The Japan Times - Serbia's students demand state media chiefs resign after poll win

Sunday's historic victory by the student-backed list came after two years of protests sparked by the 2024 collapse of a railway station canopy in Novi Sad that killed 16 people.

Widely blamed on corruption, the disaster triggered some of Serbia's largest protests since the fall of strongman Slobodan Milosevic in 2000.

But throughout the protests, students regularly accused the publicly funded Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) of deliberately ignoring and denigrating demonstrators.

"We demand the resignations of the RTS director general, his deputy, the editors-in-chief responsible for news coverage and all news editors," the students said in a letter on Tuesday.

They accused RTS of selective reporting and failing to scrutinise officials.

"We consider it particularly unacceptable to uncritically report insulting remarks and messages targeting students and other citizens over their views," they said.

The broadcaster has yet to respond.

On election night, the broadcaster stopped covering events in Belgrade after Vucic conceded defeat, despite thousands celebrating into the early hours across several parts of the capital.

- 'Blind eye' -

Earlier, the editor-in-chief of a separate state media channel in northern Vojvodina province resigned, with a presenter also making an on-air apology.

"The public broadcaster has failed to fulfil its role for many years," a presenter said Monday.

"It turned a blind eye, kept silent."

Meanwhile, civil society groups and media associations urged regulators to revoke the licence of Informer TV, a private pro-Vucic station, citing repeated violations of broadcast rules.

Informer was infamous for vitriolic attacks on opposition figures, often launching expletive-laden smears against protesters.

In recent years, journalists and media watchdogs have reported increasing pressure on independent media, including threats, lawsuits and intimidation.

Late Monday, dozens of people, including the mother of a Novi Sad disaster victim, stormed Informer's premises and disrupted its broadcast.

In a video posted online, Dijana Hrka, whose son died in the station collapse, demanded an apology from Informer editor-in-chief Dragan Vucicevic.

But the student movement denied involvement in the incident, saying: "There is no place for conflict and violence".

With almost all votes counted, the student-backed list has won 52.8 percent of the vote, which will give it around 140 seats in the 250-seat parliament, enough to govern alone, according to the central election authority.

Final results await the expiry of a three-day appeals period, after which parliament will be constituted, and the leaderless movement will form a government, naming a prime minister.

T.Sasaki--JT