"There are more and more indications that the police in Serbia used prohibited sound weapons against the demonstrators," reports the German public service ARD. And the newspaper Cajt brings an extensive report from the student protests
"Serbian opposition politician." Marinika Tepic holds up a photo at a press conference. It shows a dozen policemen with helmets in front of a black police jeep. The photo is said to be from a protest on Saturday and was taken next to the Assembly. A gray device that looks like a large screen can be seen on the hood of the police jeep. Sound cannon, says Tepić, holding another document. Its intention is to show that the MUP of Serbia acquired seven sound devices LRAD 450 KSL", ARD reports.
The German public service says that there are videos on the Internet from Saturday and the moment when the sound cannon was allegedly used. "The footage shows a street in Belgrade full of people. Suddenly, the crowd splits in the middle, and people run away in panic," he writes. Deutsche Welle (DW).
The use of sonic weapons against people is prohibited in Serbia, ARD writes in an article on its portal and adds that opposition politician Dragan Đilas has announced that he will sue the government.
The Serbian government reacted with its well-known "salami tactic", reports ARD, using the term used in Germany to describe the political tactic of gradual concessions, which would mean that in this case the truth is reached through several small confessions.
"At first it was said that no sonic weapons were used at the demonstrations, and now Serbian Interior Minister Ivica Dacic says: 'Yes, the police were equipped with a sonic device, but it was never used as a sonic weapon,'" reports ARD.
"As a supposed proof that everything was in accordance with the law, Dacic showed two sound devices from which a police announcement could be heard over the public address system," states the German public service, but also emphasizes that "such messages were not broadcast during the demonstrations."
Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić also denies that sound weapons were ever used against citizens. ARD quotes him as saying: "If our forces used a sound cannon, Vortex, whatever it's called, I'm no longer president."
New identity of Serbia
In an article entitled "Young, brave, Serbian", the Cajt newspaper writes that until now there have never been major protests in Serbia and that the country is hopelessly taking its future back into its hands.
"Serbia is a country in decline. The birth rate is low, there is almost no immigration, and young people are leaving their homeland en masse. According to World Bank estimates, in 25 years there will be only 5,4 million people in Serbia, instead of today's almost seven million. There is nothing to indicate that this trend will change. At the head of the country is President Aleksandar Vučić, who stifles anyone who thinks differently from him, who wants or dreams differently from him. The country of that president is a country without hope and without a future - that's how everything was until November 1, 2024."
The author of the text, Ulrich Ladurner, writes that the protests have gradually spread throughout the country and that they are shaping the new identity of Serbia.
"The contours of a different, better Serbia are becoming more and more visible. The initiators of change are students and pupils - and no one counted on them. It was thought that young people were apathetic and depoliticized. (...) But suddenly they take to the streets and mobilize the masses. More than 300.000 people protested in Belgrade on Saturday, at the peak of the protests. That's almost five percent of the population of Serbia."
The author also writes that in the 2020s, Serbian militias carried out ethnic cleansing in the name of "Greater Serbia", and that in the early XNUMXs, that term was replaced by "Serbian world".
"But the meaning is the same: the unification of all Serbs in one state. The ideas from that time are still alive and dangerous. They have the potential to destabilize the Balkans. The conflict between Serbia and Kosovo remains unresolved, while in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the leader of the Bosnian Serbs is working on the secession of his entity," Cajt writes.
"So, Vučić has a number of destructive cards to play. When he threatened students at the beginning of the protests, and the pro-government media condemned them, many Serbs were afraid that the violence could turn against their own youth, that the war could return home and that their own children could be endangered. They instinctively felt that they had to protect them from the danger coming from those in power - those who rose on the sufferings of war. That is why countries around the world began to open for students and pupils."
Vučić? Who was that?
"Since the students have no leaders, Vučić could not apply his usual strategy - to smear, destroy or bribe the opposition leaders, depending on the situation," the text continues. "Students simply ignore him. Vučić? Who was that? In this way, almost unconsciously, they achieve something great: they show all citizens of Serbia what life could look like without Vučić's omnipresence."
In the end, the German newspaper concludes: "President Vučić survived the biggest demonstrations in the country's history. The demonstrators, however, neither sought nor expected his downfall. He is therefore still in office, but the country he believes he holds firmly in his hands is beginning to slip away from him. Serbia is beginning to heal the wounds inflicted on that society by war, nationalism, poverty and humiliation. Nothing is the same anymore, says an elderly woman who joined the youth that day. 'Today we have become different!'"
The President of the Association of Journalists of Kosovo, Dzemailj Redza, claims that the deputies of the Serbian List "tried to hide" that they had signed the oath
"Our kitchen for spreading hatred and lies is in this building above us, on this same RTS that still spreads lies and hatred today. My generation accepted those lies, it believed that we were doing the right thing and that we were right and the others were evil. And those others thought the same for themselves, and then the wheel of evil started which cannot be stopped and continues to this day for many", said Goran Samardžić, a war veteran, who was the same age as the students when he was in He also became a war invalid in Sarajevo
In order to get out of the political impasse and divisions in society, Serbia should step up its efforts in the fight against corruption, advance reforms of the rule of law, including the election of the REM Council through a transparent and comprehensive process, stated EU Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos.
It is particularly worrying that media workers in RTS are denied freedom of movement and the performance of professional journalistic tasks, and disturbing threats have been sent to them, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
There are no more wet roads, they should only be expected in the south and southeast, where short-term showers are still possible.
Anyone who condemns the regime's targeting of people from the media, the non-governmental sector, the opposition and universities, must not agree to this targeting of RTS editors and journalists either.
The government of Đur Mazut is "counter-revolutionary", focused on retaliation and state and street violence against opponents of the regime
Depriving Dejan Ilić, an intellectual with an impeccable life and work biography, of his freedom, without the slightest meaningful reason, is just one of the brutal indicators that the regime has turned against its own citizens and is entering a phase of terror
Vučić and Šešelj: Where I stopped, you continue
The return of radical violence subscribeThe archive of the weekly Vreme includes all our digital editions, since the very beginning of our work. All issues can be downloaded in PDF format, by purchasing the digital edition, or you can read all available texts from the selected issue.
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