenes like this will only get worse, the interlocutors of "Vremena" are convinced. Majorca police officer Katarina Petrović told "Vreme" that she believes that the phalanxes of people who are on the margins of society will only become more active. "Some of them were in prison, some were not, some should be," says Katarina Petrović. "They will only be engaged by the system, but they will also 'act' at their own discretion. Because these people would never be in the positions they are in now, or have the protection they have now, if it were not for the existing government. That's why I believe they will defend the regime with their lives."
Retired police colonel Slavica Radovanović tells "Vreme" that students are currently "the most threatened group of people in Serbian society" - they are threatened by both the police and thugs.
photo: iva tanackovićPOLICE BRUTALITY: Beatings and arrests of young people
A MAN WITH A ROD AND PEPPER SPRAY
Until last June 28, Ivana was not afraid of the police. At all the protests before that, she told Vreme, she felt safe on the street, protected by citizens who want justice and fight for a better society: dissatisfied, angry, but persistent and dignified people. Even as a security guard, she felt that she wanted to protect, and she was a security guard at every protest. "It lasted until fifteen to nine on Vidovdan", he remembers. "The first feeling that something was really going to go wrong was the kidnapping of Stefan Tomić a few days before the protest itself. This is a colleague who came to the protest at the Government. No one who knew him at that moment could believe what they were accusing him of. Everything that followed after the end of the protest was a continuation of the attempt to weaken the student movement through selective arrests." Ivana's story is shared by a large number of students.
A few evenings ago, a student, we'll give her the pseudonym Sanja, saw a man with a bar in the street and the first thing she thought was - it's not smart to go there, maybe it's for her. That says a lot about the situation in the country. She is one of the active participants in the student struggle. He tells "Vreme" that, with the waves of monstrous violence against students - in which the police and vicious characters at the service of the regime participate with joint energy - she has become incomparably more considerate. "It's not that I was scared, I just thought it wasn't smart to cross the street," he explains and describes the precautionary measures. "When I come home, I look at the brands of black cars nearby, I carry pepper spray with me."
photo: tadic raw...
MOM'S DISMISSAL AND ALWAYS THE SAME NAMES
The third student, Nemanja, which is also a fictitious name, found his mother with a dismissal decision the day after he visited Impression of the week at Olja Bećković. "The more active I was, the more often there were situations where the threat and reality overlapped. For example, three times a week a man stood in front of the building, so I didn't go to the entrance but around the building and waited for him to move," Nemanja describes. "Maybe there wasn't a real threat, but the whole atmosphere was threatening. It shows how people feel and how afraid they may be, how anxious they are for their safety." However, he says, what happened to him is not even close to what happens to other people - beatings, threats, kidnappings... Many already share a strategy among themselves - they have the number of lawyers in a visible place, someone should always know where they are or at least that they are not alone and that they have pepper spray.
The student, whose name is fictional, Tamara, tells "Vreme" that the batterers are "a steady network that has been built for years, because that is what we can see from the analyzes of the attacks." And he continues: "Somehow it always ends up with the same names or the names are connected to each other. Through my experiences on and off the street, I became aware of their character and (mis)deeds, but what is important is the focus on what we do and how we behave. Such characters and their very function, the act of existing in that system, is based on maintaining 'integrity' through fear and trembling." But, paradoxically, says Tamara, "when we connect with each other, when we build a community and a safe space for each other and for each other - these characters lose their power, he adds. In the end, it often comes down to the fact that they are people who go to the gym, have an angry look and a purse over their chest, and when you look at them like that, they lose the illusion of dangerous faces".
AVOIDING JAIL AND BUILDING MONEY
In addition to the police, who have already resorted to violence countless times, students on the ground have also experienced attacks by people who follow the regime closely and are ready to fight for it. For example, the appearance of Milan Ostojić Sandokan at the protest in Slavija, when he hit a student and threatened him. Since the video of this incident was published on social networks, the student told "Vreme" that Sandokan additionally threatened him. He allegedly offered money to anyone who told him the student's name. The main motive of this criminal act of supporters of the regime is not ideology or staying in power because of mere politics, police Major Katarina Petrović thinks, but financial interest. "It is important for these people that the government remains as it is so that they do not end up in prison for the crimes they have committed, but also to protect their financial situation. Everything they have acquired is probably illegal and they are aware of it," adds Petrović and says that she is convinced that, with the elections approaching, students will be even more under attack. "They always have to have a phone with a camera and they can't go anywhere alone anymore. That's my recommendation to all people who fight against the mafia," she says.
Retired police colonel Slavica Radovanović believes that, as we get closer to the elections, attacks on students will be targeted. "Anyone who gives a speech, who makes a guest appearance on television, whose face the criminals see, they will chase," thinks Slavica Radovanović. "There must be at least so-called buddy security for students. Not only for them, but also for their family members." Her experience, she claims, shows that criminal structures have permission from the police to attack, intimidate and harass students. He mentions the case of an attack on a student in Resnik, who was kidnapped and put in a trunk. This attack took place after the action of handing out stickers in April 2026, when one of the students was beaten by unknown men, put in a black Škoda and driven in an unknown direction. Members of the citizens' assembly said that the student's head was smashed at the time, and that he recognized the attacker from the "Serbia is winning" van. "Who knows what would have happened in Resnik with the young man if there were no social networks and if the citizens had not appealed to bring him back," says Radovanović. "That's when I myself went to the police in Resnik and tried to talk to them, to explain what happened, to ask for help."
Slavica Radovanović does not expect that the police will be there to protect students in the future. "The MUP will," she says, "be organized to withdraw only when it sees that the regime is falling, which is not the case at the moment. When I realized that the people I worked with for years in the office, with whom I was friends, do not understand, my optimism for progress in the police died out", she adds. Today we have a crazy situation where the policemen who arrested those criminals and spent their whole career so that they would end up behind bars - now they have to protect them, to cooperate with them. "The minority tried to resist and lost their jobs," recalls Slavica Radovanović.
photo: iva tanacković...
PHYSICAL DANGER AND CONSEQUENCES
The very feeling of physical danger triggers a whole series of psychological processes in people, psychologist Sarah Kalember explains to "Vreme": "The authorities called them all sorts of names, the highest government officials said they were mercenaries and terrorists. Then the threats started, and then the physical attacks that never stopped." She adds: "Experiencing physical danger activates a sense of fear and a biological reaction like a response." fight or flight (fight or flight). In those moments, adrenaline and other stress hormones are released, the pulse quickens and the body prepares to react. Such an intense stress response is withdrawn when we stop perceiving a direct physical threat, that is, when we get out of a situation in which we are physically threatened."
Some students, on the other hand, have not been able to escape direct attacks for more than a year and a half and are a constant target of the tabloids, the regime and its corrupt and criminal tentacles. That's why Kalemberova says that for this group of young people, "prolonged stress or anxiety is a bigger problem than possible or repeated physical endangerment". In order to say what are the most common psychological problems that the students in the blockade have faced during the protests so far, Sarah Kalember points out that, without reliable results or insights, the answer to this question would be, to a certain extent, guesswork. "Based on some experiences or literature, it can be said that the problems that students face very often or on a daily basis can significantly increase the risk of developing anxiety and anxiety disorders, depression, burnout syndrome, PTSD, but also emotions such as guilt, shame, ambivalence, sleep disorders...", states the psychologist. He advises anyone who thinks they need professional help to contact psychologists or psychiatrists without hesitation, because they face incredible pressures, and many experts offer help for free. Namely, there are challenges that even the most experienced politician or activist would have a hard time coping with. "Prevention strategies and support networks are of great importance, but sometimes it seems to me that we neglect these elements," says Sara Kalember. "These two factors alone may not be enough to relieve prolonged stress, but they can ease it or at least prevent it from having more serious psychological consequences."
KAD "EVIL CHARACTERS" AWAKENING DEFENCE
Although at the beginning, in the interview for "Vreme", the students described internal struggles and primal fear for their own lives and the fate of their loved ones, they ended with a similar message. It's as if these experiences strengthened them, and overnight they became adults who are afraid, but not blocked by fear. "We stopped being afraid of dangerous characters. I think students are the least afraid of them," says Sanja at the beginning of the text. "It's not a virtue – now we're, like, fearless. We're just deeply traumatized and we don't react anymore."
Psychologist Sarah Kalember explains that anyone who goes to a protest, who signs petitions, donates, provides other forms of support and shows solidarity – confirms to students that personal sacrifice is not without purpose. "This is exactly what, at least in part, could be behind what they themselves describe: that they have awakened to defiance and that they have developed new strategies to deal with this kind of pressure," she says. "Such support can also have a mobilizing effect, create a sense of common purpose and temporarily suppress fear."
Many of Sanja's colleagues were horribly dragged out by the tabloids whenever the regime needed it (that is, non-stop). "It's terrible," says Sanja, "but, I think, if we survived it, we don't need to be afraid yet."
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