Twenty Months On, Novi Sad Falls Silent for 16 Victims
At the students' call, citizens in Novi Sad marked 20 months since the railway canopy collapse with 16 minutes of silence, as blockades continue and the government says the protests are losing support.
- On July 1, at the students' call, citizens in Novi Sad marked 20 months since the canopy collapse with 16 minutes of silence.
- The collapse killed 16 people and left one severely injured; the rallying cry was "we remember and will not forgive."
- Twenty months on, there is still not one final conviction, while blockades and civil disobedience continue across Serbia.
Citizens gathered in Novi Sad on Tuesday, July 1, at the call of University of Novi Sad students, holding 16 minutes of silence in front of the railway station to mark 20 months since the collapse of the station canopy that killed 16 people. The gathering began at 8 p.m. near the Futoska market, from where a memorial procession set off toward the station, the site where the tragedy struck on November 1, 2024, at 11:52.
During the 16 minutes of silence, one victim’s name was read aloud for each passing minute, a minute for every life lost. Traffic was halted at the junction of Bulevar Oslobodjenja and Bulevar Jase Tomica for the duration. Commemorations were also held in Nis, and the message was the same everywhere: 16 dead, and no one held legally responsible. The canopy that fell belonged to a station that had been reconstructed and ceremonially reopened twice before the disaster.
Who will answer for 16 lives?
The question of accountability remains the knot around which most public anger gathers. Organizers and victims’ families stress that, in a year and a half, no one has been convicted with a final ruling, even though several proceedings were launched after the collapse. The slogan “we remember and will not forgive,” which accompanied the rallies, neatly captures the mood of a segment of citizens who feel the institutions have not delivered a response proportional to the scale of the tragedy.
For many of those present, 20 months is not merely the passage of time but a measure of how slowly the courts move. Banners bearing the date and time of the disaster, alongside the figure 16, have become the visual language of this movement, recognizable from Novi Sad to Nis. Blockades of intersections and acts of civil disobedience continued both before and during the commemoration, showing that the energy of the protests, despite fatigue, has not faded.
Government and street in two realities
President Aleksandar Vucic, for his part, argues that the blockaders are gradually losing popular support and that the protests are inflicting measurable economic damage on Serbia. By his assessment, first-quarter growth would have reached as much as 3.8 percent, instead of the 3 percent recorded, had there been no blockades. Against the protests he sets a narrative of continuity in state projects, summed up in the line that “while some blockade, others build.”
Economists, however, view such damage estimates as overstated and hard to prove, since the share of the blockades in the movement of gross domestic product is virtually impossible to isolate from other factors. That opens a gap between two pictures of Serbia: one in which the streets are emptying and growth is slowing, and another in which citizens keep coming out to demand accountability.
Twenty months later, the two sides speak different languages. For the government, the key words are stability and continued construction. For the citizens gathered at the station, the key word is justice, and a concrete one, with names and verdicts attached. Between those two points stand 16 minutes of silence that, month after month, prove harder and harder to translate into final rulings.
How many more anniversaries of silence must pass before someone answers before a court, with a final ruling, for 16 lost lives?
