A long column of people attending the tenth anti-government protest in nine weeks in Belgrade called on Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic to resign – as the first solidarity protest took place also in the divided northern Kosovo town of Mitrovica.
In Belgrade, protesters attending Saturday evening’s “1 of 5 million” event as usual marched past the presidential building, the parliament and the public broadcaster, RTS.
Speakers repeated the movement’s main demand – for Vucic’s resignation and an end to what they call the usurpation of state institutions and political abuses by his ruling Serbian Progressive Party.
During their march, protesters stopped at the Presidency building to leave letters in boxes for Vucic, telling him their personal reasons for taking to the streets. They also glued signs and wrapped tape at the entrances to the offices of Serbia’s national broadcaster, RTS, and pro-government daily newspaper Politika, calling for more media freedom in the country.
Ahead of the protest, several hundred college professors, actors, artists and other public figures expressed their support for the protests in open letters.
On Saturday, students at Belgrade University’s Faculty of Political Sciences joined a 5.5 kilometre-long walk from the faculty to Students Square in the city centre to join the protest.
Angering supporters of the movement, Education Minister Mladen Sarcevic told N1 regional television on January 29 that he did mind some professors lending support to the protests, as he had seen no “serious names” on the list of supporters.
Some professors reacted by accusing the minister of trying to humiliate the academic community, adding that contempt for the opinion of citizens was “characteristic only of autocratic regimes”.
At the protest on Saturday, the students called for Minister Sarcevic’s resignation.
During the week, similar protests were held in dozens of Serbian cities and towns, with the largest one taking place in the northern city of Novi Sad. The protests were held in other cities and towns, including Kragujevc and Sombor, on Saturday as well.
Balkan Insight@BalkanInsight Alongside tonight’s anti-govt demonstration in Belgrade, more #1od5miliona protests are also taking place in other cities and towns across Serbia: Photo 1: Kragujevac Photo 2: Sombor
Alongside tonight’s anti-govt demonstration in Belgrade, more #1od5miliona protests are also taking place in other cities and towns across Serbia:
Photo 1: Kragujevac Photo 2: Sombor
Besides seeking Vucic’s resignation, the protesters demand effective prevention of alleged abuses of the electoral roll and of public resources in election campaigns, proper supervision of the electoral process, including in Kosovo, and criminal sanctions against those that abuse election campaigns.
They also want fairer treatment on RTS, and a thorough investigation into the attempted murder of website Zig Info journalist Milan Jovanovic, whose home was torched in the Belgrade suburb of Vrcin on December 12.
They also want the authorities to resolve the unexplained murder one year ago in north Mitrovica of the Kosovo Serb politician Oliver Ivanovic.
That killing, and the failure to resolve it, was one of the main motives for the first “1 of 5 million” protest in the Serb-dominated north of Mitrovica.
“The people who gathered on Saturday demand to know what happened to Oliver Ivanovic, and who ordered, and executed, that murder,” Marko Jaksic, one of the informal organizers of the protest in north Mitrovica and a member of Ivanovic’s Civic Initiative, SDP, told BIRN.
He added that people in north Mitrovica wanted to show solidarity with the protests held across Serbia. “They want to show that they will not tolerate pressure, violence and burned cars,” he said.
Jaksic accused the main Belgrade-backed Serbian party in Kosovo, Serbian List [Srpska lista], of intimidating Serbs working in public institutions, so they would not come to the protest.
Ahead of the protest, Srpska lista and the head of the Serbian government’s Office for Kosovo, Marko Djuric, condemned the rally in north Mitrovica, calling it divisive.
“If someone in other parts of Serbia is protesting and dividing people politically or on any other basis, there is no place for that here,” he said on Thursday.
In reply, the protest organizers said on Friday on Twitter that Djuric and his allies did not own Kosovo.
“We are sorry to disturb the unity of your and [Kosovo PM Haradinaj] Ramush’s Kosovo government. We’ll walk. Kosovo and Metohija is ours, not yours,” a post on the official Twitter account of the organizers said.
The Balkaninsight
