11-07-2025
Serbia's bold protests and buried crimes
Fred Abrahams covered the South Balkans for Human Rights Watch from 1993 to 2000. He testified in the UN war crimes trials of Slobodan Milosevic, Vlastimir Djordjevic, and other former Serbian leaders.
For months now, Serbian students have braved intimidation and arrest to fill streets across their country in vibrant protest. Their demands are clear: an end to corruption, abuse of power, and the tight grip of President Aleksandar Vučić's lengthy rule. They want transparent governance, a free press, and courts that uphold the law rather than serve leaders.
The challenge now is how to realise that brighter future while honestly grappling with Serbia's darker past – and connecting the fight for justice at home with accountability for abuses that crossed borders and generations.
That link comes into sharp focus this month, as Bosnia and Herzegovina marks the 30th anniversary of the genocide at Srebrenica. On July 11, survivors and families, and many around the world, will again remember how Bosnian Serb forces massacred more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim boys and men – Europe's worst atrocity since World War II. The Vučić government continues to reject Serbia's responsibility in enabling and supporting that crime. And the student-led democratic movement is still grappling with how, or whether, to reckon with this heavy legacy.
Some critics accuse the students of avoiding this history to calm or appease nationalist currents. Others argue it is unfair to expect young people – many of whom were not even born at the time – to answer for crimes committed decades ago.
But whichever view one takes, the connection cannot be ignored: a more democratic society, rooted in the rule of law, will stand on shaky ground without an honest reckoning with the crimes that came before.
Consider the recent case of Vlastimir Djordjevic, who ran Serbia's powerful police during Slobodan Milosevic's rule and the 1998–99 war in Kosovo. Last month, Djordjevic returned home after serving an 18-year sentence handed down by a United Nations tribunal for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Within days of his release, he stood proudly at a ceremony to rename a street after the special police units he once commanded – forces responsible for torture, mass killings, sexual violence, and the secret removal of around 1,000 bodies to hide the evidence.
Those remains, dumped in mass graves at police compounds and other sites across Serbia, have never been fully found.
His warm welcome is no anomaly. Other senior officials convicted by the UN tribunal have come home to applause. They speak at public events, appear on state TV, and deny the crimes for which they were convicted – even as domestic war crimes trials stall and high-level suspects remain untouched.
The brave students protesting in Belgrade and other cities may not carry signs about Srebrenica or the mass graves hidden beneath Serbian soil. But their struggle is bound to the same truth: A state that shields political cronies is the same state that protects war criminals.
A government that buries the truth about the past cannot be trusted to deliver genuine justice, transparency and democratic rule.
