The teacher from Nis is punished for covering the “graph when the army returns to Kosovo”

The ruling party in Serbia, the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), condemned the move and named the activists of the May Green Front (ZLF) from Nis, who participated in the removal of the graph, as “auto-sovinists”.

The nationalist slogan “when the military returns to Kosovo” is written throughout Serbia, while civil society activists have removed these slogans even in the previous years, arguing that such a message spreads intolerance and promotes conflicts.

The Serbian military and police withdrew from Kosovo in the summer of 1999, following NATO's intervention, which was undertaken because of the war crimes Serbian forces committed against Albanian civilians during the war.

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This graph calls for war and conflict. This message brings us back in the years '{0}'90s, at a time when Serbia was losing new lives and territories”, Free Europe Radio (REL) Dejan Petrovic, 54, teacher at Nis School “Uciel Tasa”.

Petrovic adds that the graphite in question was written in the school yard several years ago and that he, in some cases, has suggested to the school principal that such a message is not appropriate and must be removed, but responsible authorities have not reacted.

I told the director at one point that if she wasn't able to find a way to do this, I would do it myself at my own expense. She didn't stop me, she just kept quiet. I understood this as a sign of approval”, Petrovic says.

Along with his colleague Rastislav Dinaq from the Green Left Front, Dejan Petrovic over the past weekend he painted the white wall where the graphite was written.

A few days later, municipal police officers came to the school and told him to go to the headquarters in Nis, where a criminal outcry would be handed over.

“Mu said that the person who had delivered the confession was an anonymous citizen who had filed the denouncing that I had painted without the approval of director”, he says.

Free Europe Radio has attempted to contact the director of the School Begin “Uciel Tasa”, Radmila Krstic, but it was not available for conversation and did not even respond to the SMS messages sent to them.

Radio Free Europe has also been addressed to Nis's municipal police with the question of how much criminal allegations of the same action have been handed over during 2025, as well as whether the gains “when the army returns to Kosovo” are treated as spreading hatred, discrimination and calling for conflict, but until the publication of this text by this institution have returned no response.

To remove profits from public spaces responsible are local government municipal services in Serbia, while for the facades of private objects responsible are their owners.

What do they say from the ruling party in Serbia?

The Serbian Progressive Party has condemned the action of activists from Nis, the Green Left Front.

The leader of the ruling party and former Prime Minister Milos Vuchev said it is about a “scandalous action” of people who “gar in auto-sovinism”.

“HOw all that is Serbian, hate our army and Kosovo and Metohija”, Vuchev said through a video message published on X.

Serbian police and the Yugoslav Army withdrew from Kosovo in the summer of 1999 after the signing of the Kumanovo Agreement, thus ending the NATO war and bombings on the former Yugoslavia.

Nine years later, Kosovo declared independence, which official Belgrade does not recognise.

Before the International Court in The Hague, top Serbian officials have been sentenced for war crimes against Albanians in Kosovo.

Has the Law for Education been violated in Serbia?

In the case of removal of graphite from the school yard, the SNS Committee in Nis has indicated that it has accused the Green Left Front of violating the Law on the foundations of the educational and educational system, which prohibits party political activity in educational institutions.

“I call on organs to react to this violation of the law, and I am also urging their working organisations to react, because it is unacceptable for teachers and education workers to participate in a political party action”, the head of the SNS's Nis municipal council group, Uros Radulovic, has stressed.

Teacher Dejan Petrovic denies he has violated the law and stresses that the SNS is trying to intimidate all those who might dare to do the same.

We were in the school yard, but over the weekend, when there were no students and no learning. We did something that benefits not only children, but the entire school community”, Petrovic says.

“State Project”

Graphics titled “when the army returns to Kosovo” surfaced throughout Serbia at the beginning of 2023. The message with military symbols was written for several days by unknown men on public and private facades, as well as on supporting walls along highways.

It's about a string from reprocessing a Serbian folk song. As anthropologist Ivan Cloviq has ascertained, verse “when the army returns to Kosovo” does not exist in the original form of song that they refer to those who write this slogan. It appears for the first time in 2011 in the book “Kosovo is the head of Lazar” of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Amfilohij Radovic.

Murals are not signed, but in a portal, which has been presented as the informal information portal of Cervena Ziesda fans, it is said that this verse has been painted in many places in Belgrade.

This is a state project. Such slogans can be found not only here in Nis, but also in other cities in Serbia, on highways, in many public places”, estimates Dejan Petrovic.

Actions Against Activists

Mural painting in residential buildings requires approval of residents living there, and if the object is protected, permission of the Institute for Protection of Cultural Monuments of Serbia is required.

Activists from several civil society organizations, including the CROKODIL Society, covered one of these walls in Belgrade's Slavia Square in February 2023. Before the action ended, municipal police went to the scene, who pronounced fines for activists.

Soon a wall appeared in the same location with the same message.

If you dare to remove the wall that says when the army returns to Kosovo, illegally placed in a public space, it is guaranteed that there will be reaction from the authorities if they catch you, and even from a number of citizens who react very aggressively. When that wall returns, it happens in the middle of the day, in front of the police and passersby”, says Vdalmir Arseniyevic of the CROKIDEL association for REL.

The Court for Anti-Wrath in Belgrade has handed down several release decisions for activists against whom municipal police had launched mural proceedings in Slavia. In two separate verdicts from July and November 2024, the court has estimated that no evidence has been proven that the accused committed violations.

Vdalmir Arseniyevic says these decisions should serve as encouragement not only to activists, but to all citizens.

If an illegally established graphite, with any content, appears on the facade of a building, citizens have not only the right to remove it. That's what we're trying to transmit to citizens. There's no service that's going to come off. That's what we should do by ourselves”, he says.

In addition to the graphs calling for the return of the military to Kosovo, the public space of Serbia can also be seen mares glorifying convicted war criminal Ratko Mladic.

One of the most prominent appeared on the Vegoseva Street in Belgrade at the end of July 2021, a month after being sentenced to life imprisonment by former Republika Srpska Army commander in The Hague for war crimes during Bosnia and Herzegovina.

All efforts by citizens and activists to remove it were unsuccessful because unknown authors, allegedly part of rightist groups and fans, returned it to its original state within hours.

After covering by activists in May 2023, the wall has no longer been made “changing”.

Nongovernmental Organisation Youth Initiative for Human Rights ( YIHR Serbia) in the same year has handed over 300 chants to municipal services in Serbia's ten cities and municipalities, demanding the removal of murals and graphs praising Mladic. /Periscope