On Wednesday the 11th of December 2013, an unknown till then student organization planned to discuss the hazards of GMO foods in the premises of the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade. Among others, fascist Miroslav Živković, coordinator of the campaign “For Serbia without GMO” of the nationalist clerical political party “Dveri Movement”, as well as journalist Biljana Đorović, sympathizer of the neo-Nazi group “Obraz”, were invited to speak.
On the day of discussion, students of the Faculty of Philosophy released an open letter demanding from the administration to prevent the participation of right-wingers and the promotion of their ideology, but the administration failed to respond on that request, so a group of students took action. During their protest, which lasted around 30 minutes, they carried placards and informed visitors about the discussion’s political background. Students were soon faced with the aggressive reaction of visitors who wanted to stop the protest. Eventually, the discussion was held only after the ring-wing speakers left the building.
The university’s administration showed their acceptance towards extreme right-wingers, but this never came as a surprise. The new administration is obviously continuing the practice of the previous one, which never publicly denounced attacks of armed neo-Nazis on student strikers during protests and occupations for reduction of tuition fees, and also fueled lynch atmosphere in the mainstream media against their “disobedient” students. Far-righters already found support and organized their discussions on a couple of other faculties (Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, and the Faculty of Law), and it is well known that they have immediate ties with parts of the Serbian Orthodox Church and the “Serbian intellectual elite”.