Nis Marks 20 Months Since Canopy Collapse With Vigil

Students in blockade at higher education institutions in Nis have called on residents to join them tomorrow, on Wednesday, July 1, at a gathering marking 20 months since the collapse of the canopy at the Railway Station in Novi Sad. The assembly is set for 7 p.m. outside the Basic Court in Nis, from where the column will move toward the city’s Railway Station. There, speeches will follow, along with 16 minutes of silence, one for each of the 16 people who lost their lives.

Unlike most protests so far, this one has been announced as peaceful and quiet, without music and without the noise of whistles or other devices. The message under which the students are calling on fellow citizens reads: “Nis remembers, Nis does not forget.” The emphasis, then, is on commemoration rather than confrontation, which sets the tone of this gathering apart from the dynamic that has marked the streets of Serbian cities in recent months.

Over the past year, Nis has become one of the centers of the student movement outside Belgrade and Novi Sad. The format the organizers chose for tomorrow’s event, a walk from the court to the station and a collective silence, clearly ties the local city to the central symbol of the entire crisis, the canopy in Novi Sad itself.

Why has the number 16 become the symbol of the whole crisis?

The concrete canopy at the Railway Station in Novi Sad collapsed on November 1, 2024, at 11:52, killing 16 people. That event did not remain an isolated tragedy. It set off months of protests that spread from Novi Sad to Belgrade, Nis and dozens of smaller towns, with demands to establish accountability and release the full documentation on the station’s reconstruction.

Hence the 16 minutes of silence as the central ritual of tomorrow’s gathering. The number of victims has become the movement’s unit of measure, and silence a kind of shared language that needs no slogans. With it, the students signal that this is a commemoration of the victims rather than a party rally, seeking to keep the event outside the daily political divide between the government and the opposition.

A gathering amid a new wave of blockades

The Nis announcement does not arrive in a lull. It comes amid a three-day wave of traffic blockades that students and citizens have organized across Serbia, so tomorrow’s quiet gathering fits into a broader calendar of actions. That raises the question of how far the commemorative character of the Nis event will manage to stay separate from the wider political temperature of the moment.

For months now, the authorities and the protest organizers have offered competing readings of both the turnout and the meaning of these gatherings. Tomorrow’s event, precisely because of its emphasized silence, will be a test of whether the form of commemoration can outweigh the habit of immediately translating every mass gathering into the language of party contest. For now, the time, place and intent are known, while the course itself will show how far the line between remembrance and protest can be drawn at this moment.

Will the 16 minutes of silence in Nis tomorrow be understood as an act of remembrance above the divides, or will it too become a subject of political dispute?