« Pumps on, increases the pressure! » – Diepresse.com
Thousands of people came to a large demonstration in Belgrade, which the authoritarian government calls for consequences under Aleksandar Vucic.
Already on the night of Saturday, thousands of students came to all the parts of the country on foot, by bike or with the tractor to the Serbian capital Belgrade to take part in a demonstration under the motto « On 15th for the 15 ». Tens of thousands were on the street on Saturday. The Ministry of the Interior spoke of 31,000 participants. There should be more: drone shots that made several Serbian media showed elongated streets of the Belgrade city center full of people, there is talk of hundreds of thousands of people, it is likely to be the greatest demonstration in the history of the Balkans.
The motto of the demo refers to the accident in the North Serbian city of Novi Sad on November 1st, in which a station presentation collapsed and 15 people died. The disaster triggered a large wave of protest, which is borne by the country's students. The word « Pumpaj! » And the emoji of a pump are a kind of slogan of the protest movement, which means roughly: « Pumps further, increases the pressure! »
The participants of the protests blame the corruption of the governing under the partly authoritarian president Aleksandar Vucic for the accident in Novi Sad. The train station had been rebuilt. However, they do not demand the resignation of politicians, but the consistent enforcement of the rule of law and the punishment of corrupt actors.
Critics accuse Vucic of supporting his power on corrupt networks, limited media freedom and manipulated elections. Control over the judiciary enables him to maintain conditions that contradict the rule of law.
Happy mood
At the reception of the students there was a happy, almost euphoric mood in the city center of Belgrade, as a DPA reporter reported. Large groups of young people had covered considerable distances in partly multi -day foot marches, for example from the Central Serbian Kragujevac (140 kilometers) or the northern border town of Subotica (190 kilometers).
The center of the rally was the Slavija Square in the late afternoon, on which the organizers had built a stage. « See where we are. See how many we are. Your voice counts. (…) Let us awaken Serbia together. The night is the darkest at the dawn, ”a student called the first speaker into the crowd. At 11:52 a.m., the time of the accident of Novi Sad, thousands of people who were already in Belgrade held a 15 -minute long silent for the victims. An unreal silence lay over the city.
Vucic had previously meant that the students planned a violent overthrow and stormed public buildings. But the major event was peaceful.
In a southern suburb of Belgrade, a driver deliberately drove into a lot of marching people. Three young people suffered injuries, the police said. The driver of the vehicle was arrested.
In the past, too, attacks on demonstrators had always occurred, be it through government supporters with their cars or by rackets from the Vucic government party. (APA/dpa)
