Thousands of people in Belgrade and Novi Sad commemorated the victims of two massacres with silent marches. His protest was also directed against President Vucic. He senses a political campaign.
After two gun attacks that killed 17 people last week, tens of thousands of people demonstrated against the violence in Serbia. They commemorated the victims of the mass murders with silent marches in the capital Belgrade and Novi Sad in the north. Several left and right opposition parties called for the protest.
Protesters demanded the resignation of high-ranking politicians, including the interior minister and the intelligence chief, and the revoking of broadcasting licenses for state-controlled media outlets that encouraged violence and allowed convicted war criminals to demonstrate in your programs. Participants occupied a highway in Belgrade. In Novi Sad, participants held a banner reading “Everything must stop” and threw flowers into the Danube in honor of the dead.
Vucic called organizers “vultures”
After the official end of the demonstration in Belgrade, some of the demonstrators chanted slogans against the increasingly autocratic President Aleksandar Vucic. They demanded his resignation as he passed the government seat. In an interview with the pro-government Happy television channel, he dismissed the protests as a “disgrace”.
He accused the opposition of using people’s pain for their political ends and inciting violence. “It’s pure politics,” said Vucic, describing the organizers as “vultures”. Representatives of his Serbian Progressive Party condemned the protests as “politicizing” the bloody acts aimed at attacking Vucic.
Minister of Education tendered his resignation
Last week, two deadly attacks shook the country in the Balkans within 48 hours. In the first of two gun attacks, a student at a Belgrade school fatally shot eight children and a security guard with their father’s gun. Less than 48 hours later, a 21-year-old killed eight people in several villages near Belgrade.
Education Minister Branko Ruzic resigned on Sunday. President Vucic had announced a full-scale “disarmament campaign” after the attacks. The authorities also intensified actions against the illegal carrying of weapons, but the opposition criticized this measure as late and insufficient.
According to government information, more than 760,000 firearms are registered in the country of 6.8 million inhabitants. According to the Small Arms Survey (SAS) research project, 39% of the population own a gun – in no other European country is the proportion so high.