As protests continue to shake Serbia, minority Hungarian and Slovak communities in the country’s northern Vojvodina region describe growing political pressure, shrinking autonomy, and a quiet exodus of youth. From Balkan Insight.
When one thinks about Serbia’s northern province of Vojvodina, images of vast plains, golden fields, and cheerful, rosy-cheeked villagers – like those portrayed in Slovak naive art – come to mind.
Recognized by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage, this form of naive art over the decades captured village weddings, snowy winter landscapes, and summer harvests – a simpler way of life, one embedded in small-scale agriculture and tight-knit communities.
While there are traces of that life still visible in Vojvodina today, much else has changed, especially since the beginning of mass student-led protests that flared up across Serbia following the deaths of 16 people when a canopy on a recently renovated train station in the city of Novi Sad collapsed in November 2024. A number of issues, already bubbling under the surface, burst into the open.
BIRN interviewed over a dozen people from both ethnic Slovak and Hungarian minorities in Vojvodina who spoke about the deepening polarization in their communities and the increasingly strong grip of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) over their lives.
The picture of peaceful life depicted in Slovak naive art was finally shattered last summer when an exhibition in the Slovak-majority town of Backi Petrovac, displaying photos of the student protests, was violently disrupted by masked men, both Serbian and ethnic Slovak, believed to be affiliated with SNS.
“Afterward, [the town] looked the same as during the Covid curfew,” Petra Castven, a 25-year-old philosophy student in Novi Sad, originally from Backi Petrovac, told BIRN. “There was no one in the streets, as if the end of the world had come.”
The incident in Backi Petrovac can be seen as part of a wider crackdown on the protestors in Serbia. Across the country, the media reported that people linked to the demonstrations have been attacked and their businesses vandalized. The ruling party has conducted mass firings of those who have either participated in the protests or refused to attend SNS counter-rallies. Businesses seen as supportive of protestors have faced state inspections and closures. Some police and army officials, perceived as not loyal enough, were replaced.
“The exhibition was the first time someone actually hit a [respected] war veteran in the face. It marked a new wave of violence on behalf of… the Serbian Progressive Party,” Ivan Bartos, a 31-year-old online marketer from Backi Petrovac who attended the exhibition and some protests, told BIRN.
Given the nationalist-populist government in Slovakia, the Slovak minority in Serbia could be forgiven for thinking that their request for support from Bratislava after the incident would be respected. But the Slovak coalition government of Prime Minister Robert Fico remained mostly silent, citing non-interference in the domestic politics of Serbia.
This attitude is mirrored by the government in Budapest. Despite pouring huge sums into Vojvodina’s Hungarian community, the province’s largest minority, its support comes with strings attached – loyalty to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party as well as SNS, the party of his friend and ally, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic.
The Promise of Autonomy
Vojvodina, Serbia’s northern province, often feels like a mosaic, with more than 25 ethnic groups speaking six official languages making up roughly 30 percent of the province’s population. The two largest ethnic minorities – Hungarian and Slovak – make up 13 percent and 2.3 percent of the region’s population, respectively.
Serbia’s minority protection framework is often praised in legal terms. National minorities are guaranteed rights to preserve their language and identity through education at minority language and cultural institutions.
The National Councils play a crucial role in this system. Created to protect and advance collective minority rights, these councils are elected by members of each recognized minority. They allow communities to self-govern, as well as shape and defend their own interests instead of relying only on majority institutions.
“The National Councils are the driving forces behind minority groups. They have consultative status and a say in local legislation,” said Ferenc Nemeth, a Budapest-based expert on the Balkans who is currently a Fulbright scholar at Georgetown University, explaining why even the Hungarian minority, which receives a lot of support from Hungary’s nationalist-populist government, sees its National Council as essential.
“I have positive thoughts about the Hungarian National Council – they do provide us rights,” said Izolda Papp, a young Hungarian student in Subotica. Two other ethnic Hungarian university students we spoke to in Novi Sad echoed this.
But for many Slovaks and Hungarians in Vojvodina, autonomy exists only on paper. In practice, they describe systematic pressures coming from the regime of Serbian President Vucic and his SNS.
Since SNS consolidated power nationally in 2012, critics say local minority institutions have increasingly aligned with ruling party structures. And political proximity, overlapping political agendas, and friendship between the three countries’ leaders – Vucic, Orban, and Fico – are exacerbating these trends.
The National Council for Slovaks is not viewed as positively as that for Hungarians. People BIRN spoke to in Kovacica, Backi Petrovac, and Padina – some of the towns with the largest Slovak communities – all agreed that elections to the council are based on an illusion of choice, and whomever they choose is likely to be a member of SNS.
This echoes issues previously reported by the Serbian media of local elections marred by voting pressure on public-sector employees, the misuse of public resources, and allegations about the organized “migration of voters”, vote-buying, and domination of the campaign by President Vucic.
The incident in Backi Petrovac followed earlier tensions during the May 2025 election for Matica Slovenska, the main cultural, scientific, and educational institution for the Slovak minority. Despite reported attempts by SNS-aligned figures to lock the doors and prevent the public from attending the vote, an independent candidate, Juraj Cervenak, won.
“When I won, a lot of my Serbian friends congratulated me, saying I beat Vucic. I said, people, I didn’t beat Vucic, we are just a small organization,” said Cervenak.
“What we need in Serbia is guaranteed parliament seats [for minorities] like they have in Croatia. When the parliamentary majority is slim, those representatives can influence decisions, that’s proper political leverage. Here, our National Councils are not independent, they are tied to SNS. Minority representatives should defend their communities,” he said.
Since 2018, the majority of representatives on the Hungarian National Council belong to the Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians (SVM), the strongest ethnic Hungarian party in Serbia, which is also a coalition partner of the ruling SNS and is seen as Orban’s partner party in Serbia.
Ahead of the last 2022 elections for the national councils, Zuzana Kalmar, who resigned from her post on the Hungarian National Council after it voted to ban a theater play in mid-2021, told Radio Free Europe that she believes that the councils are just an “extension of the political parties”.
“I was not pressured, I could talk freely, but everyone knew it would not contribute to any discussion, we would be outvoted anyway,” she said.
The Serbian Progressive Party and the Slovak National Council did not respond to BIRN requests for comment. But Arpad Fremond, the president of the Hungarian National Council, wrote in response to BIRN’s enquiries that the council is working in accordance with the law.
He also stressed that he had resigned as both an MP in the Serbian parliament for SVM, as the council’s leadership cannot be state or party officials.
Asked about the fact that the SVM-backed list was the only one on the ballot at the last council election, Fremond said that others were free to participate, but could not get enough signatures. “We believe that the only obstacle for others to participate in the election for the Hungarian National Council in 2022 was a lack of citizens’ support to such a degree that it completely rendered their participation in the work of the council meaningless,” he said.
Serbia’s Slovaks: Neglected by Belgrade, Ignored by Bratislava
While bilateral relations with Serbia remain friendly – buttressed by Slovakia’s strong support for EU enlargement, Fico’s support for Vucic, and general positive relations with the Western Balkans – Slovak interest in their ethnic kin living in Serbia isn’t particularly noteworthy.
The Slovak governing coalition failed to condemn the violence in Backi Petrovac, though the country’s president, Peter Pellegrini, went to Serbia at the end of December. He met with Vucic and they made a joint visit to the town. The Slovak community indicated it was ready to meet with Pellegrini but protested Vucic’s presence, publishing an open letter from the three regions in Vojvodina – Backa, Banat, and Srem – ahead of their arrival.
During the visit, police encircled the small protesting crowd – which included Slovaks, Serbians, and Hungarians – which sang the Slovak and Serbian anthems. Eventually, some of the Slovaks got to talk with the advisers from Pellegrini’s presidential office.
“Whenever Slovak politicians visit Serbia, they always try to meet with representatives of the minority in some way. At the same time, I also perceive – and this is perhaps a more general comment on Slovak politics – that in Slovakia, regardless of who has been in power over the last 20-25 years, we have not found a systematic approach to working with the minority,” said Vladimir Bilcik, a senior fellow at the Globsec think tank and former European Parliament Standing Rapporteur for Serbia.
“We need to systematically show them that the [Slovak] government cares about them. Not just when there is a problem, or simply that it is not just about sending us money every year,” Bilcik said, adding: “Incidentally, the Slovak community is quite divided.”
Marijana Farkas, a 48-year-old accommodation host from Kovacica, told BIRN that the position of the Slovak minority has degraded significantly since SNS came to power in 2012. “Up until about 10 years ago, it was okay, but since SNS came into power, little by little they have put up restrictions,” Farkas said.
Like many other locals, she describes increased delays in Slovak-language textbooks, reliance on Serbian-language books and materials, and difficulties in obtaining bilingual ID documents – all of which are guaranteed under Serbian law.
“Don’t say Slovaks have rights when they don’t. If I could put everything I’ve built here on wheels and just go, I wouldn’t think about it for a second,” Farkas said.
In Backi Petrovac, Milina Zima painted a similar picture: “Nothing is systematically arranged anymore. We order books in September, and they arrive in March, and we just have to make do with what we have until then. And the [Slovak] National Council did nothing. There was no pressure from anybody to protect the children’s education in their own language.”
BIRN reporters visited the public library in Kovacica. After two years, it received a new batch of 140 Slovak books that the staff are currently processing. Around a third of the 30,000 books in stock are in Slovak, and people are interested in borrowing them, as well as attending events the library organizes, according to the library employee BIRN spoke to. However, some of these have had to be paused because of budget allocations by the city council, she added.
Vladimira Dorcovs-Valtnerova, editor-in-chief of Storytellers.rs, a Kulpin-based independent news site, published in both Slovak and Serbian, previously worked at Hlas Ludu (“Voice of the People”), the longstanding provider of local news for the Slovak community, especially the elderly, who rely on the printed version of the newspaper as their main source of information.
Dorcovs-Valtnerova told BIRN that the influence of SNS on the publication has increased and is strong today. This led to unsatisfied citizens setting up Slobodny hlas ludu (“Free Voice of the People”), but as of today that publication has still not been accredited with official media status.
Dorcovs-Valtnerova described how, as a small independent newsroom, access to information can be quite difficult: requests for information sent to state institutions remain unanswered and they are excluded from official mailing lists, which means their stories lack coverage of SNS or SNS-affiliated figures in the community. If anyone does answer, it is mainly off the record, she added.
Hungarian Funds
The dynamic between Hungary and ethnic Hungarians in Vojvodina is more complex. Since 2010, Hungary has offered a simplified process to citizenship for ethnic Hungarians living abroad. With dual citizenship came EU mobility, employment opportunities, and recognition from the mother country.
Hungary has poured substantial funding into Hungarian-language media, schools, churches, and businesses in Vojvodina. But this support comes with alleged demands for political alignment and political support in Hungarian elections. In the previous general election in Hungary, in 2022, around 60,000 voters living in Serbia had the right to vote.
“And that is why Orban sends aid to Vojvodina, which has recently decreased because Hungary is facing a major economic crisis and inflation, and money is not coming from the EU. Otherwise, funds for Vojvodina mostly arrive through the Prosperitati Foundation, from which people close to SVM [the Fidesz- and SNS-allied Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians] benefit the most,” argued Gabor Bodis, journalist and former head of the Radio Free Europe bureau in Budapest.
SVM denied such claims. “There is not a single family in Vojvodina, not a single dual citizen, who could not count on some kind of assistance, financial support from the government of Hungary, because this country pursues a responsible national policy and, for the past 33 years, it has been a tradition to support the Hungarian diaspora,” Balin Pastor, the head of SVM, told Radio Free Europe.
If Orban wins the April 12 general election to serve a fifth term, the money flows will continue, with his government promising it will invest 525 million euros with Hungarian-owned entrepreneurs in Serbia.
Arpad Fremond, the president of the Hungarian National Council, told BIRN that the council decides on financial contributions in “strictly controlled” procedures that were put in place a decade ago. He also said the council’s position is that there is pluralism in Hungarian-language media. “Numerous critical articles that can be read, heard, or watched on public and private media testify to that,” he said.
Zsolt Gyulai, a bar owner in Subotica, disagreed. “Most of the Hungarian-language media parrot Orban’s political agenda. And as for the funds, they didn’t teach us how to fish, they just gave us fish,” he told BIRN.
Gyulai once tried to establish an alternative Hungarian platform on social media, gathering intellectuals active in their local communities who shared with their audiences narratives critical of those promoted by SVM. However, they have not been as active recently.
“I know that a lot of people, at least from Novi Sad, do not support SVM. And you have people who support SVM and their politics with Vucic and those who don’t. But SVM shouldn’t be splitting the minority like this. Minority politics are neither the ruling party nor the opposition; they should represent the entire Hungarian community,” a student from Novi Sad told BIRN.
When asked about whether there are organizations that aren’t politically aligned with Orban, Hunor Habram, 24, a student from Novi Sad, said: “There are some smaller organizations, for science and culture, but they’re very rare, because still you need money for all of that, and the money comes from Hungary. So, if your politics don’t align with that, you don’t have money for your organization.”
Since the Serbian student protest movement started in late 2024, the Assembly of Vojvodina Hungarians – an independent, non-profit, politically unaligned organization – has been established. “Their main focus now are the elections for the National Council,” Hunor explained, “and they want the Hungarian community to be independent.”
“We don’t face repression as much as there’s a tendency to buy everybody out. But what we are fighting for right now in Serbia, that’s everyone’s fight, and I shouldn’t be quiet because I’m Hungarian. I live here; my parents pay taxes. If we don’t rise up, it will never be better,” he said.
Leaving Home
Petra Castven from Backi Petrovac described the problems of living in a politically polarized small community. When she and other active citizens started to organize solidarity protests to support the student-led movement, she noticed that they had a higher attendance when the meetings took place at night, because people could not be recognized so easily in the dark.
“We are conditioned to think that something might happen to us all the time and we have no stability, no certainty that we can go out on the streets without something happening to us when we speak up,” said Castven. “Then we carry it with us wherever we go. And I think that’s how it is for those who leave and move to another country and live there for maybe 10 years, they still carry Serbia with them.”
Roza Feher, a journalist with the Hungarian-language Csaladi kor i Szabad Magyar Szo, recently spoke about deep divisions and fear among Vojvodina’s Hungarian community.
“I think they are more afraid than the Serbian population. They are so materially conditioned by their jobs, so exposed to the opportunities provided by the Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians [SVM] here in Vojvodina, that they don’t dare to attend rallies or even put likes on certain [social media] posts, because even that is monitored,” Feher told Becejski mozaik, a local media outlet.
“For example, those who received funds through the [Hungarian government’s] Prosperitati program are not allowed to advertise in our newspapers or give statements. People are so restricted that they cannot express their views because it is monitored and punished,” she added.
Against this backdrop, it is hardly surprising that many ethnic Hungarians and Slovaks are voting with their feet. Between the last two censuses held in Serbia, in 2012 and 2022, the Hungarian minority in Serbia shrunk by 27 per cent and the Slovakian one by 21 percent.
Castven told BIRN that her high school graduation class numbered just 60 pupils. Only three of them are still in Serbia, while all three of her best friends have left to live in Slovakia in search of better job opportunities, a place in the EU and surrounded by a familiar language. In Backi Petrovac, there is now only a small community of people her age.
Jan Andrasik, a 27-year-old student of Slovak language and literature in Novi Sad, faced a similar situation, though he stuck around and found that some people are now returning.
“I insisted that I wanted to stay here because I want to fight for a better future in this country – and that’s what keeps me here,” he told BIRN. “Even though sometimes I wonder how I’ll manage here, I’m staying. I promised myself that I wanted to stay here, so I’m not changing my mind.”
Economic pressures underpin the decision of most people to leave. Jan Zahorec, an evangelical priest in Pivnice, told BIRN that opportunities in the agricultural sector, which has long been the backbone of Slovak village economies, are in decline. “The traditional economy and agriculture are in decay, mainly due to the consolidation of land and large-scale farming,” he explained.
Between 2008 and 2012, around 400 members left his church, in a town of some 3,300 people. After two local factories were privatized in 2004 and 2008 many lost their jobs and went to Slovakia, where new car factories were opening up at the time.
The rapid decline in the number of ethnic Hungarians living in Vojvodina lies partly in the new citizenship law that was enacted by the newly elected Fidesz government in 2010, which grants an easier path to citizenship for Hungarian minorities in neighboring countries.
“The consequence of this law was not only that many people applied for citizenship in order to finally feel themselves fully Hungarian, but many of them immediately decided to leave,” explained Virag Gyurkovics, an independent journalist in Vojvodina.
With the younger generations moving on, Vojvodina’s population is aging. Izolda Papp, the student organization leader, said many members of her generation decided to study at a Hungarian university, where they would not experience any language difficulties. And, of course, they also feel that the EU offers greater opportunities. “Not everybody likes this Balkan lifestyle,” she said, a smile on her face.
As to the question of why anybody like her would decide to stay in Vojvodina, with all the opportunities available in Hungary or in the rest of the EU, she explained: “It is probably that I came from a small village. I have my family here; it is important to me. And I believe you can be happy here too, if you find your own way.”
Tamara Kanuchova is a journalist at the VSquare consortium of nonprofit investigative journalism outlets in Central Europe.
Nevena Vracar is the lead correspondent for Serbia and Bosnia & Herzegovina at The European Correspondent.
Patrik Galavits is a journalist at Direkt36 and contributor at Forbes Magyarország.
This piece originally appeared on Balkan Insight. Republished by permission.
