Thousands of Serbian women are turning to social media to talk about their experiences with sexual violence and the police’s indifference using the hashtag #NisamPrijavila (“I didn’t report.”)
On December 24, political activist Nina Stojaković wrote a tweet in support of her sister, who allegedly has been beaten and abused by her boyfriend, Serbian rapper Numero.
“My sister Lidija, who has been suffering from depression for years, was beaten continuously for a year and a half by the guy she lived with. We found out a month and a half ago when she gathered the courage to leave him and return to our parents after she tried to kill herself,” Stojaković wrote on Twitter.
Stojaković turned to Twitter with her sister’s story after the family attempted to report Numero’s violence against her sister to the police, who said they couldn’t do anything, “although there are several witnesses, including her psychotherapist who saw her in bruises and to whom she was the first to admit everything.”
“If the police can’t do anything, I can stand by my sister and say the public name and surname of the perpetrator,” Stojaković concluded.
Stojaković’s story has garnered more than 10 thousand likes on Twitter and in the 24 hours following her report, almost 3,500 tweets were shared in Serbian with the hashtag #NisamPrijavila. Today, the number is closer to 18,000 according to a database collected by BBC journalist Andjela Milivojevic.
“I didn’t report because he was a police inspector, because many of me would be guilty of being alone with him in the apartment, because my mother’s heart would break with grief, because my dad would kill him and die inside, because they are the ones I told first asked what I was wearing that day,” writes another popular tweet.
First created by activist and survivor Tarana Burke, the hashtag #MeToo took the English-speaking world by storm in 2017, exposing the pervasive nature of sexual violence and sexual harassment in women’s lives. Similar forms of hashtag activism spread beyond the confines of the anglophone sphere, with women in France using #BalanceTonPorc, or in Italy with #QuellaVoltaChe to talk about their experiences.
A similar reckoning, however, has yet to reach the Western Balkans. While individual cases of rape and sexual violence have led to mass protests in Albania and Kosovo, these have been limited in scope and reach.
Earlier this year, Serbian actress Danijela Stajnfeld accused actor and teacher Branislav Lecic of rape, but Serbian prosecution dismissed the case for lack of evidence.
Steinfeld produced a feature documentary on sexual violence called “Hold Me Right,” where she documented the experiences of both survivors and perpetrators with the trauma of rape.
