Novi Sad Protest Marks Anniversary of Strazilovska Clash

The protest in Novi Sad, held on Thursday evening, August 13, began with speeches outside the Banovina building and ended at the same intersection where it had started. The rally was called by the Novi Sad citizen assemblies to mark one year since the clash between citizens, police and supporters of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) outside the party’s offices in Strazilovska Street.

At the front of the march, protesters carried a banner reading “Students Are Serbia.” Speakers on the stage outside Banovina said students had woken Serbia up, and the rally returned to the event that had triggered months of protests: the deaths of 16 people when a canopy collapsed at the Novi Sad railway station.

The March First Stopped at Futoska Market

The walk set off toward Novosadskog Sajma Street. By the time marchers reached Futoska Market, they had turned on their phone flashlights, and the column stretched from the market at the front all the way back to the Vojvodina stadium at the rear.

Only after that did the column enter Strazilovska Street and stop outside the Serbian Progressive Party’s offices, which have been shuttered for a year. Protesters chanted, made noise and put up stickers, including one reading “Square of Corruption Victims” on the building itself. A speech was also held outside the party’s offices on Oslobodjenja Boulevard, after which the crowd moved on toward Kralja Petra Boulevard and returned to the city center through Kisacka Street, where they again blocked the intersection of Mihajla Pupina and Zarka Zrenjanina boulevards.

Plainclothes and traffic police were present at the gathering, and riot police formed a small cordon in Strazilovska Street. Among the vehicles in the column was a bus belonging to carrier Milomir Jacimovic, covered in slogans reading “People, why are you silent?”, “Magic loses, because students win” and “I don’t want to move away.”

Aleksandar Bjelobrk, one of the representatives of the citizen assemblies, said residents had gathered to remember events that began “in the most horrific way, with the killing of 16 fellow citizens,” which, he said, was a reminder of “the most terrible truth: corruption kills.” He also recalled the protests that followed the tragedy, as well as the blockades at the University of Novi Sad’s faculties.

“We didn’t know Novi Sad would build a movement of its own resistance, but we knew one thing: that we would not let the crime be forgotten,” Bjelobrk said.

Speaking about November 15, 2024, the day Novi Sad first stopped and fell silent for 14 lives lost, Bjelobrk said: “No speeches, no music, just silence and a city standing still.”

What Happened in Strazilovska Street a Year Ago?

A group of residents gathered in the Campus area on August 13, 2025, from where a protest march set off around 8:30 p.m. toward the Serbian Progressive Party’s offices. The protest at the time was organized as a response to incidents in Vrbas and Backa Palanka, where protesters had been hit with fireworks, as well as to events in Novi Sad itself in the days before.

When the column reached the party’s offices in Strazilovska Street, fireworks, flares, firecrackers and pyrotechnics were launched at demonstrators from the direction of the building, along with thrown stones and other objects. Demonstrators responded with stones, bottles and pyrotechnics of their own, several physical clashes broke out, and police and Gendarmerie units tried to separate the two sides.

The clash spilled onto Oslobodjenja Boulevard, where a police cordon had been set up and the party’s supporters stood outside its offices. It later emerged that the party’s top officials were also there at the time, together with security from the “Cobras” unit, which was protecting then SNS president Milos Vucevic.

Several people were injured, among them seven members of the “Cobras” unit who, according to witnesses, fired shots into the air.

Mihailo Krstic, a member of the Novi Sad citizen assembly, said residents had gathered to show that the city remembers and that it fights violence peacefully.

“We remember all the wrongdoing this regime has inflicted on us over all these years. We are walking peacefully to Strazilovska, where something happened last year that I had never experienced. I served in the army and took part in artillery fire drills, but experiencing something like that in a city full of women, children, mothers, sisters is different. Being pelted with pyrotechnics as if we were the worst enemies, that’s something you don’t forget,” Krstic said.

Who Has Been Held Accountable So Far?

A criminal case was opened after the clash, but against several citizens, on suspicion of attacking military personnel. For what happened that night outside the party’s offices, as speakers at the rally pointed out, no one has been held accountable even a year later.

The same imbalance surrounds the reason for the protest itself. Bjelobrk stressed that corruption caused the railway station tragedy and that, because of it, no one has been held accountable to this day.

The Novi Sad gathering was the second this week tied to August anniversaries. A day earlier, residents had taken to the streets in Vrbas, the town that was itself one of the triggers for last year’s march toward Strazilovska Street.

The citizen assemblies called people to the rally with the message: “We are not standing here because we have nowhere else to go. We are standing because we know what we stand for.”