Motorcyclists, tractor farmers and conflict veterans equipped safety for a day-long demonstration organised by means of scholars in Subotica, Serbia. The town of greater than 90,000 population in northern Serbia with an important Hungarian minority, has a number of universities whose scholars have staged blockades since December following the fatal awning cave in at Novi Sad station. They nonetheless consider the ones accountable have no longer been prosecuted.
A lot of demonstrators have been anticipated to reach within the town from the encompassing rural villages and from Novi Sad, a few of whom arrived by means of bicycle or on foot. As demonstrators had prior to now been attacked by means of Aleksandar Vucic’s supporters in Belgrade and Novi Sad, the rally in Subotica started underneath heavy safety. Police diverted visitors from lots of the roads main into town centre, and the roads into town centre utilized by protesters have been utterly blocked by means of farmers sympathetic to the protests with tractors, whilst conflict veterans patrolled the demonstration websites from the afternoon.
Although we handiest controlled to talk to probably the most veterans, who informed us that they weren’t demonstrating however have been there to “protect the children”, others informed Euronews that those other people, who have been normally wounded within the southern Slavic wars, are being paid humiliatingly low wages by means of the state and subsequently resent Aleksandar Vučić’s regime.
Since the realm round Subotica is agricultural, lots of the farmers have additionally come to give protection to their very own kids attending native universities, however we additionally met a liberal arts scholar who had pushed into the city on a tractor borrowed from his folks’ farm.
‘It’s just right to look the power’
“This country has been going downhill for thirty years,” a middle-aged Hungarian lady who works in a publish place of business in a Vojvodina village informed Euronews. “They have taken away the best thirty years of our lives, eighty percent of our children have left the country. We have to make a change here, because we can’t give any more of our lives.”
A lady in her thirties informed Euronews that she believes corruption is the largest downside this is conserving the rustic from transferring ahead, and she or he, like the general public, blames Aleksandar Vučić. She herself has no longer lived within the nation for ten years and was once stunned by means of the dynamics of the present protests, which she cites as her reason why to return house. “It’s so good to see the energy people have shown! It’s amazing to see them going from town to town and rallying different sections of society.”
The scholars who have been ready to speak to us have been very disciplined of their feedback about in need of to look significant penalties for the tragedy in Novi Sad and the discharge of the ones imprisoned for protesting – however no longer the overthrow of the federal government. By distinction, Novi Sad Mayor Milan Durić has mentioned from the beginning that the actual goal of the demonstrations is to get Vučić to surrender, and maximum protesters trust this – with the exception of the organisers. “We want to rethink the system. We aren’t politicians, we have no political goals. We want to live in a better system that is not so corrupt, so we just want a better future.”
16 mins of silence
The day-long protest incorporated kids’s actions, a caricature exhibition, meals distribution, a live performance or even fireworks. The most powerful a part of the demonstration was once the now standard 16 mins of silence in reminiscence of the 16 killed in Novi Sad, which was once specifically robust in gentle of the noise they made sooner than and after with their whistles and plastic fanfares paying homage to South African vuvuzelas.
