A year of protests divided Serbia

WHEN Vesna Senicic describes the division she feels after a year of protests in Serbia, she uses a grim metaphor for families desperately trying to avoid bitter political fights.

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“In the house of a hanged man, you don’t mention the rope,” the 61-year-old grammar school teacher said.

The collapse of a canopy at a newly renovated train station last November, which killed 16 people in Serbia's second city, sent shock waves across the country - transforming students into protesters and exposing deep political fault lines.

As the anti-corruption movement prepares to mark the anniversary of the Novi Sad tragedy with a major rally tomorrow, Serbians across the country said that the past 12 months had changed the Balkan nation.

“We're divided - even more, even worse than before November 1,’ Senicic said in her home in the town of Kraljevo, some 250km south of where protests first began.

A supporter of the student movement, she said two opposing camps have emerged - protesters and government loyalists.

Although much of society remained “neutral’, she said, many opponents of the students had “become obscenely rich or benefited from the status quo” and remain supportive of President Aleksandar Vucic.

Bojan Klacar of the electoral watchdog CeSID agrees, saying the global trend of polarisation has seeped deeply into Serbians’ private lives because of the “massive mobilisation” of both sides. “In Serbia, it has taken on huge proportions and will likely last longer,” he said.

In Vranje, a southern town and electoral stronghold for the country’s embattled president, philosophy student Andrej Stojanovic no longer talks about protests with his grandparents.