On November 1st, the roof of the Novi Sad station - recently rebuilt by Chinese companies - collapsed, causing 14 deaths and dozens of injuries. Thousands of citizens took to the streets, giving rise to protests that also turned violent
I motivi del crollo della tettoia devono esser ancora appurati. La stazione di Novi Sad era stata recentemente ristrutturata grazie ai fondi ottenuti dalla Cina nell’ambito della Belt and Road Initiative, ovvero la nuova Via della Seta.
On Friday, November 1, shortly before noon, the external roof of the Novi Sad station collapsed. The toll was tragic, 14 dead, over 30 injured, three of whom are still in critical condition.
A day of national mourning was declared in Serbia. In the following days, violent protests took place in both Belgrade and Novi Sad in what appears to be a new wave of discontent throughout the country.
The collapse
The reasons for the collapse of the roof have yet to be ascertained. The Novi Sad station had recently been renovated thanks to funds obtained from China as part of the Belt and Road Initiative, or the new Silk Road.
The station, the reconstruction of which began in 2021, was opened in 2022 , during the election campaign, by the presidents of Serbia and Hungary Vučić and Orban, and then closed again so that the work could be completed. The structure was finally opened to the public in July this year.
The reconstruction of the railway and the station had been awarded to the consortium of Chinese companies composed of the Chinese Railway International Company (CRIC) and the Chinese Communications Construction Company (CCCC) and, apparently, subcontracted to a local company. The supervision of the works was entrusted to a Hungarian company.
The Chinese consortium explained immediately after the collapse that the reconstruction of the roof was not part of the works that had been awarded to them, a version denied by a consultant who had worked on the reconstruction materials. The station had been built in 1964 and it would be rather strange if the roof had been excluded from the reconstruction works.
It should be noted that many aspects of the entire reconstruction process of the station are not accessible to the public. Already in January 2024, a Novi Sad portal had requested information on the reconstruction of the station, but the Ministry of Construction, Infrastructure and Transport had rejected this request, saying that the contractor, namely the Chinese consortium, did not agree that the elements of the contract as well as the information relating to the contract be made public to third parties.
However, this response was in apparent violation of the law on access to information, as pointed out by former guarantor Rodoljub Šabić, who explained that the law limits the situations in which information cannot be made public to certain very specific cases. And these cases certainly do not include the will of the contractor: “We are not a colony”, Šabić had said.
Who is responsible?
On the very evening of the collapse, president Vučić , addressing the entire country, asked that both the Novi Sad prosecutor’s office and the government identify political and criminal responsibilities and that those responsible be brought to trial and severely punished.
A few days later, on Tuesday, November 5, in the face of growing discontent in the country, Infrastructure Minister Goran Vesić tearfully resigned, declaring that he had no responsibility for what had happened, but that as a responsible person he felt obliged to resign.
Vesić explained that most of the decisions taken by his ministry preceded his mandate and that the Ministry was only responsible for financing the work. It will therefore be the task of the prosecutor's office, according to Vesić, to determine why the shelter had not been rebuilt. Vesić's resignation was presented to Prime Minister Vučević on the same evening of the collapse, so it cannot be ruled out that the resignation was presented under pressure from President Vučić himself, as speculated by the newspaper Danas .
The prosecutor's office immediately opened an investigation and in the first few days heard over forty witnesses: the aim will be to ascertain responsibilities and above all whether the shelter had been rebuilt or not. It remains to be seen whether the prosecutor's office will be able to conduct the investigation without any interference and whether the investigation will lead to ascertaining all the responsibilities for the deaths.
Doubts in this case are a must, given that too many important cases from the recent Serbian past are still unsolved.
During the protests on Sunday 3 November - Photo M. Moratti
“A crime not a tragedy”: protests turn violent
Citizens’ anger and distrust of institutions were already apparent on Sunday, November 3, when several hundred people first protested in front of the Prime Minister’s building and then in front of the Ministry of Infrastructure.
The slogan “a crime, not a tragedy” blamed corruption and lack of transparency of institutions as indirect causes of the collapse. The protesters, with their hands covered in red paint, left their fingerprints in front of the institutions’ buildings before dispersing.
Another protest took place in Novi Sad on Tuesday, November 5. The protest was attended by many inhabitants and was broadcast live on N1 television.
There were fears that the protests could turn violent or be exploited. During the day, former Prime Minister of the Vojvodina government, Bojan Pajtić, reported that the SNS was distributing baseball bats to groups of fans, with the clear intent to cause riots. Meanwhile, in the city, the SNS headquarters had been attacked with red paint and stones that had broken some windows.
The demonstration began at 6 pm in a tense atmosphere. Soon the Novi Sad city hall became the target of bottles and red paint. In the initial stages, some city councillors tried to enter to present their demands, but as time passed, they gave up.
Meanwhile, a tractor towed a tanker and dumped sewage in front of the city hall as a sign of contempt for the city leadership, which according to many participants should have resigned already.
The situation then worsened as the hours passed when groups of hooded and masked youths appeared and systematically broke all the windows on the first floor of the building, tore down the surveillance cameras and tried to break down the doors using bars and ladders taken from a nearby construction site.
The police barricaded themselves inside and responded by throwing tear gas and pepper spray. Other riot police units stationed in a nearby courtyard did not intervene.
As N1 and Radar journalists present at the scene found, this seemed like a familiar scenario, like the groups of violent people had been sent there on purpose to create chaos. In the meantime, a few hundred metres from the area where the incidents were taking place, the police were stopping some of the protest organisers. Most of the citizens, given the violent turn of the demonstration, slowly moved away from the square.
At the end of the evening, President Vučić himself went to Novi Sad to visit the party headquarters that had been damaged during the day. Some citizens of Novi Sad filmed hooligans who, upon Vučić's arrival, stopped their action and headed towards the party headquarters.
In fact, the arrival of the President of Serbia coincided with the end of the violence. The next day, the Novi Sad prosecutor's office announced that it had arrested 9 people and was looking for another person.
Further protests
The next day, the controversy raged with tabloids close to the government attacking opposition leaders for the damage caused and the independent press demonstrating how the violence was actually organised by the government itself. Further protests are announced for the next few days in Belgrade with the same demands presented in Novi Sad.
The climate is reminiscent of the one after the massacres in the Ribnikar school in Belgrade on May 3, 2023 and in Mladenovac the following day, when the government was accused of having created the conditions that allowed the two massacres and protests subsequently took place that lasted months until they led to extraordinary elections last December.
A little over a year after those episodes, another hot autumn in Serbia cannot be ruled out.