Opposition Leader: Vucic Has Introduced Serbia into the Darkest Chapter of His Rule

Dragan Djilas (BETAPHOTO/MILOS MISKOV)

Freedom and Justice Party president Dragan Djilas said on July 3 that Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic had introduced the country into the darkest chapter of his rule and that the most brutal violence was being used in the streets of Belgrade and other Serbian cities.

Djilas said in a statement that everyone was living in an undeclared state of emergency. “Vucic has ordered that even children be arrested, high school minors and kept in detention for hours,” the leader of the Freedom and Justice Party said.

He added that his party demanded the immediate release of everyone who had been taken in, an urgent investigation to establish the criminal liability of those who had participated in beating high school students, university students, citizens and foreign students who were beaten by “people in uniforms who we do not know whether they are real police officers.”

He said that his question for the international community, which was only writing statements about the brutality in Serbia, was would this be allowed in some other European capital? “Would officials of the EU, OSCE, Council of Europe and embassies not say anything if hundreds of people were arrested anywhere else for defending the Constitution, law and requesting free elections and democratic institutions? While foreign diplomats stay silent, the people of Serbia are suffering. And remembering. Because staying silent in the face of violence is being an accomplice to it,” Djilas said.