By Christian Edwards | CNN
Two weeks later mass shootings rocked their country, Serbs have handed in more than 15,000 weapons, more than 2,500 explosive devices and hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition as part of a month-long amnesty announced by the government.
Eighteen people were killed and 21 injured in May in two shootings in as many days. At Vladislav Ribnikar Primary School in Belgrade, a 13-year-old boy opened fire on his companions – allegedly using two of his father’s guns – killed seven girls, a boy and a security guard. A 10-year-old girl injured in the attack died on Monday, bringing the number to 10.
The next day, a 21-year-old gunman wielding an automatic weapon killed eight people and wounded 14 in the town of Dubona, south of the capital. Despite having one of the highest rates of gun ownership in the world, mass shootings like this are extremely rare in Serbia. Many could barely comprehend the back-to-back tragedies. “It has never happened like this,” said Zvonimir Ivanovic, a professor at the University of Criminal Investigation and Police Studies in Belgrade.
In response to the attacks, President Aleksandr Vučić announced a series of bold measures, aimed at no less than what he called the “almost total disarmament” of the country.
But while the announcement of an ambitious gun amnesty was praised abroad, at home, Vučić’s actions have been seen as little reassurance.
Since the shootings, what started as candlelight vigils because the killings have turned into full-scale protests against the government, with what is expected to be the largest yet, set to take place on Friday evening, not just in Belgrade but across the country.
And anger is directed not just at guns but at the “culture of violence” — from iron-fisted political discourse to the glorification of criminals — over which the government has prevailed, critics say .
“The streets are calling us,” opposition leader Zdravko Ponos tweeted Friday morning ahead of planned protests.
“Serbia must break with its past”
When Francis O’Donnell arrived in the Balkans in 2000, serving at the United Nations, “the whole region was awash in weapons,” he said.
He moved to Belgrade as the United Nations Resident Coordinator for Serbia shortly after the fall of Slobodan Milosevic, the former president of Serbia and later of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, in whose government Vučić served . When Yugoslavia broke up, “there was a whole influx of weapons coming into the hands of various militia groups fighting for one cause or another,” O’Donnell said.
It is not clear how many weapons are in Serbia. But according to 2018 Small Arms Survey, the country ranks third in the world for gun ownership per capita, behind the United States and Yemen, and tied with Montenegro. The survey estimates there are 2.7 million guns in Serbia, with less than half of them registered with the government.
Although O’Donnell said much has improved in the country since the breakup of Yugoslavia, gun ownership has proved sticky. Some of the reasons for this are benign. Because of Serbia’s strong hunting tradition, many families have “a small arsenal” of weapons, he said. Shots are often taken during wedding and birthday celebrations. Most people simply inherited the weapons of their parents and grandparents, remnants of the kind of violence that no longer plagues the region.
Other reasons are less benign. Serbia has the highest levels of organized crime in Europe, according to the Global Organized Crime Index. While the two “gratuitous” acts of violence that shocked the country this month were unprecedented, O’Donnell said, other types of violence are more banal. For these reasons, he does not believe that “it is feasible to disarm the population”, despite Vučić’s determination.
In announcing the amnesty, Vučić appeared to respond with a swiftness that made the slowness of other countries that have faced similar tragedies far more regularly than Serbia appear negligent. When the month-long amnesty ends, those found in possession of illegal guns will face tougher penalties, including longer jail terms. His decision to act was praised by many abroad.
But while Vučić’s tone was full of urgency, it was lacking in other ways, some domestic observers said. “The president … used offensive language, an unacceptable tone and a vocabulary devoid of any compassion and desire to achieve catharsis after these violent events,” said the Belgrade Center for Security Policy, a group of independent reflection, in a statement to CNN.
“Justice will be served for the little monster and the biggest monster,” Vučić told reporters on May 5, referring to the boy accused in the first shooting and his father. He wrongly claimed the second shooter was wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with neo-Nazi symbols. Much of the initial debate focused on lowering the age of criminal responsibility to allow for more severe punishments for the first shooter. In what the Center for Security Policy in Belgrade described as the “most controversial measure”, the Ministry of the Interior required all schools to make a list of children who are “at risk of committing violence” or who “present antisocial behavior”.
Meanwhile, when thousands of people began gathering for vigils at the elementary school, Vučić was not among them. Only one member of his government attended, the Minister of Health. “We haven’t seen an immediate and visible expression of sympathy and reaching out to the people most affected — normal, civilized, social behavior,” O’Donnell said.
“Serbia Against Violence”
Since the shootings, tens of thousands of Serbs have taken to the streets in marches led by the opposition “Serbia Against Violence”, demanding the resignation of several government ministers. The Minister of Education has already resigned. The interior minister is under intense pressure to do the same. Vučić has even promised to hold parliamentary elections in September.
Public anger has also been directed at TV shows. Pro-government Pink TV’s most popular reality show features Zvezdan Slavnic, a convicted murderer and drug dealer, one of many criminals who have featured prominently in Serbian media. Nearly 440,000 people have signed a request asking that two official television stations lose their licenses for broadcasting violent reality shows.
Faced with this public demand for a softening of the political culture, Vučić has not seemed sure how to respond. Regular language doesn’t seem to work. “The president is organizing a protest against a protest against violence,” Ponos, the opposition leader, tweeted. “Man, get up!”
At a press conference on Thursday, Vučić warned those preparing for Friday’s protests: “You think that by occupying buildings or roads you will get something, you will get nothing and you will never get it. This is what I guarantee. This is the which I have repeated 10 years in a row”.
Despite the president’s tough talk, the protests have already softened some of Belgrade’s harsh exteriors. A mural of Ratko Mladic, the “Butcher of Bosnia” condemned of orchestrating a campaign of ethnic cleansing in Srebrenica in 1995, the worst massacre to occur in Europe since World War II, has long stood proudly on one of the city’s walls. Activists have previously faced criminal charges for defacing it. Whenever the mural is damaged, it is quickly restored, often by far-right nationalists.
This time, so far, has been different. A large red heart painted on Mladic’s face shortly after the shots were held in place. By Friday, the mural had been completely removed, replaced by the message: “Turn on your brain. Turn off Pink TV.” Murals of Russian President Vladimir Putin, a close ally of Vučić, have also been defaced.
“This is the changing face of Belgrade,” O’Donnell said. “Murals depicting war criminals as heroes are disappearing and being replaced by symbols of love and expressions of compassion.”
