Several Hundred Thousand Attend Massive Protest in Belgrade

Protest in Belgrade, Sat. March 15 2025

Several hundred thousand people rallied in Belgrade on March 15 at a massive protest called by protesting university students under the slogan "15 for 15," in honor of the 15 people who were killed when a concrete overhang collapsed on them at the Novi Sad railway station in November 2024.

Earlier on, the students posted maps of gathering points across Belgrade and the program of the protest via official student protest social media accounts. Even though the protest was scheduled to begin in front of the Serbian parliament building at 4 p.m., it began hours earlier, with traffic blocked in many streets in downtown Belgrade from the early morning and streams of people making noise for hours with whistles and horns as they passed, chanting what has become the rallying cry of the protest - "Pumpaj! [Pump it]."

The central site of the protest was changed from the parliament to Slavija Square, and as protesters were moving to the new location, some of those present activated flares and threw firecrackers in front of the parliament, the Student Cultural Center and at several other locales, after which the protesting students urged everyone to cease all use of pyrotechnics.
 
A 15-minute silent tribute that has been observed during the months of protests calling for accountability in the wake of the deadly overhang collapse was interrupted at 7:11 p.m. by an unidentified sound phenomenon that those nearby described as a cannon strike, while footage of the moment shows a panicked crowd abruptly parting along the middle of the street. In an urgent press release, the protesting students of the Belgrade Faculty of Dramatic Arts urged everyone to move away from the National Assembly due to incidents, and then to leave the protest altogether. Around 8:30 p.m. they called an official early end to the student protest. Straggling protesters dispersed around 11 p.m.

Speculation soon emerged on social media that a "sound cannon" was used, a sonic weapon prohibited by Serbian law. Several opposition and non-governmental organizations condemned the as of yet unconfirmed use of a sound cannon, while the Serbian Interior Ministry and Defense Ministry denied that any such device was used during the protest. The Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs said in a press release that 107,000 people participated in the protest in Belgrade, though protesters and many domestic and foreign media outlets stated that there were several hundreds of thousands of people. The Archive of Public Assemblies announced that there were between 275,000 and 325,000 people at the protest.