From the criminals, through the hordes of thugs Novak Nedić, we got to the point where activists of the Serbian Progressive Party no longer hide their faces when they attack protesting citizens. It's as if SNS is exerting some kind of cruel psychological pressure on its own: go to be seen and filmed, that way you will better and more vigorously defend these privileges that we have given you
"The officials Serbian Progressive Party they don't organize anymore beaters, they are now beaters" - this is how the post of one user of the X social network reads, written in the days when people with hoods provoke, attack and beat citizens. And the citizens either peacefully protest against the removal of the Sava Bridge or pay their respects to those who died in the fall of the canopy on November 1 in Novi Sad.
The claim about officials as beatings is not incorrect. Among the thugs who attacked peaceful citizens during the protest against the demolition of the Old Sava Bridge was Gavrilo Kovačević, the president of the municipality of Zemun, otherwise a member of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS). And he is only one in a series of those who were recorded and identified, either as members or as officials of SNS. A strange evolution took place in SNS: from criminals and fans (although it comes to him the same), through lower-ranking supporters and members, we suddenly reached the point where citizens are being attacked and beaten by anonymous progressives. They don't even hide their faces. It's as if SNS is exerting some cruel psychological pressure on its own: go to be seen and filmed, that way you will defend better and more vigorously the few privileges we have given you.
IT ALL BEGAN IN SAVAMALA
There is some creepy symbolism in the fact that Vučić's thugs these days are harassing citizens right in Belgrade on the water. The violent nature of this regime first took an extreme form in that very place. The demolition in Savamala was the preparation of the ground for the beginning of the construction of Belgrade on the water.
On election night 2016, a group of masked men demolished the facilities of the private companies "Iskra", "Transport Peroni" and the restaurant "Sava Express" in Hercegovačka Street.
Musician Miloš Đorđević was playing in one of the bars in then-dark Savamala that night - the street lighting was not working, the footage from the only security camera showed.
After the performance, he went to his car in the parking lot in Hercegovačka to pack his equipment. Then three men in phantoms approached him.
"They pulled me out of the car, told me to keep quiet and keep my head down - I thought they were stealing the car," Đorđević told N1 television three days after the crash. They immediately took his phone and all his documents, he says, and he was released only after an hour. A security guard in Herzegovina told a similar story for N1. "That's where they took me out, tied me up, took away my phone. They had bats and masks and just run around in a circle. There were 30 of them, like a company of soldiers," Tanasković stated at the time. He died a month later.
The ghosts of Savamala remain a mystery to this day. Police officer Goran Stamenković, who was the shift chief of the Belgrade police that night, was the only one responsible for the Hercegovačka case so far. He pleaded guilty before the High Court in Belgrade in 2018 and was given a suspended sentence for negligent work because he did not respond to citizens' reports and did not send police officers to stop the demolition. He later told the media that in return, if he pleaded guilty, he was offered a promotion and the opportunity to legalize a residential building.
IT CONTINUED AT THE INAUGURATION
In these twelve years of the rule of the SNS, all kinds of things happened, as in 120 years. Something that happened seven years ago should not be easily forgotten, especially if it is a high-intensity event. Such as, for example, the inauguration of the President of Serbia. Specifically, the inauguration of Aleksandar Vučić in 2017.
In parallel with the inauguration, the "Against Dictatorship" protest took place. "Danasa" journalist Lidija Waltner was physically unable to follow the protest of individuals gathered in the "Against Dictatorship" movement. When she tried to photograph how members of the informal security of the gathering "caught the protester Marko Radosavljević by the collar", the same people threatened her if she did not stop taking pictures, and then they physically took her to Pionirski Park. Then a dozen men created a cordon in the Terazij tunnel, making passage impossible. A journalist from Radio Belgrade asked them who they were and who they represented - instead of an answer, they knocked the recorder out of her hand.
Among those stewards, as revealed by KRIK, was Borko Aranitović, a man who provided security for numerous Belgrade clubs and was close to the group of Aleksandar Stanković, a fan leader convicted of drug dealing. Let us remind you that after Stanković's murder, the group was taken over by Veljko Belivuk, and he is on trial for seven serious murders and a number of other crimes. When asked who provided security for the gathering, SNS deputy Vladimir Đukanović immediately after the inauguration replied to the editors of the then "Nin": "Our people from SNS, professional security is certainly not, and now who, you have to ask the people who were involved in the organization. Party headquarters."
In that conversation, he said, among other things, that the beaters "of course should be rewarded for preventing incidents and riots by those who came to a meeting registered by law. I am disappointed in the so-called journalists who did not condemn those who came to provoke, and then later whine and whine because someone prevented them from provoking". When asked who exactly those people are, Đukanović said: "Whoever they are, kudos to them."
He confirmed what the public speculated about - that he is a large, balding, black man in a black shirt, a member of the SNS: "I know him from some of our party gatherings or celebrations. I saw him in the party premises, yes.”
"Nin" then reminded of the name associated with the SNS beaters - Zoran Milojević Zelja, "operative". Đukanović said that he was a "great man": "He was at my wedding, he is a member of the SNS." Whoever says that he is behind the beatings is lying."
Zelja's name did not appear for the first time then. Milivojević was an advisor in the Office for Kosovo and Metohija while it was headed by Aleksandar Vulin (2012-2013). In 2013, opposition activist Danilo Bobić from Vrbas recognized Zelja as the man who kidnapped and beat him during the election campaign. In the first few years of SNS rule, after every incident during local elections, Zoran Milojević Zelja is mentioned as one of the actors. But none of the cases received a judicial epilogue.
When it comes to the 2017 inauguration, the incidents were reported to the prosecutor's office, which consolidated them into one case. Five months after the inauguration, the First Basic Prosecutor's Office in Belgrade announced that they rejected the criminal complaint, stating that there was no threat to security or violent behavior in the specific case.
CORONA PROTESTS AND GREATER TROUBLE
At the beginning of July 2020, Aleksandar Vučić tried to re-introduce a state of emergency due to the corona virus pandemic. People were already fed up with curfews, multi-day curfews and a general lack of logic in the measures that were lifted only to hold parliamentary elections, originally scheduled for April.
In July, people took to the streets to protest against the return of the measures, and those protests will be remembered for the most brutal scenes of police torture, but not only police torture. There were, of course, beaters in civilian clothes.
Photos of "civilians" in action circulated on social networks, and numerous users claimed that they showed the leaders of the notorious "Janjičar", including Veljko Belivuk, aka Velja Nevolja. Belivuk has a substantial police record behind him, and some media, together with his best friend, the murdered Aleksandar Stanković (Salet Mutavi), marked him as a direct link of that fan group with the state leadership.
Belivuk was arrested on February 4, 2021. On the same day, the police handcuffed his friend Marko Miljković and fifteen others. Belivuk was the leader of a criminal fan group called "Principi", which gathers members of the former "Janjičari" group after the murder of Stanković in 2016. Both of them are listed in the police as members of the Kavački clan, which has been at war with the rival Škaljar clan for many years.
Dijana Hrkalović, the former state secretary in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, is also associated with this in the public, but when it comes to her actions in beating the opposition, the year 2018 is important. The local elections in Lucani took place in a very tense atmosphere, so a slightly stronger police force was grouped in the police station in Guca.
Dijana Hrkalović was filmed lining them up and giving them orders.
THE ROLE OF NOVAK NEDIĆ IN SCARING THE FAIR WORLD:
It was May 2023. Four farmers' associations, dissatisfied with the price of fuel but also with the purchase price of milk and grain, after unsuccessful negotiations with the Government of Serbia, started a protest that included blocking roads. The accident was that at the time of the blockade, the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, was supposed to visit Pancevo, next to which there was one of the larger blockades.
A video of people who, without exaggeration, look scary has appeared on social networks. In black T-shirts, bald, huge, bulging, they get out of some raft in a column one by one. There is no doubt that their intentions are bad. But they are led by an interesting man. Novak Nedic has been the Secretary General of the Government of Serbia since 2014. For ten years, this man, obviously trustworthy, has been in this position. And he leads the batiners.
It is even more interesting who is recognized in that team of his.
One of those whom the insiders recognized in the pictures is Đorđe Gačanović. He was a direct witness to the intervention of the gendarmes at the Pride Parade in 2014. On that occasion, there was an incident with Vučić's brother Andrej and Siniša Malog's brother, Predrag. Gačanović testified about this in court and, as a key witness, contributed to solving the case so that it turned out that the two brothers were not guilty of anything.
At the time of the disputed event, Gačanović, according to his own statements, was the director of the Department for Security and Investigations of the non-governmental organization Russian Initiative, headed by Siniša Vučinić, a member of the Serbian Progressive Party. In the proceedings against the gendarmes, Gačanović had the status of a key witness. In his statement, he stated that he was on his way to the Russian Embassy in Belgrade. "Vreme" wrote in detail about this case and Gačanović in May 2017.
Users of social networks recognized a certain Tupesa among the buff guys in black shirts. It is speculated that his name is linked to the ownership of a certain gym, as well as a warrant for causing serious bodily injury.
The third recognized is Miljan Hofman Vidović, a kick boxer, who in 2019 was suspected of kidnapping a certain Nenad Jakovljević from Bijeljina together with Ljuban Vidović and Dragan Cerovec from Zvornik. The media reported that the three of them forced Jakovljević to sign a contract with force, threats and beatings in which he admits that he owes 16.000 convertible marks to Fikreta Mušanović, the mother of boxer Đorđe Tomić, known for his participation in the reality show "Couples". As the aforementioned Jakovljević testified in court, the Vidovićs released him after eight hours of torture.
The fourth person who was recognized by social network users on the raft with Nedić is called Bojan Asak and is close to Pavlo Bihalij from the "Leviathan" movement, who, again, is close to violent behavior, but also to Aleksandar Vulin.
Novak Nedić, on the other hand, was linked to Veljko Belivuk and his clan on several occasions, which was investigated by the prosecution to some extent, but suddenly stopped after a while.
In September of last year, Nedic attacked retired police director Vladimir Rebić at a funeral at the Bežani cemetery. According to witnesses, Nedic was standing in front of the chapel when Rebic arrived. As soon as he saw him, he started throwing things at him and then insulting him. He cursed his mother and shouted: "You betrayed us all", and then added that they would find him, wherever he was. Rebić did not react.
By the way, he was the director of the police for six years, he retired in 2021, and according to the KRIK organization, his mandate was marked by the war of criminal clans and the politicization of the police.
SOMEONE IS INSULTING, SOMEONE RECORD IT
Apart from the President of the Municipality of Zemun, another high-ranking SNS official stood out in recent events. Damir Zobenica, the vice-president of the Assembly of Vojvodina, is suffering because a recording of a telephone conversation in which he gave instructions to an activist was leaked to the public.
"These locations will be blocked," says Zobenica. "We need to monitor in other cities whether some of the locations will be blocked. We have the task of securing people who are not recognizable, who are not officials, who will come to insult these people and protest that they are being blocked, i.e. insulting the opposition, at all these locations, except for the railway station, the intersection near the railway station in Novi Sad leaders. Let them be creative. All of that must be recorded and the recording sent to me, so that I can pass it on to the media."
Then Zobenica is heard issuing the order again: "I don't have to explain to you how important this task is." We don't have much time, everything has to be organized by 11 tomorrow, so that when there are blockages, we can do the job properly. So, insulting the opposition, rebellion because it is blocked, insulting the opposition and everyone else, from Bjelogrlic to I don't know who... Recording all of that, someone insults, someone records, or the one who insults should record and send me the video."
The President of Serbia spoke immediately and said that Zobenica claims that it is artificial intelligence. However, that is completely impossible, as every journalist knows, because in recent years we have been bombarded with appearances deep fake recordings. In order for someone to make a fake audio-recording that is this believable, with all the sighs, laps, and the like, they must have thousands of minutes of real recordings of Damir Zobenica's speech. Those thousands of minutes do not exist, because Zobenica did not speak that much in public. Moreover, these days there are articles in the media about who he is in general. Well, he is so well known to the public.
This cannot be the work of artificial intelligence for another reason - this kind of "work" needs days, if not weeks, to be this convincing. This would mean that work on this project started even before the canopy fell in Novi Sad and killed 15 people. So - the recording is authentic and there is no scenario in which it is fake.
And what do we have now? We have a high-ranking SNS official who asks the lower-ranking ones to go to blockades, insult the opposition and record all of that. How would he, allegedly, send it to the media, as if they were not already at the blockade and as if the people from the blockade would not film and publish the provocateurs on the networks.
Ozonica does not need this for the media. He needs it for his records. There is no doubt that the SNS functions like an army: Vučić has had to shoulder the struggle to stay in power. Now they have to go out on the streets and prove themselves. The general can't do it all by himself, he also needs an army.
The gathering of SNS members in front of the party premises in Novi Sad on December 1, while a commemorative walk for the 15 victims was underway, should be read in the same key. Between 50 and 100 members stood in front of the premises in dead silence, thinking, I guess, that the citizens were going to attack them. The townspeople calmly walked past them, completely ignoring them and not wasting air to address them. And they, blackmailed and intimidated, morally debatable, stood with blank stares and refused to answer the journalists' questions about what they were doing there. One tried to turn so the cameras wouldn't capture his face, but he quickly returned to his starting position. I guess he remembered the order that he should be filmed.
WE ARE WHERE WE ARE, WHAT NOW?
On Monday, the police were at the "Jovan Jovanović Zmaj" high school. According to the testimony of the students, they were forbidden to leave the classrooms, and the children who are in the student parliament were taken to the ceremonial hall, where the principal, Radivoje Stojković, accompanied by a policeman, gave them a letter about how to honor the dead. Although they were forced to leave the classes, the members of the student parliament were registered as absent.
One boy, however, a student of this high school, is conspicuously present in public against his will. We are talking about the son of Prime Minister Miloš Vučević, who was allegedly "forced" to leave school on Friday, November 29, and participate in a fifteen-minute blockade. It was the third Friday in a row that professors and students paid tribute to the fallen. Professor of philosophy Danijela Grujić, whom the tabloids began to harass, was marked as "guilty" of this. However, it quickly became known that Grujić teaches the third and fourth grades, and that Vučević's son goes to the second, so the teacher and the student do not even know each other. At the same time, the President of Serbia spoke again, and because of the incident at the blockade in Požarevac. Ljubiša Stokić, retired professor of sociology, ended up on the hood of the car with which the unknown driver tried to break through the blockade. Stokić tried to stop him by throwing himself on the hood, but the unknown driver carried him on the hood for about fifty meters.
The driver remained unknown because the president personally defended him: "They say someone jumped on his hood because the man wanted to pass. Well, he says, let's maybe arrest the man driving the car. How the hell do you arrest a man who hasn't broken the law? That man went his own way. Are you all conscious, right? Wash yourself with ice water, take it somewhere, there is as much cold water as you want. You stood in someone's way, you told him I am a god and a whip in this country, I won't let you pass. And the man passed. And you jump on his car and you say arrest the one who was driving the car. Are you normal, right? In which country does that exist? Are you all clean together?" Vučić asked, practically giving permission to trample pedestrians.
They are, they are clean. The people at the blockades, students, high school students, are all sad, angry, upset, but their hearts, cheeks and heads are clean. In contrast to the Batina authorities, which set their sights on their heads.
Less than two days of blockade - that's how long it took to see how weak and powerless the public media service is, both from the outside and from the inside. At the moment of writing this text, it is the eighth day of the blockade, and the sixth that RTS is not broadcasting its program. They also seem to be facing a strike inside the house. And the essence of blocking RTS is not in what it publishes, but in what it keeps silent
In the months after the fall of the canopy in Novi Sad, the flames of rebellion spread throughout Serbia. The first protests started in Novi Sad right after the tragedy. The authorities responded with arrests, police cordons and intimidation, but instead of calming down the protesters, new protests followed.
The rector of the University of Belgrade, Vladan Đokić, has been the target of top state officials and regime tabloids for months, who label him as an insidious instigator of student protests, an opportunist, "the face of evil" and "the leader of the criminal octopus." How and why a rector became "state enemy number one"
"I'm standing in the cordon, and my daughter is shouting at me 'aw, aw, killers'. What should I do? If they ordered me - I would throw down my baton and bulletproof vest and stand on the side of my child," a police officer from the south of Serbia, who works as needed in the Belgrade Police Brigade, told "Vreme"
The recent formation of the Đura Macuta government is part of the regime's revenge and cynicism. This can be seen most in the "black troika" of new ministers appointed to deal with the parts of society that are the leaders and symbols of the big rebellion that lasted for several months, the cause of which was the fall of the canopy in Novi Sad, which claimed 16 human lives. Education, universities, unsolicited media and parts of the judiciary that refuse to listen to orders, either publicly, with announcements, or hiding behind legal procedures, should be dismantled. Those who will have no problem doing everything they are told, even reinforcing the orders with their own inventions, are chosen for this.
Who mentions the extraordinary elections when the rating of the party in power is falling, and according to all surveys, Vučić is not the most important political factor in the country, but the students?
The brutal beating of students and citizens in Novi Sad shows that the regime is not only ready to take revenge - it is actually carrying it out
If in reality the principle of balance is violated - the way the incompetent regime violated the relationship between the concrete elements at the Novi Sad Railway Station - reality will behave like a canopy: it will fail to obey
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