Thousands of people marched Monday evening in Belgrade to demand the resignations of political leaders and to protest against the promotion of violence in the media, a few days after two shootings which left seventeen people dead, in particular in a school. The demonstrators gathered in front of the parliament building, in the center of Belgrade, at the call of several right and left opposition parties, behind the slogan: “Serbia against violence”.
“We’ve waited too long, we’ve been silent for too long, we’ve turned our heads too long,” Marina Vidojevic, a Serbian elementary school teacher, told the crowd. We want safe schools, streets, villages and cities for all children. »
In their call to demonstrate, opposition parties demand “an immediate end to the promotion of violence in the media and in the public space” and the resignation of the Minister of the Interior and the head of the intelligence services, accused of inaction. Education Minister Branko Ruzic resigned on Sunday offering his condolences to the families of the victims of a “cataclysmic tragedy”.
Disarmament plan
The opposition is also calling for the suppression of reality TV programs that “promote violence, immorality and aggressiveness” and the closure of pro-government newspapers accused of disseminating “false information” in order to harm political opponents. Several leaders of President Aleksandar Vucic’s Conservative Party (SNS) have accused the opposition of “politicizing” the two killings to attack the head of state and those in power.
Serbia has been shocked by two shootings that occurred last week in less than forty-eight hours. In the first, unprecedented in this Balkan country, a 13-year-old schoolboy opened fire on Wednesday May 3 at a school in central Belgrade, killing eight students and a security guard. Six other students and a teacher were injured.
On Thursday, a 21-year-old young man killed eight people with an automatic rifle and injured fourteen in two villages about sixty kilometers south of Belgrade.
After his shootings, the Serbian president promised to launch a large-scale disarmament plan. According to the research project Small Arms Survey, from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, 39% of the inhabitants of Serbia own a firearm, the highest rate in Europe.
