site.btaUPDATED Students Block Main Entrance of Serbia's Public Broadcaster RTS in Belgrade

A group of students and citizens continue to protest in front of the main entrance of the state-owned public broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) in Belgrade preventing employees from entering. Fellow citizens bring them food, drinks and warm clothes as horns and cheers of approval are heard from passing cars.

"These are the children of Serbia, our future, we are with them!", Liliana, who brought several blankets, told BTA. 

Students started a spontaneous blockade of the building on Monday evening after an RTS journalist used the word "horde" as a description of the student movement against corruption in Serbia, which arose over the death of 15 people in Novi Sad caused by a collapse of a railway station visor. 

The term "horde" was used in a question by a RTS journalist to Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic.

On Monday evening and early on Tuesday morning the regular programme of the national television was not broadcast, but the programmes have been restored.

"Some of the employees of the public broadcaster used another entrance to report to their workplaces, but one of the presenters of the morning programme refused to enter the studio," students explained to BTA.

"We do not want aggression and violence, but we cannot remain indifferent after what we heard and saw last night when we were called a horde, a mob," the students added.  

Last night, there were clashes between the protesting students and the gendarmerie in which one policeman was injured.

The Higher Public Prosecutor's Office in Belgrade ordered the police to "urgently identify the persons who attacked members of the gendarmerie in last night" in front of the RTC building, as well as to identify the persons who "attacked a civilian policeman in the line of duty and caused him an eye injury".

The blockade of the RTC building, which began on Monday night around midnight, will last 22 hours. Students in Novi Sad also blockaded the RTS building in the city in a show of support for their colleagues in Belgrade.

Later on Tuesday, Serbian Minister of Information and Telecommunications Deyan Ristic said that social tensions, regardless of their intensity and duration, can only be resolved through honest, open and inclusive dialogue.

"None of what is happening now is as dramatic or more dramatic than other social crises that we as a people have gone through in previous decades and centuries," Ristic told RTV Pink. "We have emerged stronger and more united than any of the previous social crises we have experienced. That is why it is crucial that we strengthen social dialogue and the time is right to do so."

According to the minister, "calls for violence, its direct application and ideas for the destruction of the constitutional order are made through certain media outlets that actively participate in demonstrations and the political life of the country."