BELGRADE: Massive student-led anti-graft protests have spread from Serbia to neighboring Balkan countries, with thousands rallying under the slogan \u201cCorruption kills\u201d following a series of deadly tragedies that have claimed dozens of lives.
\nYoung people have used the rallies to vent their anger in a region of Europe that rights groups say suffers from endemic corruption, prompting hundreds of thousands of mostly young people to go onto the streets in Serbia alone to demand change.
\nThe wave of demonstrations on a scale unseen in Serbia since the 1990s kicked off after a recently renovated train station canopy collapsed on November 1 in the northern city of Novi Sad, killing 16 people.
\nWith many blaming the deaths on corruption and inadequate oversight, the tragedy fueled outrage across Serbia and prompted the prime minister to resign in the protests\u2019 wake.
\nAfter the Serbian example, young people have organized similar anti-graft rallies in North Macedonia and Montenegro, while protesters in European Union member state Bulgaria have offered solidarity with their Balkan neighbors.
\nNow the symbol of those protests \u2014 a bloodied red hand print \u2014 has turned up at rallies in neighboring North Macedonia after a fire at a nightclub operating under a questionable license killed 59 mostly young concert-goers on March 16.
\n\u201cGirls from my generation died,\u201d Ema Peseva, a 20-year-old student from Skopje, told AFP during Monday\u2019s protest in the capital which drew thousands.
\nAs in Serbia, demonstrators at the Skopje rally chanted \u201cCorruption kills\u201d while accusing officials of being \u201cmurderers.\u201d
\n\u201cEveryone is bribed so they can line their pockets for travels, yachts, private schools. Meanwhile, children are dying from fire and pyrotechnics at concerts,\u201d Peseva said, referring to the stage effects blamed for the blaze.
\nMilena Janevska, one of the organizers, said that students wished to \u201cdemand accountability for the tragedy in Kocani,\u201d where the fire took place.
\n\u201cWe demand transparency from all institutions, simply to be accountable to the citizens who have a duty to show this revolt,\u201d the 26-year-old told AFP.
\nIn a show of solidarity Bulgarian anti-graft protesters last week held a few minutes\u2019 silence remembering the Kocani fire dead along with their own, with some drawing comparisons to the country\u2019s 2001 Indigo Disco stampede that killed seven queueing teenagers.
\n\u201cWe said a long time ago that corruption kills \u2014 literally. We saw in Bulgaria how corruption killed children in front of the Indigo nightclub. We saw it when people died in bus crashes, on unsafe roads, in incidents caused by poor construction,\u201d said lawyer Velislav Velichkov, one of the organizers.
\nMontenegro meanwhile was likewise shaken in early 2025 by protests after a man shot dead 13 people in the street on the evening of January 1 \u2014 the second mass killing in the small town of Cetinje in less than two and a half years.
\nDirectly inspired by the Serbian protest movement, demonstrators demanded the dismissal of senior security officials, police reform, the confiscation of illegal weapons and better mental health care.
\n\u201cStudents in Serbia are truly an inspiration to all those frustrated by the high levels of corruption \u2014 which, as we have seen from concrete examples, can be deadly,\u201d Aleksandar Popov, president of the Center for Regionalism, a Novi Sad-based think tank, told AFP.
\nAnd compared with the rest of Europe many Balkan countries struggle with graft, according to watchdog Transparency International.
\nSerbia ranks 105th out of 180 countries on the latest global corruption perceptions index \u2014 its worst position in more than a decade.
\nNorth Macedonia fares only slightly better at 88th place, while Bulgaria ranks 76th and Montenegro 65th.
\nSofija Todorovic, director of the Serbian branch of the regional Youth Initiative for Human Rights NGO, said she found it encouraging that young people are leading the anti-graft protests and driving change in the Balkans.
\nShe said that they have defied the stereotypes of their generation as being \u201cpassive and too absorbed by the Internet and their phones.\u201d
\n\u201cI believe young people have shown far more sharpness, capability, and wisdom than previous generations,\u201d Todorovic told AFP, adding that the key difference lies in how they access and process information.
\n\u201cThey genuinely feel they have a role to play in society, that their voices matter, and I believe this is crucial for the future of the region.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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