For four months so far, Serbia has been absorbed through unprecedented protests. Disorders It was launched Through the collapse of the roof at a newly renovated train station in the second largest city in Serbia, Novi Sad, which killed 15 people and was seriously injured on November 1.

Despite different strategies from the government to try to suppress the demonstrations, they only gained momentum. Universities were occupied and large demonstrations and strikes were held throughout the country.

Foreign observers and international media have ignored either this collective mobilization or reduced this to the “anti -corruption” protests. Russia and China stood by President Alexander Vicc and its ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), while the United States and the European Union, who usually boast of relying on the promotion of democracy, did not express its support for the protests.

However, what was happening in Serbia is much more than citizens who are frustrated by their government or demanding resignations. In the past three months, there has been a new model for ruling institutions and society.

This is a historical development that deserves attention, given that it opposes the background of decline in Europe from democracy and the crisis of the political establishment.

Siege and professions

The protests began at the Novi Sad shortly after the disaster hit, as the local residents and students conducted 15 minutes of road classes to celebrate silently. This form of protest has spread throughout the country in a very decentralized manner, with more than 200 cities, towns and villages carrying such protests.

On November 22, a group of students from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts at the University of Belgrade tried to keep a 15 -minute period of time when they were attacked by a group of people.

In response to the attacks and other similar attacks and in the absence of any reaction from the authorities, students decided to occupy their facilities after three days. This inspired other students to take similar measures.

In the following weeks, six major public universities were occupied, which have been paralyzed in the entire country, as all academic activity was suspended in these institutions.

On February 13, the students went a step forward, as they occupied the Cultural Center for Students in Belgrade, which was previously a cultural life center and a prosperous student, who was under the management of the Ministry of Education, heading and used to a large extent for commercial purposes.

With the occupation of universities, the students decided to transfer their mobilization to the streets. On January 28, they organized a 24 -hour profession for the main traffic intersection in Belgrade. This was followed by a similar occupation in Novi on February 1 and in Caraguvak city On February 15.

Groups of students went 100 km (60 miles) to support their colleagues at Novi Sad and Kragujevac. Along the way, they were received by blocs of people who provided meals, refreshments, medical assistance and stay.

At the end of the comprehensive gathering in Novi Sad, hundreds of taxi drivers appeared to return students to Belgrade. The residents of Kragujevac in their homes absorbed about 700 protesters from outside the city. Citizen solidarity with students was amazing.

During these professions and marches, students’ demands remained the same: launching all documents related to rebuilding the train station, trying to attacked demonstrators, dismissing the charges against the demonstrators, and an increase in the budget for higher education.

They do not demand the resignation of the government, the thorny elections, or the opposition is responsible.

Porridge

The professions not only defied the status of the Serbian universities, but also abroad.

Students have developed effective self -government through a group of students or assemblies, where each student has the right to speak and vote on all decisions. Working groups are dedicated to dealing with various issues, from security and logistical services to public relations and legal questions.

The university’s professions work without discriminatory leadership, and rotation of actors who speak to the public. They insist on their independence, and prevent themselves loudly from all political parties and party’s policy, as well as from civil society organizations in force and even informal groups.

By doing this, they create a new political space and new means of politicians for the age, which penetrates the limits of the engraved institutional policy and representative democracy.

Students have created what might be called the “Career” effectively, partially within the system and partly outside it, which declares its own political sovereignty, recognizes and drafted its own needs, defines its own rules, and following its own agendas.

Unlike the demonstrators, students who appear recently to support Gaza in the West, students in Serbia completely control the institutions that they occupied while enjoying tremendous support for the public: About 80 percent For Serbian citizens support their demands. Moreover, universities are generally funded and have not yet turned into money earning factories, as in the United States, which gives students much more weight requirements.

Lead

While opposition parties and civil society groups close to them suggested resolving the crisis by forming a “temporary government” consisting of technocrats or representatives of the parties, students are calling for “changing regularity” and basic democracy.

These ideas have reached the street. During the group gathering in Novi Sad, which you attended, students organized the first place for citizens. People were asked to vote by lifting their hands if they wanted to extend the siege for another three hours. Lifting my hand among thousands of others was exciting.

Students have repeatedly emphasized the need for other groups to organize and behave within their own institutions, which demands them. Some have surrendered their invitation.

On January 24, Serbia got the closest to a general strike, given that the SNS system is practically controlling all public institutions, including unions, and was able to press them so as not to join.

Workers from various institutions and companies and a number of professional associations still joined the strike. While the educational unions withdrew from the general strike, individual schools and even individual teachers suspended classrooms.

The teachers then, without protecting their professional associations, left a new unofficial institution, the “Schools Association for the strike”, which regardless of the students ’demands, offered their own. They continue to strike despite facing amazing pressure, including the threat of cuts in wages.

Other sectors also responded to various protest work. The Serbian Lawyers Association suspended the work of its lawyers for a month. The workers of the Public Transport Company in Belgrade and the General Pharmacy Union protested the privatization of their sectors.

Workers in the cultural sector created an informal “Culture in Siege” initiative. After holding many protests and weaving on its own, on February 18, they occupied the Cultural Center Belgrade, one of the most important cultural institutions in the city. Meanwhile, many theaters have also been hit.

Democracy from below

We are now living at a time when liberal policy has become completely exhausting. In Serbia, this is very clear in the fact that there is a very little public confidence in the political establishment, including the opposition, while students enjoy popular support because they have nothing to do with the current policy and have no ambition to take over anything else of what they already have – their universities.

Since liberal democracy is retreating in front of the forces of salvation, authoritarianism and technical fascism, with facilitating its rise, there is an urgent need for an alternative societal and political formulation, and Serbian students have shown the way.

Unlike the socialist “self -administration”, which was pursued as a government policy by the Communist regime of the Yugoslav Federation and its implementation from the top to the bottom, the autonomy of students, and other social actors come from a thousand to Z. Students have seized an institution, and they established it and its democracy, and thus redefining the meaning of democracy.

In this way, the students opened a horizon towards another type of democracy, and another type of future that goes beyond “capitalist realism” and the dying liberal system.

Professor Stanford Branislav Jacofelgivic described the current political moment in Serbia as a conflict between society and the state. The people of Serbia have an opportunity (re -claiming) state institutions and give them a democratic character. They will need great courage and a living imagination to engage in a very experimental re -negotiation process for how their community governs.

Hope is that in this endeavor, they will be guided by the ethics that students have been constantly presented: that justice, freedom and solidarity.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the editorial island.