"Blockades in miniature: A handful of miserable blockaders in front of the Belgrade City Assembly".
This is how the portal is Informer described attempt to block the session of the Belgrade City Assembly which was called for by Belgrade choirs and activist associations on Friday (September 19).
It is true that on Friday at 9 am, when the protest was scheduled, there was no response from the citizens. Only a few dozen people gathered this morning at Nikola Pašić Square, with the intention of blocking the announced assembly session. The goal was to prevent the holding of the Assembly session to lead to the dissolution of the city parliament.
The tabloids, which have been playing up the end for months and proclaiming the demise of the "colored revolution", couldn't wait to use this morning's protest as "another proof" of the "blockade" debacle.
"Such a scene once again confirms that blockades, announced as mass events, in practice attract only a limited number of participants," writes the Informer.
The president of Serbia said something similar this morning Aleksandar Vučić in a guest appearance on TV Blic. He announced that on Thursday, 3150 "blockaders" gathered all over Serbia.
"They didn't report a single gathering. There were 24.000 criminal gatherings, and we secured at least 23.000. It's a responsible decision, but it's not in accordance with the law. I initiated it to protect them," said Vučić, adding that "they can't admit now that everything failed because they invested too much energy and emotion."
"And it failed and there is no longer any possibility for a colored revolution," said the President of Serbia.
"Broken like a skirting board"
While on the one hand they are celebrating the "defeat of the blockaders", the regime tabloids are pumping up the numbers at the meetings against the blockades organized by the Serbian Progressive Party. The informant, for example, says that last Saturday there were 145.000 people demanding a "normal life" at the rallies against the blockades.
Similar information has been repeated like parrots for weeks by Minister of the Interior Ivica Dačić and Director of Police Dragan Vasiljević. They started with a number of 70.000, and every subsequent weekend they bid on an increasing number of participants. Vučić has now given them their homework and announced in advance that there will be 200.000 people at the next protests against the blockades on September 27 in 200 places. Well, let someone count less.
On Thursday, an unnamed Informer journalist reported on the same portal that "the lost chests were like slats - their blockade in front of the Central Prison in Belgrade failed, so they attacked the woman who was filming them!".
"The blockaders are so furious that they cannot gather people for their violent protests, so now they have started attacking everyone in turn. Neda Perić (activist of the Serbian Progressive Party), who was filming them, experienced the worst insults, because she just wanted to show that they broke down and that there were only a few of them," wrote Informer about the protest in front of the Central Prison in Belgrade on September 18.
The jubilation of the regime's media and government politicians is fully in line with the narrative they have been promoting since the beginning, which is that the blockades are few in number, violent, pointless, and that the citizens, in principle, oppose them.
Aside from the sensationalist and tendentious headlines of Informer, one really gets the impression that the protests have lost their strength in the past period. Is it the end of the "colored revolution", as the media strikers of the regime have been announcing for months, or is it just a lull before the storm?
Photo: FoNet/APThe regime does not hesitate to use force in dealing with mass protests: Gendarmerie intervention on August 16 in Belgrade
Stormy autumn
Experience shows that the latter is more likely, for several reasons. First of all, November 1 is approaching, and with it the anniversary of the fall of the canopy at the Railway Station in Novi Sad and the death of 16 people, the event that triggered the biggest wave of protests in recent Serbian history.
Until now, students have regularly marked the passing of each month since the tragedy in Novi Sad with protests. Therefore, it is unreasonable to expect that the anniversary of that event will not be marked by a large protest, perhaps on the level of the historical protests of March 15 or June 28. The anger and sadness of citizens do not subside, and it is realistic to expect that emotions will be at their peak in the days before and after the anniversary.
Especially since no one has yet been held accountable for the fall of the canopy, and the investigation is still in progress. As KRIK journalists were told, the reason for this is the health condition of the former Minister of Infrastructure and one of the defendants in the case of "canopies", Goran Vesić, for which he has not yet been questioned.
"The questioning of witnesses is possible after the questioning of all the suspects, so since the suspect Vesić has reasons that are a hindrance to his questioning, it was not possible to schedule the questioning of the witness," the Public Prosecutor's Office for Organized Crime replied to KRIK.
Furthermore, practice has so far shown that protests regularly die down in the summer, so if they survive the summer lethargy, they intensify in the fall and winter.
This summer was hotter than usual, in every sense. Instead of the traditional dying down of protests, the streets across Serbia became the scene of direct clashes between demonstrators and progressives, and almost every major protest was marked by the excessive use of police force. The anger that the citizens felt at the beginning of the summer did not disappear, it was only intensified by the violent actions of the regime.
Violent suppression of protests
Aleksandar Vučić and his puppets have a monopoly on violence, complete control over the police and certainly at least a part of the army. It is one thing to say that the citizens are furious because of progressive violence, and it is another to expect them to willingly submit themselves to the batons of the policemen and the batons of thugs for the sake of ideals.
For years, Vučić hesitated to use bare force and state repression. The trauma of October 5th, when the state power finally provoked the power of the people ready for the final showdown, is deeply rooted in him. He reacted to almost all mass protests in the past decade with restraint and patiently waited for them to blow out on their own.
The government assumed that the protests caused by the death of 16 people under the canopy of the railway station in Novi Sad would suffer the same fate. Just like the big protests after the mass murders in "Ribnikar", Dubona and Mali Orašje on May 3 and 4, 2023 under the name "Serbia against violence".
However, as the demonstrations and blockades gained momentum, after the blockade of part of high schools and all universities, the current at the top of the government became louder and louder, demanding from Vučić to release the special police units and paramilitary formations of criminals under the command of SNS to re-establish the reign of fear.
The logic is clear: most people are not ready to take personal risks, if force is demonstrated, the protests will be diluted and eventually die out.
Photo: Gavrilo AndrićFrom the citizens' protest in front of the SNS premises
For this purpose, on March 15, despite the strong denials of the authorities, sound weapons were probably used.
When it was clear that the mass demonstrations and blockades would still survive even after the Vidovdan protest, the final decision was made to crush the rebellion with bare state force in coordination with the progressive thugs. On the twelfth of August, clashes were staged in Vrbas and Bačka Palanka, which proved to be a template for later protests in Belgrade and Novi Sad.
The current lull on the side of the rebellious Serbia favors such a course change.
That is why the government continues to play the card of violently suppressing protests, intimidating citizens, and arresting some of them to serve as an example: this is what will happen to you if you do not step down, it could be any of you. During the entire summer, students and citizens were imprisoned, some of them are still being eaten by bedbugs in their cells. Many years of prison sentences were imposed on them. In this sense, it is difficult to look at the future optimistically.
However, the energy of the students did not disappear, just as the anger in society did not evaporate because of everything that happened in the last 10 months. Even though classes have started and exams are in full swing, plenums are still regularly held at faculties, protest actions are planned and the student list for extraordinary parliamentary elections is being worked on. The essential difference between these, and all previous demonstrations against the regime of Aleksandar Vučić, is that today young people are the driving force of the rebellion.
Everything is moving towards November 1. It seems that day could turn out to be a turning point in this wave of mass civil protests against the lawlessness and corrupt student-led progressive government.
