Written by Aleksandra Bosnić Đurić
Within the European landscape, a uniquely surreal phenomenon called “Ćaciland” (Ćaciland comes from ćaci, a misspelled and illiterate version of students) is more than just a fenced-off area filled with tents, portable toilets, and regime supporters, some paid, some volunteers, who claim to be “defending Serbia”. It’s hard to shake the feeling that this bizarre scene, which passersby say even has its distinctive smell, feels like a twisted parody of the story of Noah’s Ark. Most of us know that tale: Noah’s Ark was built under divine command to save Noah, his family, and a selection of animals from the Flood.
On the other side of Ćaciland’s so-called “safe zone”, a space fashioned in the image of a higher authority (in this case, state-sponsored intervention), lies a very different Serbia. One that hasn’t abandoned its path toward Europe, even as a relentless cycle of troubling events unfolds at a dizzying pace. Inside the ark of Ćaciland, there’s a strange mix: “students who want to study,” elderly loyalists willing to sell themselves for a daily wage, a few thugs not yet deployed to other city streets, and the occasional latecomer hoping to secure a position or title, even as the curtain is already falling on the show.
Meanwhile, the images and stories we hear about days later, or sometimes in real time, push the absurdity to extremes, challenging the idea that this version of Serbia, battered by repression, ugliness, and authoritarianism, is truly ready to integrate into the European Union.
That is, if and when authoritarianism and state capture are ever dismantled. Because in this Serbia shaped by the regime, it’s considered “normal” for the Ćaciverse to exist alongside semi-conscious Marija, slumped on the floor of a police van as she’s transferred from custody to a prison hospital. Or alongside Lazar, embraced by his parents, who rejoice that he’s been granted house arrest with an ankle monitor, seen as a more “lenient” punishment. And all those people who wept outside the court in Novi Sad that day…
Then there’s Lado, welcomed home by his wife and children as a police officer escorts him to house arrest. And the three men, Mladen, Srđan, and Davor, whom we picture at the moment they’re told they won’t be getting ankle monitors, and will remain in detention at Klisa, sharing space with bedbugs a while longer. Then there’s Davor, a volunteer with the Solidarity Kitchen, whose nose was broken by a fellow inmate during a prison yard walk, who now struggles to breathe and sleep under heavy medication. At the same time, his terrified parents wait helplessly outside.
After this long stretch of agony, punctuated by fleeting relief, because Marija survived her hunger and thirst strike and is now safely in her family’s arms, and Lazar and Lado are too, the president called on his supporters to block the courthouse. When legal experts pointed out that this amounted to a coup attempt, he brushed it off as an emotional outburst. Yet he still hailed as “heroes” those who were “just” defending their party offices and beliefs, beliefs that led them, in the name of some “higher” ideals, to break a female student’s jaw.
Almost simultaneously, the former Prime Minister, who resigned after the incident and was previously the mayor of Novi Sad, the European Capital of Culture, threatened citizens by saying, “Now you’ll see what a disturbed public looks like”.
Following these threats and calls for party mobilization to defend their so-called "hero," the Free University has urged all domestic and international human rights organizations and advocates for the freedom of peaceful assembly to monitor developments in Novi Sad over the weekend closely.
“In blatant violation of the constitutional separation of powers, it is the President of the Republic and the head of the ruling party who are now calling for the court to be blocked. Since students have already been blocking the court for nine days, we can only interpret these statements as threats and a possible excuse for another attack on the students (...). We call on the United Nations missions, the Council of Europe, the OSCE, and all other international human rights monitors in Serbia to be present on Monday to send a clear message that violence against students is unacceptable”.
At the mass protest titled "Thugs are not heroes – Hands off our students!", the message was clear: not all sides are the same. We reject false equivalence and we reject violence.
In Serbia’s political multiverse, Ćaciland stands out as a carefully crafted construct, designed to fill the void left by the (un)expected decline in support for the authoritarian regime. This intervention is nothing more than a political fantasy, something that, by definition, belongs to the strange realm of objective subjectivity. It’s a projection through which its creator tries to bridge the growing divide between himself and a society that, until recently, offered him enough backing.
The phantasmagoria of Ćaciland, this mysterious enclave tucked right in the heart of the capital between the National Assembly and the Presidency, is most obvious in the fact that even the project’s initiator can never fully convince himself of its reality. Hence, the rising anxiety at the top of the regime.
They know, deep down, that “students who just want to study” are not real.
They know that the “support” from people bused in for rallies isn’t real either.
They know that a Serbia like this has no place in the European Union.
And they know that the metaphor of a Noah’s Ark that will miraculously save them is pure fantasy.
The only thing that’s real now is the flood.
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