Citizens of Serbia blocked several motorways across the country yesterday in a response to the adoption of the Law on Referendum and Law on Expropriation earlier this week. The adoption of the laws is seen as laying groundwork for the lithium mine of the international company Rio Tinto in western Serbia, which has been met with serious opposition from the Serbian public. The protests ended up with multiple arrests and a violent conflict in the city of Šabac.
Activists groups held a protest in front of the Presidency of Serbia earlier this week, warning that they would call for a blockade of roads during the weekend if the controversial laws were adopted by the parliament. After the adoption, they called the citizens to block roads in their cities between 2 and 3 p.m. on Saturday.The country is once again going through violent protests, following the ones in July 2020. Another protest has been announced for next Saturday.Masked men and a bulldozer deployed against protesters in ŠabacThe most serious incident occurred in the city of Šabac, where unknown people tried to drive through the group of citizens blocking the road with a bulldozer. One of the protesters managed to climb to the bulldozer cabin and started beating the people inside.
The violent incident was widely shared on the social networks. Protesters in Šabac were also attacked by the masked people carrying bats and hammers. According to the leader of the opposition party Together for Serbia party and former mayor of Šabac Nebojša Zelenović, this has happened after the police had withdrawn from the scene.“Police withdrew and let the mafia carrying weapons, bats, hammers, to attack us, dispersing the people who were peacefully protesting, to enable the passage to SNS busses which were on their way to their congress”, Zelenović said.
Serbian Progressive Party has been accused of cooperating with the persons of potentially criminal background ever since the inauguration of President Aleksandar Vučić in 2017, when some of the people investigative journalists connected to the criminal clan of Veljko Belivuk violently removed journalists gathered at the scene.
More recently, men dressed as football hooligans came to protect the mural of Ratko Mladić in Belgrade, against which activist groups were protesting. These groups accused the state of protecting both the mural and the hooligans.
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