Protesters clashed with riot police outside the Serbian presidential building
BELGRADE, March 18 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Serbian police used tear gas to clear thousands of protesters trying to blockade the residence of President Aleksandar Vucic in Belgrade.
The protesters – who are demanding greater media freedom and free elections – shouted “Resign!”
But Vucic refused to bow to the pressure, saying: “I am not afraid.”
The opposition has been staging largely peaceful rallies for weeks. But tensions escalated on Saturday when crowds stormed the state TV station.
Vucic is a reformed extreme nationalist who now wishes to lead Serbia into the European Union.
Riot police fired tear gas at the crowds that had gathered outside the presidential residence in the capital. The crowd shouted “He is finished!”
That was the slogan the slogan of the movement that ousted Slobodan Milosevic in October 2000.
Milosevic was president of Serbia and later Yugoslavia during the latter’s violent break-up in the 1990s. His government placed severe curbs on independent media.
In 2001, he was transferred to The Hague to face trial on war crimes charges at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. He was found dead in his cell in 2006, before his trial could be completed.
The protest was organised as Vucic was giving a televised address from inside his residence on Saturday’s violence.
“Serbia is a democratic country, a country of law and order and Serbia will know how to respond,” the president said, branding the protesters “fascists, hooligans and thieves”.
After the president’s address, crowds of people marched from the residence to the city’s main police station, demanding that the people who were arrested at the Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) building on Saturday night be released.
Once they arrived, they were again locked in a stand-off with riot police outside the front door of the station. — NNN-AGENCIES
