One year after the student movement that shook Valjevo: Serbia at a crossroads

The video lasts only a few seconds. A man lies on the street in Valjevo, about 90km southwest of Belgrade. Policemen surround him and beat him as he lies on the ground.

This footage has become one of the clearest pieces of evidence of police violence during the student-led protests shaking Serbia. The incident occurred on August 14, 2025.

Over the past year, the protests have grown into a mass movement challenging the long political dominance of President Aleksandar Vucic, Serbia's leader for over a decade, who seeks to balance close ties with Moscow and the country's declared path toward European Union (EU) membership.

Blockades have spread across the country. Hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets. Students have gone beyond their initial demand for accountability over the collapse of the concrete canopy at the Novi Sad railway station in November 2024, which killed 16 people, to call for political change.

In Valjevo, one can measure how much Serbia has changed and how far the student movement is willing to go. Darija Rankovic, editor-in-chief of the Kolubarske.rs portal, who has followed the city's political and social life for years, said: "Valjevo, in every sense, experienced a deep trauma that night."

She recently became the target of a public smear campaign after pro-government media accused her of "subverting the state." "When you are subjected to a coordinated attack on national television, accompanied by the crudest insults about your appearance and blatant lies about 'blackmail,' 'threats,' and 'subversion of the state,' it is natural that your sense of personal and professional security collapses," she said.

According to her, independent journalists are in an extremely dangerous position. "When top officials and their media outlets fuel conflict and label journalists as 'enemies' or 'state saboteurs,' they deliberately put a target on the foreheads of all those who are simply doing their jobs for the public interest," she told Al Jazeera.

Nonetheless, Rankovic has no intention of backing down in the face of threats. She will continue to cover the anniversary protest in Valjevo this Friday. "The consequences of social fracture and the erosion of trust are still affecting daily life, a year later," she said.

The police maintain that the use of force was legal and followed attacks on officers, arguing there was no other way to restore public order. Tomislav Markovic, a writer based in Belgrade who has tracked Serbia's political and social landscape for years, recalled that a day after the protest and police violence, masked individuals vandalized another café in Valjevo, injuring a female employee, then stormed into a car repair shop and assaulted the owner and customers.

No one has been held accountable, Markovic said, directly blaming Vucic and his Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), which has held power for 14 years. "The students awakened a huge energy that had been suppressed for years in people who lived in limbo under Aleksandar Vucic's regime – desperate, dejected, and passive, believing that nothing could change," he said.

The students now occupying universities and demanding a different society were between 7 and 12 years old when Vucic came to power. "They have only witnessed the arrogance, plunder, violence, and cruelty of the ruling Progressives," Markovic observed.

However, he warned that nationalist symbols and slogans are increasingly visible within the student movement. Old signs of Serbian nationalism have resurfaced, including references to "sacred Serbian lands" – language that neighboring countries, above all Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Montenegro, view as a threat. This has contributed to the disillusionment of many liberal citizens and undermined the strong initial support students received across the region.

While a fundamental political and ideological transformation of Serbia remains hard to envision, Markovic argued that the most important step is removing Vucic and the SNS from power.

Aida Corovic, a human rights activist, has stood by the students since the movement's beginning. Among acts of solidarity, she has cooked for them for months. But she does not accept their views unconditionally. "I still stand with the students. They are the largest and most serious alternative to Aleksandar Vucic's regime. But precisely because of that, I cannot close my eyes to developments that could harm and ultimately destroy them," she said.

She argued that the movement cannot be divorced from the society in which the students grew up – a society shaped by nationalist propaganda and the legacy of the 1990s wars. "They grew up in an extremely nationalist environment," she said. Having witnessed the conflicts of the 90s, Corovic said she understands where flirting with nationalism can lead.

At the same time, she cautioned against generalizing, saying that the majority of students remain democratically oriented and have no nationalist or right-wing ambitions. In her view, Valjevo has become a symbol of a larger issue: the state's relationship with protesters, and the question of whether Serbia can ensure accountability for police conduct.

When the movement only demanded accountability for the station canopy collapse, people of very different political views could stand under the same umbrella. But once the movement began seeking power, she said, it could not avoid the question of what kind of country Serbia wants to build.