Hundreds have protested in opposition to Serbia’s president and pledged to ‘radicalize’ gatherings

Tens of 1000’s of anti-government protesters on Saturday staged marches in Belgrade and different Serbian cities in opposition to President Aleksandar Vucic, pledging to “radicalize” weeks of peaceable gatherings which have already shaken his populist rule.

The demonstrators in Belgrade blocked the primary freeway that leads by the capital and chanted slogans for Vucic to resign, one thing that he has repeatedly rejected over the previous seven weeks of protests.

The protest initially erupted in response to 2 back-to-back mass shootings in early May that left 18 folks lifeless and 20 others wounded, lots of them pupils from a Belgrade elementary college.

The protesters have been demanding the resignations of high Serbian safety officers and the revoking of broadcasting licenses for pro-government media and tabloids that often air violent content material and host crime figures and conflict criminals.

The protesters contemplate that the state-controlled media is answerable for the tradition of violence that has been mainstay in Serbia because the wars within the Balkans within the Nineteen Nineties that left greater than 100,000 folks lifeless.

Vucic, a former ultranationalist who took an lively function within the breakup of the previous Yugoslavia, now claims he needs to take Serbia into the European Union. He has mentioned he won’t ever settle for the opposition calls for. He has branded protest leaders as “hyenas” who need him and his household lifeless.

One of the protest leaders, Aleksandar Jovanovic, mentioned that the demonstrations will proceed, and vowed to additional “radicalize” them with the blockade of roads and authorities buildings all through Serbia.