Growing protests in Serbia demand social change after mass shootings

Protests in Serbia following successive mass shootings last month culminated Saturday in the largest street demonstrations in the capital, Belgrade, since protesters toppled Slobodan Milosevic as Serbia’s president in 2000.

Weekly “Serbia Against Violence” protests have gained momentum since early May when two massacres – one at a school in Belgrade, the second in nearby villages – killed 18 people and sparked a wave of public revulsion at what critics of the stronghold leader of denouncing the country, Aleksandar Vucic, as a “culture of violence” promoted by the government and loyal media.

Saturday’s protest, the fifth and by far the largest, increased the pressure on Mr. Vucic to meet at least some of the protesters’ demands. Those demands include the firing of senior law enforcement officers and the revocation of broadcasting licenses from pro-government television stations notorious for broadcasting violent reality shows and ignoring opposition politicians.

“Enough is enough,” Zoran Kesić, a satirist and TV presenter, told protesters. “Enough with violence, enough with hatred and intimidation, enough with humiliation.”

The protests have turned into a wider, hitherto peaceful uprising against the increasingly authoritarian rule of Mr Vucic, who has ruled the Balkan nation for nearly a decade, first as prime minister and then as president.

Mr Vucic began his political career as a radical nationalist during the Balkan wars of the 1990s, but in recent years has tried to present himself as a pro-European leader keen on Serbia’s stalled attempts to join the European Revive the Union. He has hesitated to impose sanctions on Russia over its war in Ukraine, but Serbia has voted at the United Nations to condemn Moscow.

Many protesters on Saturday called for Mr. Vucic to resign, and one group released helium balloons with a banner reading “Vucic Go Away” below a large photo of the president, who sailed into the sky.

The president, who won re-election last year in a landslide, is determined to stay put and dismiss the protests as a “political stunt” by his opponents.

Unlike a major protest involving football hooligans and arson in October 2000, which forced Mr Milosevic, under whom Mr Vucic was Minister of Information, to resign, Saturday’s demonstration was peaceful, apart from some clashes between demonstrators and pro-government agitators.

Mr Vucic has experienced – and survived – large street protests in the past, but none as large as on Saturday. Previous protests, spearheaded by opposition parties and disrupted by violence instigated by government supporters, have all come to nothing.

But Ivan Ivanovic, a 48-year-old protester, noted that unlike previous rounds of street demonstrations, the anti-violence protests were only getting bigger.

“The motivation is very strong – in a sad way. It’s not about the opposition. These are people who are fed up,” he said.