March 24, 2025. Students protest and the 1999 NATO bombing of Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

Student protests in Serbia are considered by a large majority of the mainstream media as ‘pro-liberal’ and anti-authoritarian. Although there are certainly students who support these values, the anniversary of the 1999 NATO bombing unfortunately uncovered another episode of an anti-Western disinformation campaign, reiterating a long-standing narrative promoted by the Serbian government...

Student protests in Serbia are considered by a large majority of the mainstream media as ‘pro-liberal’ and anti-authoritarian. Although there are certainly students who support these values, the anniversary of the 1999 NATO bombing unfortunately uncovered another episode of an anti-Western disinformation campaign, reiterating a long-standing narrative promoted by the Serbian government.

For instance, in spreading disinformation, the official online accounts of the student protest organizers, ‘Studenti u blokadi,’ posted anti-Western, pro-Serbian nationalist revisionist disinformation narrative by falsifying the number of Serbian victims while completely neglecting the vast majority of civilian casualties, who were predominantly ethnic Albanians1. For instance, they claim that 3,500 Serbs were killed during the NATO bombing, even though the actual number of those killed by NATO bombs was the following2: 

•   451 civilians (217 Albanians, 204 Serbs, and 30 Roma, Montenegrins, and Bosniaks)
•   276 members of the VJ/MUP RS
•   29 members of the KLA

As a matter of fact, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia adjudged the highest military and political echelon of Serbia being part of a Joint Criminal Enterprise (JCE). The goal of a JCE in Kosovo, as determined by the ICTY, was to consolidate Serbian control over Kosovo by forcibly removing ethnic Albanians through crimes such as murder, deportation, persecution, and other inhumane acts. This concept was central to the prosecution of Serbian leaders, including Slobodan Milošević, Vojislav Šešelj, and senior officials, which found that Serbian political, military, and police leadership orchestrated systematic attacks on Albanian civilians in 1999 during the Kosovo War3.

This anti-Western disinformation would certainly not become widely popular if there were no media outlets that affirmatively and without a critical viewpoint broadcast it. For instance, a major Serbian cable channel, TV N1 Info, which live-streamed the student protest in front of the Old General Staff Military Building in downtown Belgrade on March 24, 2025, allowed interviewed students to spread anti-NATO-EU disinformation, such as:

• widespread anti-NATO narrative on ammunition with depleted uranium4.

• Visible anti-EU-NATO flags event though the protests were announced as “apolitical”, etc.

What is unfortunate is that a large percentage of so-called “pro-Western” activists, aspirants for political positions, and NGOs are still portraying student protests in a rosy light. There is still hope that students in Serbia and Serbian citizens with adequate education and integrity will stand up against these detrimental developments.

  1. Studenti u blokadi: March 24, 2025, https://x.com/studentblokade/status/1903951060152050134 ↩︎
  2. Humanitarian Law Center, Belgrade, March 24, 2022, Kosovo, 20.3 – 20. 6. 1999: žrtve VJ, MUP Srbije i OVK ↩︎
  3. “Convictions for Kosovo crimes upheld for four senior Serbian officials,” Jan. 23, 2014, https://www.icty.org/x/file/About/Reports%20and%20Publications/ICTYDigest/2014/icty_digest_139_en.pdf. ↩︎
  4. “Opinion on the Environmental and Health Risks Posed by Depleted Uranium,” Scientific Committee on Health and Environmental Risks (SCHER), May 18, 2010, https://ec.europa.eu/health/scientific_committees/opinions_layman/depleted-uranium/documents/depleted_uranium.pdf ↩︎