“Tensions were high, Vucic’s speech signalled additional pressure on protesters and media”: What is the world writing about the “We do not give up Serbia” rally?

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic’s speech to thousands of his supporters at a rally in Belgrade signalled that state pressure on protesters and the media could increase, AP reports on yesterday’s “We do not give up Serbia” rally.

“Serbia’s increasingly authoritarian government has stepped up its crackdown on critics and independent media, with police questioning students and activists and threatening legal action to curb university strikes,” the text said.

The rally in Belgrade, the AP explains, was designed as a counterbalance to the massive anti-corruption protests that have attracted hundreds of thousands of people, “an unprecedented challenge for Vucic”.

It added that in a “divisive speech”, the Serbian President accused the student-led protesters of having “caused enormous damage to Serbia over the past five months” and repeated claims of an attack which he said was externally orchestrated to oust him from power.

“The attack originated from abroad,” Vucic said, AP reported, adding that the Serbian president did not explain who the alleged foreign organisers were, nor did he offer any evidence for his claims, but stressed that “we will not allow those from outside and inside Serbia to destroy our country.”

The report also states that Vucic received the support of his right-wing ally, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who addressed the gathering via video message. The second speaker was the President of the Bosnian Serbs, Milorad Dodik, whose arrest is being demanded by the Bosnian authorities because of his separatist politics.

Describing the atmosphere at the rally, the AP noted that the authorities closed the centre of the capital Belgrade in front of the parliament building and set up concert stages, tents and food stalls for the thousands of nationalist supporters from the region. “A neighbouring park where Vucic loyalists were outside the presidential palace was surrounded by dozens of tractors, apparently to protect his offices.”

As tensions mounted, the text added that protesting students, a key force behind the almost daily protests, urged citizens of Belgrade to stay away from Vucic’s rally and “use the weekend to take a break”. The Serbian capital reverberated with the sound of whistles, vuvuzelas (a type of trumpet) and pots banging during Vucic’s protest speech.

“Vucic is a former ultra-nationalist who now says he wants Serbia to join the European Union, but has faced accusations of stifling democratic freedoms while maintaining close relations with Russia and China,” the AP says at the end of the report.

In its report on yesterday’s rally in Belgrade, Reuters also notes, among other things, that “tensions were high between Vucic supporters and anti-government protesters”.

“In Novi Pazar, the administrative centre of Serbia’s Muslim-majority region, anti-government activists tried to prevent buses carrying Vucic supporters from leaving the city. In Belgrade, protesters tried to prevent buses from reaching the city centre by pelting them with eggs, which led to police intervention.”

In its report, picked up by France24, AFP notes that the Archive of Public Assemblies on the “X” network says that at least 55,000 people attended yesterday’s rally, which, it adds, is significantly lower than the group’s estimate of 275,000 to 325,000 people who took to the streets of Belgrade on 15 March in the largest student protest ever recorded in Serbia.

The agency also commented on Vucic’s statement that the student-led protests were a threat to the peace and stability of the Balkan nation, and that he accused the protesters of being paid by “foreign intelligence agencies”.

Addressing the crowd late in the evening, Vucic dismissed the protest movement as “an attack from abroad because some foreign powers are not able to pass a free, independent and sovereign Serbia”.

“He announced the creation of his new political movement ‘to bring new energy’ to the country.”

“Every worker, every farmer is welcome; every man who earns an honest living and fights for his children and his country is welcome,” Vucic told the crowd, according to AFP.

On Saturday afternoon, several thousand people, mostly pensioners, some of them dressed in national costumes, walked past stalls set up in the centre of Belgrade, AFP reports on the atmosphere at the rally in Belgrade.

The stalls offered free grilled meat, sausages, wine and local fruit brandy, as well as traditional peasant shoes or the national cap of Serbia – the shajkaca./Danas/