Thousands of people in Belgrade and Novi Sad commemorated the victims of two massacres with silent marches. Their 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 violence in Serbia. They commemorated the victims of the mass killings with silent marches in the capital Belgrade and Novi Sad in the north. Several opposition parties from the left and the right camp had called for the protest.
The demonstrators demanded the resignation of high-ranking politicians, including the interior minister and the intelligence chief, and the revocation of the broadcasting licenses of state-controlled media outlets that encouraged violence and allowed convicted war criminals to have their say on their programs. Participants occupied a highway in Belgrade. In Novi Sad, participants held a banner reading “Everything must stop” and threw flowers into the Danube to commemorate those killed.
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 they passed the government seat. In an interview with the pro-government television channel Happy, he dismissed the protests as a “disgrace”.
He accused the opposition of using people’s grief 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 deeds, the aim of which was to attack Vucic.
Minister of Education submitted his resignation
Last week, two deadly attacks shook the country in the Balkans within 48 hours. In the first of the two gun attacks, a student in a Belgrade school shot dead eight children and a security guard with his father’s gun. Less than 48 hours later, a 21-year-old killed eight people in several villages near Belgrade.
Education Minister Branko Ruzic then resigned on Sunday. President Vucic had announced a large-scale “disarmament campaign” after the attacks. The authorities also stepped up action against illegal gun ownership, but the opposition criticized this measure as too late and insufficient.
According to government information, more than 760,000 firearms are registered in the country of 6.8 million people. According to the Small Arms Survey (SAS) research project, 39 percent of the population owns a gun – in no other European country is the proportion so high.