When Igor Djordjević took over as chairman of the parents’ council at the Vladislav Ribnikar school in Belgrade, he never dreamed that his post would force him to attend funerals and talks with senior prosecutors and the head of government. But since 13-year-old seventh grader Kosta K. shot the school warden, his history teacher and seven classmates in his school on May 3 and injured six others, nothing in Serbia is the same as before. The fact that tens of thousands of people took to the streets again at the weekend to protest against the government of President Aleksandar Vučić cannot be explained without the events of early May. But one after anonther.
Ribnikar School is an elite school just a few hundred meters from the Parliament and Presidential Palace. “What’s special about the school isn’t just the excellent teaching,” says Djordjević. “The school offers French lessons from the 1st grade and also teaches half of mathematics or biology in French.”
Seven years ago, Igor Djordjević and his wife Snezana decided that daughter Eva would go to the Ribnikar-should go to school. Djordjević joined the parents’ council and took over as chairman at the beginning of the 2022/23 school year. “In all the years there hasn’t been a single serious incident that required the police to get involved,” says Djordjević.
The killer is considered a nerd who wants to be the best in all subjects
On the morning of May 3, daughter Eva is not at school but at home. She is to fly to the Turkish capital Ankara with classmates and teachers for an exchange. Djordjević is standing in the door when his daughter calls him back – something terrible has happened. “In the beginning, we thought that criminals were shooting, not in school, but next to it,” says Djordjević. “Then the news came that the school guard had been shot – and about all the other victims.”
14-year-old Eva knows Kosta K., like him she is in the 7th grade. K. is considered a nerd and wants to be the best in all subjects. Otherwise she doesn’t notice anything special about Kosta K. But since the mass murder at the Ribnikar School, which was followed on May 4 by the 21-year-old Uros B. in three villages south of Belgrade, Serbia has been wondering how these acts could have happened.
Anger after the fact: huge protests in Belgrade last Friday.
(Photo: ANDREJ ISAKOVIC/AFP)
Above all, the murder at school shocked the country. Tens of thousands of Serbs, many of them in opposition to the autocratic President Aleksandar Vučić, protested against violence – and against the government – in Belgrade and other cities, most recently on Friday in one of the largest demonstrations in decades. They demand the resignation of the interior minister and the head of the security service, the dismissal of the management of the public television RTS and a ban on two television channels: Pink and Happy TV are not only the mouthpiece of President Vučić, but also maintain reality shows in which, according to many Serb violence is glorified and stars range from criminals to convicted murderers.
But what are the reasons for the killing sprees? Serbia has one of the highest gun ownership rates in the world. 2018 estimated the Small Arms Survey their number among the 6.7 million Serbs to 2.72 million, a top place after the USA, Yemen or Montenegro. But unlike in the US, for example, the number of violent crimes involving weapons is comparatively low. In 2022, around 30 Serbs died from firearms, so the SEESAC database.
There has been violence in the schools before, but no murders
Of course, many Serbian schools are also rough. Jasna Janković has been head of the Serbian Teachers’ Association for eight years, which has a good 27,000 teachers in half of all schools. “Violence was present before,” she says. “In November 2019, for example, we protested against violence in schools after a violent seventh-grader himself attacked the school principal in the small town of Sremska Mitrovica, inflicting serious head injuries on him. He also hit his classmates – and he was just one of many.”
On December 1, 2022 the teachers’ association demonstrated again – this time in 47 cities – under the motto “Stop the violence” after three students attacked a teacher at a vocational school in Trstenik: The first pulled the chair out from under the teacher’s butt, the second filmed the attack, and the third broadcast it via live stream on the Internet. “All three students have not been expelled from school,” said Janković.
As a teacher at the Branko Copic primary and secondary school in Belgrade, Marina Vidojević has also experienced violence both among students and by parents against teachers. When she gave a student an A, the worst grade in Serbia, his father called her “zero, rubbish” and threatened to run her over with his car. Association chairwoman Janković reports on the consequences of the Corona crisis: “Many children who were in lockdown and only on the internet find it difficult to classify. In many classes interest has decreased, antisocial behavior and aggression have increased, as do all my colleagues report to the schools.”
However, the teachers and parents’ representative Djordjević agree: Weapons, let alone firearms, have not played a role in Serbian schools so far. And Serbia has not experienced any killing sprees like at US schools, like in 2002 at the Gutenberg High School in Erfurt or in 2009 at the Albertville Realschule in Winnenden.
There are hundreds of thousands of illegal weapons in Serbia – despite strict laws
Serbia already has strict gun laws, but there are hundreds of thousands of illegal guns. But the mass killings of May 3rd and 4th were carried out with legally registered weapons. Vladimir K., father of Kosta K., a well-known Belgrade radiologist and marksman, apparently took his son to shooting ranges for training and kept his pistols in a locked gun cabinet as required. But his son knew the combination of his father’s safe, took two pistols out of it on May 3 and set off for mass murder, according to Serbia’s interior minister.
K. first shot the school guard at the main entrance and two classmates, then he made his way to his class 7/2 room, where history teacher Tetjana Stevanović was teaching – she had apparently given him a bad grade. K. shot the teacher, then five other classmates, mostly girls.
After his arrest, rumors spread that he had been bullied by classmates. Eva Djordjević tells her father Igor that this is fabricated. Kosta K. was not particularly popular, but was invited to birthday parties. Igor Djordjević is also part of a working group on preventing violence at the school. “There was no report of bullying or any incident in which Kosta K. was involved.” Dordjevic suspects that K. was under a lot of pressure from his parents to be the best. “He shot a number of classmates who were as good as or better than him.”
Djordjević maintains daily contact with experts from the ministries and the school board. When he die Southgerman newspaper meets in a Belgrade restaurant, he has spent hours at the chief prosecutor’s office. “It is important for us and our children that the killer is not released and threatens security.” At the age of 13, Kosta K. is not criminally responsible and, according to President Vučić, is in a psychiatric institution. “We demand that we officially know what will happen to the killer. And we worry that if he is not held accountable, someone else will use the killer as a model.”
“Police officers with guns in schools do not solve the problem of violence in society.”
The parents of the Ribnikar school “want to be non-political and seek neither the support of the government nor the opposition,” says Djordjević. In addition to a complete renovation of the school during the summer break, the parents are also demanding full public information about the history and course of the massacre. They also demand that state officials be held accountable who, after the mass murder, made known the names of the potential victims noted by Kosta K. as well as the names of the dead. These demands are highly political: Those who announced names on May 3 and violated laws on data protection, for example, are above all Belgrade’s police chief and President Vučić. Prime Minister Ana Brnabić met with Djordjević and, according to him, promised to meet all demands.
The head of government has set up a working group against violence in schools. Teachers’ Association President Janković expects little from this. “Such a working group was set up in 2019. It met once – maybe the new one will meet twice.” As part of a weapons amnesty, 30,000 weapons have been officially handed over in Serbia since the massacres, and President Vučić ordered 1,200 police officers into Serbian schools. “But police officers with guns in schools don’t solve the problem of violence in society,” says Janković. “I never thought that we would have school shootings like in the US. But now it has happened. We have crossed a line – and we can only pray that such a tragedy does not happen again.”
In front of Ribnikar School, the asphalt is covered with thousands of withered flowers, wax from burnt candles and poems commemorating the murdered students. They were buried three days after the massacre. On May 15, another girl who was shot by K. died in hospital. The school has been open again since May 10th. “The school management and we parents primarily listened to the advice of school psychologists and other experts, who advised bringing the children back to school as quickly as possible,” says Igor Djordjević.
Instead of lessons, the focus is on discussions with psychologists and teachers, who are too afraid can stay at home. “But a few days after the reopening, more than 90 percent of the children came back to school. My daughter is also going to classes again. We talk to her a lot and do things together. But children want the company of other children. And the Ribnikar school is her second home.”