Serbian authorities using spyware to illegally surveil activists, report finds

For those not upto date with modern Serbian political scene, we're living in soft dictatorship, all nation level media is under government control, pumping propaganda 24/7. They also control hooligan groups and are not shy of physical violence.

Things are really heating up in last few weeks. On November 1st a huge concrete canopy on Novi Sad railroad station collapsed, killing 15. Main problem was that station was reconstructed recently, politicians took a lot of pictures, used it for self promotion, but after this happened, they started hiding things, denying that canopy was touched at all during reconstruction, etc. Not to mention that reconstruction cost was around 65m euros, while it's suspected that majority of that money was stolen.

This created a lot of rage in public, there were protests, blocking traffic for 15 minutes at the exact time those people died... Government reacted to that by sending goons to provoke and fight with protestants. Some of protestants were beaten up, some arrested. This only increased resistance and now students started protesting, blocked Universities, asking for full documentation about station renovation, asking for release of arrested protestants, and arrest of goons who attacked and beat them.

Last time students created this kind of large protest it was a beginning of Milošević's fall. That's why Vučić fears students that much - they're not corrupted, they don't have dirty laundry that can be shown on media, they're not aligned to any political option, except they hate Vučić, they're just asking that institutions do their job without influence from the top (which is not the case for many years).

The full Amnesty International report can be read here: https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/eur70/8813/2024/en/