37 People Detained During Gathering in Front of Parliament, Journalists Attacked

(BETAPHOTO/MILOS MISKOV)

Police detained 37 individuals on the evening of Nov. 2 in front of the Parliament building in Belgrade for disturbing public order and causing incidents during an unregistered public gathering.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs announced that it was still working to identify other participants whose actions “endangered the safety of citizens and public property during the unregistered public gathering.”

The associations of journalists, namely, ANEM, UNS, and NUNS, reported two attacks on journalists, assaulted while covering last night’s gathering in front of the Parliament of Serbia, organized in support of Dijana Hrka, the mother of a young man killed when a concrete canopy at the central railway station of Novi Sad collapsed. The mother went on a hunger strike on Nov. 2.

According to the associations, an Insajder journalist, Natasa Mijuskovic, was attacked by a group of men near the makeshift tent camp set up by government supporters. They reportedly threatened to “break every bone in her body” if she refused to show them the material she had recorded.

In the same area, a group of men attacked photojournalists of the DIR radio station in Ruma, first demanding that they delete their footage, and then hitting them with open hands on the head. One of the photojournalists later sought medical assistance.

The associations of journalists also warned at the police treatment of Vojin Radovanovic, a journalist of the daily newspaper Danas, whom Marko Kricak, commander of the Police Unit for the Protection of Certain Persons and Facilities (JZO), stopped and asked him to show his ID, even though Radovanovic was wearing a yellow press vest clearly marked “press”, and stated very clearly that he was a journalist.