After rampages
Tens of thousands again protest against violence in Serbia
People take part in an opposition-led protest in Belgrade. photo
© Marko Drobnjakovic/AP
Two massacres within two days at the beginning of May deeply shook Serbian society. Since then, protests have not stopped.
After two killing sprees three weeks ago, tens of thousands of people demonstrated again in Belgrade in the evening against the violence in Serbia.
The participants of the rally gathered in front of the parliament in the center of the Serbian capital and then formed a human chain around the nearby headquarters of the state television RTS, as a reporter from the German Press Agency reported. They demanded the resignation of the authoritarian President Aleksandar Vucic.
It was the fourth protest in a row after a 13-year-old student shot nine classmates and a security guard in a Belgrade school in early May. A day later, a 21-year-old shot people in a village near Belgrade, killing eight of them. The two massacres, which were not directly related, deeply shook Serbian society.
Against government and private TV stations
The rally was peaceful. It was directed against Vucic and his government, as well as against private television stations that whitewashed violence and mafia crime and made propaganda for those in power. Vucic himself repeatedly speaks of hatred and contempt for political opponents.
The state broadcaster RTS is also the focus of opposition criticism because it hardly allows non-government voices to have their say and Vucic serves as a mouthpiece. Liberal and left-wing opposition parties and civil movements had called for the protest.