12th Serbia against Violence Protest Held in Belgrade

Protest in Belgrade, June 3 2023 (BETAPHOTO/AMIR HAMZAGIC)

Journalist and writer Biljana Lukic said at the latest Serbia against Violence protest on July 22 that the people of Serbia were living in a country where the state did not defend them and where the "regime persecutes the best police officers, prosecutors, judges, artists and professors, and promotes nobodies, drug dealers, murderers, and brags about its trolls who come up with the worst drivel and have been ruining people's lives for a decade."

Speaking from an improvised podium in front of the building of the Serbian Broadcasting Corporation, Lukic said that, meanwhile, the public broadcaster "has been painting, with its eyes firmly shut, a picture of Serbia where everyone buy meat and where there is no violence."

"We cannot hear anything from the Serbian Broadcasting Corporation's reporters about the victims of the regime, about raspberries being sold for ten times what suppliers are paid, inflation being higher than in Ukraine, wages being among the lowest in the region and Europe. You cannot hear that gas here is the most expensive in the region, that every kilometer of highway costs ten times more than it should," Lukic said.

Journalist Smiljan Banjac also addressed the crowd, saying that Serbian Broadcasting Corporation general manager Dragan Bujosevic was at the helm of the media outlet even though he had long ago met the conditions for retirement, while the main criticisms were directed at the news program. At the end of the protest, Banjac read the demands, which include the sacking of Serbian Interior Minister Bratislav Gasic and Security and Information Agency Director Aleksandar Vulin.