Professors, lawyers join students in anti-Vučić protests across Serbia

Serbia’s student-led protests against President Aleksandar Vučić gathered more steam on Saturday, as professors joined those who are demanding justice for the collapse of the canopy of the Novi Sad train station that killed 15 people last November.

In Novi Sad, the country’s second-largest city, professors, citizens, and students gathered to pay tribute to the victims of the tragedy at the railway station. Afterwards, they initiated a protest march titled ‘4,000 Teachers, 4,000 Steps’ in support of the students.

The students accuse the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) of President Vučić of corruption and nepotism, which he and the party deny. Vučić faces a criminal complaint for inciting violence, filed by a civil society organisation after a driver rammed a student protest in Belgrade on Thursday, injuring one woman.

“It is our duty as professors to unconditionally support students in their demands for a better and fairer society,“ said Professor Ljubica Oparnica of the Faculty of Education in Sombor, speaking in front of the Rectorate in Novi Sad, as quoted by local independent media N1.

“It is time for a new era… Believe me, change is coming,“ Oparnica told those gathered.

Lawyers, too, came to the support of the protesting students, with the Bar Association of Serbia unanimously voting to suspend their work for seven days.

Vladimir Beljanski, president of the Bar Association in Vojvodina – Serbia’s northernmost region in which Novi Sad is the main city – stated that the legal profession holds a unified stance on this matter.

Similar protests continue in the capital, Belgrade, and elsewhere in the country, including a student-led blockade of the law faculty at the University of Kragujevac.

‘Money from the West’

Striking students have reported pressure from Serbian state security and Vučić, who has accused the students of receiving money from the West for their protests.

Pro-government media have bluntly published personal data of some of the protesters, which likely would not be possible without the involvement of BIA, Serbia’s secret service.

Student leaders and twin brothers Lazar and Luka Stojaković became known to the general public when information from their Croatian passports was published in pro-government daily Vecernje Novosti, who wrote that the brothers were paid by Croatia’s secret service.

In Belgrade on Friday, tens of thousands of anti-government protesters gathered in front of the headquarters of state television RTS over their alleged pro-government bias.