BELGRADE – Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić spent eight hours in Ljubovija, meeting with citizens of Western Serbia, including activists against lithium mining.
Representatives of the Australian-British company Rio Tinto, led by director Jakob Stausholm, also attended the Sept. 7 meeting, which was broadcast by two national TV stations. Vučić tried to respond to the controversy and the mass protests organized last summer across the country against Rio Tinto’s Jadar Valley lithium mine project and land exploitation in Western Serbia. The $2.4 billion project to exploit lithium deposits in the Jadar Valley (one of Europe’s largest) could cover 90% of Europe’s current lithium needs and make Rio Tinto one of the world’s leading lithium producers.
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Instead of starting a debate among institutions and experts, Vučić and Stausholm decided to “descend” among the people. The meeting was exhausting and confusing, with comments spanning from fierce criticism to one citizen inviting the president to his house for a glass of grappa.
After many hours of live broadcast, however, everybody was left as uncertain and in doubt as they were before. It is still unclear what will happen to the Jadar project and what the guarantees of ecological safety will actually be.
At the end of the meeting with citizens, Vučić said that the project will be a great challenge, a tug of war, adding that he fears that Rio Tinto may invest less money in environmental protection in order to make more profits. His only interest, the president stressed, will be the health of the local population.
“If the citizens are not protected, the project will not be carried out, period,” said Vučić, who had already blocked the extracting project, but then changed his mind.
Arm wrestling
The protests against Rio Tinto and lithium mining in Western Serbia have been going on for several years now. After local elections in June 2024, the Constitutional Court annulled a 2022 government decree suspending the Jadar project due to mass protests. With its ruling, the court gave green light to Rio Tinto to proceed with the environmentally dangerous, yet extremely lucrative, project.
A few days after the court’s decision, on July 19, Vučić hosted German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and European Commission Vice President Maroš Ševčović at the Raw Materials Summit in Belgrade. A memorandum of understanding was signed between the EU and Serbia on the strategic partnership on critical raw materials, battery production chains and electric vehicles.
“The Good Lord has allowed the much sought-after mineral and one of the most important raw materials to be found in this country. Maybe it should be used, maybe it is a fortune for this country,” Scholz said.
The activist witch hunt
Vučić’s interest in this controversial investment is shown by the fact that following the mass protests throughout Serbia, the hunt for citizens who oppose the project has begun.
According to the environmental movement Kreni Promeni (Start the Change), between 30 and 60 activists and citizens who protested were questioned by the police. The investigative portal CINS recorded 30 arrests, informational interviews with the police, confiscation of laptops and cell phones and searches in the apartments of citizens who oppose the lithium extraction project.
All activists were interrogated on suspicion of subverting the constitutional order.
The case of Aleksandar Matković is emblematic. A researcher at the Institute of Economic Sciences in Belgrade, he received death threats after the publication of an analysis of lithium mining plans. According to media reports, the police and the BIA [Serbian intelligence service] searched the apartments of some of Matković’s friends.
All activists were interrogated on suspicion of subverting the constitutional order. In response to the protesters’ slogan, the website Kopaćemo (We will extract) was created, where photos and names of so-called “environmental terrorists” were published. And that is not the only list of this kind.
Blacklists
On Aug. 25, Croatian singer Severina Vučković was stopped at the border with Serbia ahead of a scheduled performance in Belgrade. The police searched her car and questioned her about her views on the crimes in Srebrenica, those in Croatia during Operation Oluja in 1995 and about her support for protests against lithium mining. Serbian Interior Minister Ivica Dačić said the singer was questioned “on the basis of verbal offenses.”
Aleksandar Vulin, Serbian Deputy Prime Minister, candidly admitted that while he was Minister of Police and head of the BIA, he had drawn up lists of people who should be banned from entering Serbia. Vulin added that he regrets not having devoted more time to the lists, “because he sees how much scum has been unjustly excluded from them”.
It is clear that, in addition to the lists of foreigners, there are also lists of Serbian citizens. Milica Ranđelović, moderator of the Facebook page Aktivizam, was stopped at Belgrade airport while on vacation and questioned about her activities on social media. Her phone was confiscated on suspicion of inciting the violent overthrow of the constitutional order.
The case of Sofija Todorović is also dramatic. President of the Youth Initiative for Human Rights, she has been stopped at the border 10 times in the past two months. The detentions and searches lasted from one to four hours on Sept. 5, while she was returning from Aachen, Germany, where she received the Aachen Peace Prize on behalf of her organization.
An unlikely coalition
Rio Tinto is not the first controversial company that the Serbian leadership, headed by Vučić, has brought to the country. And the project to build a lithium mine on fertile land in Western Serbia is not the first problematic investment in the country. But protest has never been this widespread.
So why has the Jadar project caused so much controversy? The explanation lies in the fact that some inhabitants of Mačva, the area where lithium extraction is planned, have been protesting for a long time and are supported by many environmental organizations, opposition parties and part of the public opinion.
There is a fear that Serbia could become an ecological dump that profits foreign investors.
Experts are strongly divided on lithium mining. After many technical debates, often incomprehensible to regular citizens, only one thing is clear: People fear losing their land and being displaced. Similar projects are being announced in other parts of Serbia, and there is a fear that the entire country, as was heard during the protests, could become an ecological dump that foreign investors profit from.
For Vučić, the most politically dangerous factor is that the opposition to Rio Tinto has brought together people from across Serbia and from groups one would hardly ever imagined would start cooperating: from environmental activists to opposition parties, from lobbyists to the academic community, from citizens opposed to the EU to those who are simply worried about the future.
The many years of populist rhetoric and marginalization of institutions, led by Vučić, have backfired. Now, the government is facing a political climate where there is no dialogue or healthy public debate. It is a great din, where everything boils down to propaganda, either for or against a multinational, for or against mining in Serbia.
