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A vast demonstration has been gathering in Belgrade, marking the climax of more than four months of student-led protests and the biggest challenge to President Aleksandar Vučić in the 11 years of his increasingly autocratic rule.
Vučić stoked tensions in the run-up to yesterday’s mass protest, suggesting there would be an attempt to overthrow him by force and calling it an “imported revolution” with the involvement of western intelligence agencies, but he provided no evidence for the claims. The demonstrations against government corruption and incompetence have so far been overwhelmingly peaceful.
Hundreds of government supporters, mostly black-clad young men wearing baseball caps, many with matching black backpacks, gathered in Belgrade’s Pionirski Park, opposite the Serbian parliament, one of the focal points of the demonstration. Local reports suggested there were members of organised football hooligan groups among them, as well as veterans of the Red Berets special forces unit implicated in the 2003 assassination of Serbia’s liberal prime minister Zoran Djindjić.
A thick cordon of police ringed the assembly building and separated the Vučić supporters from the protesters, who also gathered in front of a stage set up in nearby Slavija Square.
In the mid-afternoon, protesters close to the state broadcasting headquarters in central Belgrade were told by police to move as there was a threat of an attack by a pro-government mob.
Intercity trains had been cancelled for the day in what the state railway company said was a security measure for passenger safety but which was widely seen as an attempt by Vučić to limit the size of the protests. Some city transport services were also suspended in the capital. But long convoys of cars converged on Belgrade from across the country, flying national flags and banners in support of the student cause.
In the roads leading into the city, scores of tractors joined the procession, signalling farmers’ support for the protest movement, as well as hundreds of bikers, riding into town in a phalanx.
The European Union and the United Nations both appealed to the government ahead of the rally to respect the right to demonstrate. Western governments have been hesitant in their approach to the protests over the past four months, partly out of a desire to cultivate good relations with Vučić in the hope of luring him away from Moscow’s orbit.
Vučić has cultivated Donald Trump, approving the construction of a Trump hotel in Belgrade, and on Thursday gave an interview to the US president’s son Don Jr, who echoed the Serbian government’s unsubstantiated claims that the protest movement was fuelled by foreign funding.
The younger Trump suggested the protests had been “weaponised … to incite, potentially, a revolution”, airing conspiracy theories about how the protests were organised and paid for.
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The near-daily protests were triggered by the collapse of a concrete canopy over the forecourt of a newly renovated railway station in Novi Sad, which killed 15 people on 1 November. Public outrage was fuelled by an apparent attempt by government officials to cover up unsafe construction methods and potential corruption in the Chinese-led refurbishment.
The demonstrations have been led by students who have focused on demands for better governance and for state institutions to provide the services they are supposed to, without the need for bribes or personal connections.
The students, who make collective decisions rather than elect a leadership, have kept their distance from opposition parties, which they blame for being complicit in the atrophy and cynicism of the public sector.
