Mićunović predicted in 2017 that youth would protest

Dragoljub Mićunović, a prominent figure in Serbian politics and a co-founder of the Democratic Party, who passed away at the age of 96, had accurately predicted in 2017 that young people in Serbia would eventually protest.

Mićunović, who was an active participant in the 1968 student demonstrations, stated in a 2017 interview that young Serbians were not apolitical. He foresaw new protests emerging because, in his view, Serbian society suffered from a deficit of freedom and perspective, a challenge he believed would elicit a response from the youth.

"I am not threatening, but I predict such a situation. The younger generation will protest. They will seek their place," Mićunović had declared at the time, noting that many societal factors in Serbia did not concern the fate of students. He recalled the 1968 events as part of a global movement that also impacted Yugoslavia, with similar discussions occurring in Belgrade as in New York, Berlin, Paris, Prague, and Warsaw.

Mićunović recounted that the global student movement initially began as a rebellion against the Vietnam War. He mentioned that Belgrade students had planned a protest against the war in 1966, but it was banned by authorities, unlike similar gatherings in the US. The protest eventually took place in a hall at the Faculty of Philology, where police intervened, leading to clashes and the formation of a solidarity nucleus for future organization, as he detailed in a 2017 N1 interview.

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I am not threatening, but I predict such a situation. The younger generation will protest. They will seek their place.