The baseball bats in the hands of the attackers of a group of student protesters on the night of January 27-28 in Novi Sad immediately brought down the government, the mayor of the northern Serbian city and threatened the rule of President Aleksandar Vucic – the most influential political figure in Serbia since the era of post-communist leader Slobodan Milosevic, BTA reports.
"I'll tell you exactly what happened" – This is how the Serbian president began his address to the nation last night, hours after Prime Minister Miloš Vučević and Novi Sad Mayor Milan Đurić resigned.
Vučić called the group of students in Novi Sad who painted graffiti and stuck stickers on the facade of the office of the Serbian Progressive Party "anarchists" and added that supporters of the ruling party had chased them out.
The Serbian president did not go into details about the attack, after which two of the students sought emergency help, and 23-year-old Ana, who suffered injuries to her body and a dislocated jaw, underwent emergency surgery.
"Murderers! We will not remain silent, you will not silence us!", chanted students and citizens in support of Ana yesterday and today.
The attack in Novi Sad is part of a series of provocations and manifestations of physical and verbal aggression against protesting students who take to the streets of various Serbian cities every day, accusing the government of corruption and nepotism over the deaths of 15 people in the northern Serbian city.
The cause of the tragedy on November 1st last year in Novi Sad was the collapse of a concrete canopy at the railway station.
For the first time, at the end of November, students from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade were attacked by supporters of the ruling party during an anti-government rally. In response, their colleagues at over 60 faculties gradually blocked access to educational institutions and suspended lectures and exams indefinitely.
During the protest actions, there were also several incidents in which cars crashed into protesters, who blocked intersections for 15 minutes and stood in silence in memory of the 15 victims in Novi Sad.
In one of these incidents, a student was injured and hospitalized, and Interior Minister Ivica Dacic said that the action was not protected by the police because the law enforcement agencies were not notified in advance.
"I hope that what happened to my child will never happen again!", said the victim's father at the time, who traveled for hours before making sure that his daughter was alive.
On the day the students called on all citizens to take to the streets and not to go to work, another young woman was hit by a car.
Despite the resignation of the government and the resignation of the mayor of Novi Sad, anti-government protests in Serbia continue every day.
On February 1, three months after the tragedy in the northern Serbian city, there will be a new protest.
Analysts compare the size and tenacity of the demonstrations in Serbia to the riots of the late 1990s that toppled former President Slobodan Milosevic in 2000.
"I know firsthand how this student protest started. We don't have organizers, we live in the 21st century, everyone carries a phone and learns where and what is happening in minutes," student Jovana Trupković, who only knows about Milošević from her parents' stories, told BTA.
Jovana reminds that the students' demands are for the institutions in Serbia to start functioning and for the real culprits for the 15 victims in Novi Sad to be found and punished.
"We are fighting for the democratization of Serbian society, and yes, this clearly has to go through Aleksandar Vučić's departure from the political scene!", said Jovana.
"I would invite the president to play chess with us, but he doesn't play fair!", said Stefan Đorđević in response to the head of state's remark to the thousands who blocked the "Autokomanda" road junction for 24 hours on Monday.
The protesters said they would not give up, forcing Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic to act for the first time under unprecedented pressure amid the country's biggest political crisis in decades.