How AFP Reports on Protests in Serbia
The French news agency AFP writes that thousands of anti-government protesters gathered on Wednesday evening in more than a dozen cities across Serbia, with reports of clashes between some of them and supporters of the ruling party in Novi Sad.
In that city, the two groups threw flares and other objects at each other, prompting the police to intervene, AFP reports, as cited by Danas.
Simultaneous protests took place across the country, mostly in front of local offices of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party, the report continues.
In Belgrade, a large police presence was deployed in front of the Serbian National Assembly building, where supporters of both sides gathered, hurling insults and objects at each other.
AFP notes that this followed a night of clashes on Tuesday in Vrbas, during which masked men, some armed with clubs, confronted anti-corruption demonstrators in front of the offices of President Aleksandar Vučić’s SNS party.
Protests against corruption have been shaking Serbia since November 1, 2024, when the entrance canopy of the Novi Sad railway station collapsed — an incident largely blamed on endemic corruption, AFP writes.
“For almost nine months, at rallies that have sometimes drawn hundreds of thousands of people, demands have been made for a transparent investigation of that tragedy, along with calls for early elections — which President Aleksandar Vučić refuses to allow, denouncing it as a foreign conspiracy to overthrow his government,” the French agency concludes.
