Amid ongoing mass protests, students have blockaded the buildings of Serbia’s two main public broadcasters in Belgrade and Novi Sad, leading to confrontations with police in riot gear.
Students in Serbia on Tuesday picketed the main building of Radio-Television Serbia, RTS in Belgrade and the country’s second public broadcaster, Radio Television of Vojvodina, RTV in Novi Sad, demanding that they report more objectively on their months-long anti-corruption protests.
The picket in Belgrade started on Monday night at 11 pm and protesters said the blockades would continue them 22 hours, dubbing them “the liberation of our RTS”.
The move to target the broadcasters was not announced in advance but many students posted calls on social media for members of the public to join them in front of the RTS building.
“The long-prepared operation ‘Operation’ has just begun. Takovska 10. RTS. Everyone, right now,” students from the Belgrade Faculty of Dramatic Arts wrote on Monday night on their Instagram account.
Protesters arrived on Monday night and put up metal fences at the RTS building entrance.
Serbia’s gendarmerie riot police also arrived on Monday night. Videos on social media showed them going through a group of students and hitting some of them with batons. Media reported that numerous police were present inside both the RTS and RTV buildings.
Serbia’s Interior Minister Ivica Dacic insisted the gendarmerie did not attack anyone, but that the police were attacked. “There are no doubts about this, the gendarmerie only wanted to enter the building, as that was their task,” he said, RTS reported.
President Aleksandar Vucic later on Monday night posted a photo of a policeman who was injured with a black eye. “Lazar Bacic, a police officer, was attacked by Bolshevik plenary members [student protesters] in front of the RTS building. He sustained severe bodily injuries. Horrific ones. They hit him with brass knuckles,” Vucic wrote on Instagram.
Vucic added that “they will be held accountable for every act of violence they have committed”.
Although Vucic claimed the students were responsible for the attack, video on social media showed that the injured policeman was in plainclothes and was, in fact, hit by the riot police.
The Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in Belgrade has ordered the police to identify all those who attacked members of the gendarmerie in front of the RTS building and who “assaulted a plainclothes police officer while he was performing his official duties, causing an eye injury”.
RTS has appealed to the students to abandon the blockade. “Radi- Television Serbia states that this blockade is in complete contrast to previous statements made by the students in the blockade, in which they advocated the free operation of institutions,” it said.
Novi Sad students also launched their blockade of the Radio Television of Vojvodina building on Monday night. Beta news agency reported on Monday night that the students had attempted to negotiate with the general director of RTV, Goran Karadzic, about speaking on air in a live broadcast, but he refused. RTV halted its regular news programmes and has instead been broadcasting films, documentaries and other shows.
Students have called for a blockade of RTS’s second studio, on the other side of Belgrade, as well. Meanwhile however, RTS continues to broadcast its regular programming.
Mass student-led protests sparked by November’s Novi Sad railway station disaster, which left 15 people dead, erupted more than three months ago.
The protests have become the most serious challenge to Vucic’s rule since his Serbian Progressive Party came to power in 2012. Vucic has described them as an attempted revolution.
Source: BalkanInsight
