Mujo Kujovic from Prijepolje assaulted BIRN journalist Sasa Dragojlo while he was reporting from a Belgrade protest; Kujovic, who trained as a boxer, has helped in the ruling party’s efforts to undermine ongoing student-led demonstrations.
BIRN has identified the man who assaulted one of its journalists during a protest in Belgrade on March 23 as Mujo Kujovic, a former boxer from the southwestern town of Prijepolje and a footsoldier of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party, SNS.
Award-winning journalist Sasa Dragojlo was assaulted at a market in the Belgrade municipality of Zvezdara while reporting on a protest by local residents after SNS activists, including Kujovic, set up promotional stands to recruit new members to the party, which has been rocked by months of nationwide, student-led demonstrations.
Kujovic has also been involved in efforts to undermine those demonstrations, triggered by the fatal collapse of an outdoor canopy at the Novi Sad railway station in northern Serbia on November 1 last year and subsequent anger over state mismanagement, nepotism and corruption.
As he was filming, Dragojlo was approached by men organising the SNS promotion; when he identified himself as a journalist, one of them lunged at him. The police intervened, preventing further escalation, but failed to subsequently ID Kujovic or take any other action against him.
By analysing photos and social media profiles and consulting sources, BIRN was able to identify the assailant as Kujovic. Reached by phone, Kujovic denied attacking Dragojlo. When told that the incident was captured on video, he said BIRN should direct any further questions to his lawyer.
“The police were obligated to prevent the attack, and if they failed to do so, they were certainly required to – according to the authorities granted by the Police Act (Article 75) – establish the identity of the attacker and thus ensure the necessary grounds for his misdemeanor or potential criminal prosecution,” said Rodoljub Sabic, a lawyer, former Ombudsman, and head of the Civil Committee for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders.
Counter-protest ‘recruiter’
Kujovic was recently involved in recruiting people to apparently pose as students at what appeared to be designed as a counter-protest in front of the Serbian Presidency to coincide with the latest student-led demonstration in the capital on March 15 that became one of the biggest in Serbian history.
Those recruited were presented as students opposed to the ongoing occupation of university faculties by students seeking justice for the now 16 people who died as a result of the canopy collapse in Novi Sad.
On the YouTube channel Bezcenzure.rs, two audio recordings were posted on March 14 in which a man identified as the coordinator of the counter-protest is heard talking to a group of young men from Prijepolje, Kujovic’s hometown.
Several BIRN sources say Kujovic can be heard on the recordings saying: “You don’t support this? Look, I’m the first to say I don’t give a shit. And if you don’t want to, no problem, you don’t have to. But this is about being paid to do nothing. You’ll be laughing.”
Videos online suggest Kujovic once trained as a boxer and ran a plumbing business.
In 2021, he opened MK Gradnja, which was first involved in construction but then shifted into transport; also in the transport industry is Kujovic’s cousin, Dzenan Kujovic, who was charged alongside former Novi Sad police chief Slobodan Malesic in mid-2023 with criminal association.
Organised crime prosecutors alleged Dzenan Kujovic paid the police for protection; with SNS MP Vladimir Djukanovic as his lawyer, Dzenan Kujovic agreed to a plea deal and was given a suspended prison sentence of one year and fined three million dinars, or roughly 25,600 euros.
Attacks ‘could endanger lives’
Amid the ongoing student-led protests, journalists are increasingly being attacked.
Veran Matic, a member of the Permanent Working Group for the Safety of Journalists, said the trend was worrying.
“Of course, all these physical attacks on the ground go hand in hand with the incendiary rhetoric from the top of the government and ruling politicians, along with tabloids, which have created an environment where it is acceptable to insult and attack journalists,” said Matic, co-founder of the pioneering former Belgrade radio station B92. “Unfortunately, in this heated political climate, we can expect some serious physical attacks that could endanger lives.”
Warning of a climate of impunity, Matic cited the case of Vuk Cvijic, a journalist who was attacked in May 2024.
“It is known exactly who attacked Cvijic and how, but only about 10 days ago did the police send a report to the prosecutor’s office,” he said.
The Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia, NUNS, has registered nearly 30 attacks or serious threats against journalists in the last two months; the public prosecution, however, has only 11 on its books.
Source: Balkan Insight
