Maroc - EURASIAREVIEW.COM - A la une - 16/Feb 00:11

Mass Protest On Serbia’s Statehood Day; President Stages Counter-Rally

By Milica Stojanovic Tens of thousands of people blocked streets in the central Serbian city of Kragujevac on Saturday in support of ongoing student-led protests calling for official accountability for the Novi Sad railway station disaster that left 15 people dead in November. In the country’s north-west, meanwhile, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic held a counter-rally in the city of Sremska Mitrovica as he struggled to regain control over the political agenda after three months of mass protests sparked by anger over perceived institutional corruption. One of the protesters in Kragujevac, Rajko Bozic from Novi Sad, told BIRN that there was an “atmosphere of solidarity and optimism” in the streets of the city. Bozic said he travelled to Kragujevac for the rally because he thinks “the students have finally led this society in the right direction and they are leading a strong, thoughtful and important struggle, and we are here to support them”. He described how local residents warmly welcomed the demonstrators and were “making sure that no one is hungry, no one is cold” amid freezing temperatures in Serbia on Saturday. The protesters’ blockade of Kragujevac, named “Sretnimo se na Sretenje” (“Let’s Meet on Sretenje”) – a religious holiday as well as Serbia’s Statehood Day – started at 9am and was due to continue until seven minutes past midnight. Fifteen minutes of silence in the memory of the 15 Novi Sad victims were observed at 11.52am, the time the disaster happened, and were due to be observed again at 11.52pm. On Saturday morning, long columns of vehicles were seen headed for Kragujevac, Serbia’s fourth-largest city, from around the country. Students and members of the public then blocked Lepenicki Boulevard, the city’s main street. Groups of students from Novi Sad, Belgrade, Uzice, Kraljevo, Novi Pazar and Nis went to Kragujevac on foot, some of them walking for 150 kilometres. They were warmly greeted by locals in the city on Friday evening, after being hailed along the way in almost all the towns and villages they passed through. The rally in Kragujevac came 15 weeks after an outdoor canopy at Novi Sad railway station collapsed and left 15 people dead. Students have been blockading their universities since the end of November as well as holding mass protests and street blockades. The Kragujevac protest came two weeks after mass gathering in Novi Sad and some 20 days after a mass blockade of one of the major Belgrade intersections, the Autokomanda. Serbian President Vucic’s rally in Sremska Mitrovica also drew large crowds, although many of the attendees were public sector employees, some of whom are reported to have faced pressure to go to the pro-government rallies. It was the latest in a series of counter-protests aimed at reasserting Vucic’s authority in the face of the protests that pose a growing threat to his grip on power, which is facing its greatest political challenge since his Serbian Progressive Party came to power in 2012. Vucic told the crowd that the ongoing protests are a foreign-backed attempt at staging a “colour revolution”. He said that “the goal is to destroy Serbia”, not just to overthrow his rule. The Novi Sad railway station deaths have fuelled anger over a perceived lack of transparency about how the state runs large infrastructure projects and a belief that public bodies are stuffed with party apparatchiks. The students leading the protests say they have four demands: the publication of all documents concerning the renovation of Novi Sad railway station; the prosecution of everyone involved in attacking students and professors during their protests and their dismissal if proven to be public officials; a halt to the prosecution of students arrested during the protests; and a 20 per cent increase in the budget for higher education.