site.btaLecturers Shield Students as Protests Escalate in Serbia

Lecturers joined student protests in Serbia on Wednesday, stepping in to protect students from potential attacks.

Protesting students reported on social media that faculty members from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering in Belgrade stood at the front of demonstrations to prevent further incidents, including cars attempting to breach blockades and acts of physical or verbal aggression.

Tensions escalated after a student was injured on Tuesday evening in Novi Pazar when a car drove into a crowd holding a 15-minute silence in memory of the 15 victims of a fatal railway station incident in Novi Sad.

In Belgrade, a man shattered a glass door at the Student Cultural Centre on Wednesday and threw shards at students occupying a building in the city centre, according to reports from protesters on social media. Meanwhile, in Novi Sad, students marched through the city, symbolically searching for the university rector and demanding his resignation.

"Tensions in the country are constantly rising. We don’t want to be attacked on the streets, but we also don’t want to live a lie. Prime Minister Vucevic said on January 28 that he was resigning because of the attack on our colleagues in Novi Sad, but to this day, no parliamentary session has been scheduled to finalize his resignation," student Dragan Jovanovic told BTA’s Teodora Encheva.

Protests have been ongoing for over three months, sparked by the collapse of a canopy at Novi Sad railway station shortly after its inauguration in November, which left 15 people dead. Students are demanding accountability from the authorities.

The political opposition and student movement attribute the disaster to corruption, alleging irregularities in the awarding and execution of the construction work.