Original article (in Serbian) was published on 14/5/2025; Author: Marija Vučić, Milica Ljubičić
Over the past seven days, Alo’s journalists have continuously linked various individuals and organizations to the students participating in the blockade. We analyzed the past week on the web portal and in the print edition of this tabloid and observed a parade of “villains”. The goal, as always with tabloid reporting, is to discredit the student movement by any means necessary and to convince readers, without any evidence, that it is dishonorable, violent, and driven or supported by various centers of power. Here’s who was targeted today and in previous days.
Wednesday, May 14
The Croats – those who hate us the most
Anyone who picked up today’s issue of Alo could read that “Croatia is the biggest sponsor of the protesters”. According to the tabloid, these are the people who hate us the most.
How do they prove that Croats are actively working to boost protests in Serbia? They don’t.
They claim that a Croatian flag appeared among the crowd of citizens in Brussels who welcomed the students at the end of their relay marathon. That alone was enough to accuse Croatia of using students as “contractors for plans to destroy our country”.
However, the students themselves, as seen in footage from the marathon, carried Serbian flags and symbols of their universities, while they were greeted in Brussels by numerous people, including members of the diaspora, carrying various other flags.
Tuesday, May 13
The region united against Serbia
Today’s main alleged backer of the protests was Croatia, but the day before, it was the entire region.
This conclusion was drawn by following the Instagram account of Croatian singer Severina, who shared a video of the students being welcomed in Brussels. Among the crowd in the video, the flag of Bosnia and Herzegovina was also visible – something Alo finds unforgivable.
Monday, May 12
Alo’s brain teaser
It’s hard to imagine any protest in Serbia happening without the tabloids linking it to Albin Kurti. That’s exactly what happened on Monday, when they reported that the Kosovan Prime Minister had taken the lead of the protesters.
Alo once again managed to combine the uncombinable through some truly incredible mental acrobatics. A few days ago, Kurti criticized Vucic’s visit to Moscow and called on Brussels to create a plan for the accession of six Western Balkan countries into the EU and NATO, but without Serbia.
The tabloid didn’t like that, so it linked Kurti and the students running the relay marathon using a single keyword – Brussels – and thus accused them of coordinated action.
Sunday, May 11
Boris Bratina: Protests are a mix of everything
On Sunday, the newly appointed Minister of Information, Boris Bratina, joined Alo’s effort to discredit student demands. The minister stated that the “uprising in Serbia is not a student movement”, but rather the result of various actors.
“We simply have students who are different. Then you have teachers, for example. Then you have NGOs that are relentlessly supporting everything, even though they’re not visible on the scene. Then there are political parties and Western political influences. So, it seems like everyone is acting on their own, but in reality, they’re all working on the same job”, said Bratina, adding that “someone pushed the students forward”. It’s unclear who.
Saturday, May 10
Serbs, let’s unite against other Serbs
In a more freely written article titled “Who’s going to tell the students the colour revolution has failed”, Alo’s journalist pointed fingers at “some center” guiding the students, an undefined “foreign actor”, opposition media, and opposition leaders. The text elaborated extensively on how the people are tired of protests and blockades and how it’s high time for Serbs to stop being divided. We’ve already been divided, the text says, into partisans and Chetniks, protestors and loyalists, “because at our core we’re all the same”.
“The foreign actor decided to interfere again, and Serbs, being Serbs, once again took the bait”, the text concludes.
It’s unclear which “Serbs” the call for unity is directed at, or whether the students are considered “Serbs” at all. It seems that, for Alo, everyone protesting is actually the other kind of Serb – the less legitimate kind – who spread hatred under the baton of opposition leaders and media that “inflate false information”.
Friday, May 9
Descendants of former Ustashe
On Friday, pro-government tabloid journalists were mostly busy churning out stories about the grand Victory Day parade in Moscow and Vucic’s meeting with Putin. Still, Alo found room to once again take a swipe at the students.
In Strasbourg, several students attended a debate on Serbia in the European Parliament. The authorities and tabloids were particularly irritated by the speech of MEP Stephen Nikola Bartulica, who is Croatian.
According to Alo “descendants of Ustashe are lecturing the protesters, who applaud enthusiastically in an unimaginable act of submission”.
Even more than the usual narrative about Croats as villains, what really stood out was another story – about a spit roast in Loznica, where a protest was taking place.
Thursday, May 8
From start to finish – it’s always the Croats
Once again, the Croats are tangling things up for us. The previous Thursday, the role of villains was assigned to Croatian non-governmental organizations and students who went to them “for instruction”.
In reality, it was the Regional Activist School “Novi val” in Osijek, organized at the end of April by the Youth Initiative for Human Rights, a non-governmental organization from Croatia and Serbia. The invitation to the school stated that young people from the region would learn about the role of the media in war, anti-war resistance in the 1990s, the construction of war narratives, war legacy, ethnic relations, and political responsibility.
To Alo and other tabloids that covered it, the whole event seemed overly suspicious and conspiratorial, so they labelled it an “instruction session”. The article was written like a police report, with names typed in all capital letters.
It’s clear, writes Alo, that the students were using this very gathering to prepare the foundation of an election program they plan to present in the coming weeks — one that calls for early parliamentary elections, something the government and its allied media absolutely oppose.
