LETTER FROM CENTRAL EUROPE

After 25 years in Serbia, the 2025 edition of the renowned Exit music festival, which opens Thursday, July 10, in Novi Sad, may be the last to take place in the country. "We cannot accept operating in a country where our fundamental freedom of expression is called into question," said Dusan Kovacevic, the festival's director. Each year, tens of thousands of attendees gather for several days of concerts in the fortress overlooking the Danube in Serbia's second largest city.

"Ever since we supported the fight of Serbian students for justice and freedom, all our funding has been cut," said the forty-something. The festival announced in mid-June that it was being pushed "into exile" due to "enormous government pressure" following its support for the broad anti-corruption protest movement that has swept this country of 6.6 million people since November 2024. The accidental collapse of the canopy at Novi Sad train station, 100 kilometers northwest of Belgrade, which killed 16 people, triggered the protest movement.

Since this tragedy, massive demonstrations have taken place across the country against nationalist president Aleksandar Vucic, in power since 2017, who has been accused of allowing corruption to flourish. The government has tried to suppress the protests by increasingly authoritarian means: arrests have become more common, as have sanctions against cultural institutions that have shown their support for the movement by sharing what has become its symbol: a bloodied red hand.

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