When Merima Avdic crossed a bridge over the Danube into Novi Sad last November, a Serbian flag clutched in her hand, fireworks burst overhead as tens of thousands of protesting students erupted in cheers, welcoming her and her fellow marchers.
Avdic had walked more than 400 kilometers (249 miles) from the University of Novi Pazar in Serbia’s Muslim-majority Sandzak region, joining what has become one of the country’s largest and longest-running protests in decades. The demonstrations were sparked by the collapse of a railway station roof a year earlier.
Sixteen people were killed in the disaster, fueling nationwide calls for the government to resign amid accusations of corruption and a lack of accountability. Many say those failures set the stage for the tragedy in Novi Sad.
Government officials have rejected claims that state graft led to substandard construction.
Joining the thousands in Novi Sad marked a defining moment for Avdic, a student from Serbia’s small Bosniak Muslim minority who wears a hijab.
Upon her arrival in Novi Sad, she said she finally felt that she belonged in Serbia.
“During the walk, I was stunned to see so many people who supported us and came out to tell us that we are not alone,” Avdic said. “A gentleman from Kosjeric gave us his flag because we didn’t have one. With it, we marched into Novi Sad.”
Protests unite ethnicities and age groups
Muslims make up about 4% of Serbia’s population, with more than half living in the Sandzak region, where Avdic was born. They have lived there for generations, including through decades of war, Serb nationalism and ethnic conflict that tore apart the former Yugoslavia.
Protests that have swept across Serbia over the past year have been led by students and have united Serbians of different ethnicities and age groups, bound by a shared push for reform and an end to corruption in the Balkan country.
In few places has this new sense of unity been more apparent than at the State University of Novi Pazar, where a community that once faced prejudice and state repression now feels part of a broader movement for change.
Founded in 2007, the university, the first in the region, gave the Bosniak minority access to local, state-funded higher education for the first time. But wider national acceptance came more slowly.
Avdic said she felt that shift during the journey to Novi Sad. The students even spent a night at the medieval Orthodox Studenica monastery, where they were served a halal breakfast, something she said would have been unimaginable 25 years ago.
Located between Bosnia, Montenegro and Serbia, the region’s Muslim population generally practices Islam less strictly, with relatively few women wearing hijabs, and has long felt marginalized. In 1991, 99% of voters in Sandzak backed autonomy from Serbia in a nonbinding referendum.
“For the past 30 years, Novi Pazar was sidelined. People lived in fear and never stood up,” Avdic said. “I am proud of myself and my colleagues for breaking down prejudice and showing that we want to live in this country.”
A photo taken at a protest in Kraljevo, in central Serbia, captured Nadija Delimedjac, a student from Novi Pazar wearing a hijab, alongside Sava Nikolic from Cuprija wearing a traditional Serbian hat. The image went viral on social media and became a symbol of student-led unity.
A yearlong blockade of Novi Pazar University by students that halted lectures ended just over a week ago following the replacement of the university’s rector and the reversal of the expulsion of 200 students punished for anti-government activism.
The protest outlasted those at most other universities in Serbia and continued even after authorities cut heating to occupied buildings.
“I am stunned by the sacrifice they have made,” said Delimedjac’s father, Muamer, referring to the march to Novi Sad. “Diversity is our fortune.”
