THOUSANDS PROTEST VIOLENCE IN SERBIA
Tens of thousands of people rallied in Serbia’s capital on Friday for a third time in a month to protest the government’s handling of a crisis after two mass shootings in the Balkan country earlier this month. Officials ignored their demands and claimed protesters were being manipulated by foreign secret services.
In a show of defiance, the nationalist right-wing party of autocratic Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic organized a counterprotest in a town north of Belgrade attended by thousands of his supporters.
The opposition protesters in Belgrade chanted slogans calling on Vucic to “go” and “resign.” They have also demanded the resignations of two government ministers and the revocation of broadcasting licenses for two TV networks which, they say, promote violence and glorify crime figures.
Activist Jelena Mihailovic read the opposition demands in front of the National Assembly, saying the government opponents simply want to “live without fear in our own country.”
“We are here because we want Serbia without violence,” Mihailovic said. “We cannot allow them (the government) to play with the lives of our children.”
The large crowd, estimated by independent media to be the biggest since the protests started, later marched through the capital, stopping traffic on a main bridge and a highway passing through the city.
Earlier Friday, Prime
Minister Ana Brnabic and other government officials attended a parliamentary session, focusing on the May 3 and May 4 shootings and the opposition demands to replace the interior minister and the intelligence chief following the carnage that left 18 people dead, many of them children.
The two shootings stunned the nation, especially because the first one happened in an elementary school in central Belgrade when a 13-year-old boy took his father’s gun and opened fire on his fellow students. Eight students and a school guard were killed and seven more people wounded. One more girl later died in hospital from head wounds.
A day later, a 20-year-old used an automatic weapon to randomly target people he ran into in two villages south of Belgrade, killing eight people and wounding 14.
Brnabic rejected allegations that the populist authorities were in any way responsible for the shootings.