ANEM: At Least 25 Attacks on Media Occurred at Caciland

Encampment in Front of Parliament in Belgrade, Dec. 28 2025(BETAPHOTO/MILOS MISKOV)

Serbia’s Association of Independent Digital Media (ANEM) announced on Jan. 5 that, in the nine months of so-called Caciland’s existence, the illegal pro-regime camp erected in the heart of downtown Belgrade was the site of at least 25 instances of attacks on media workers and media obstruction.

ANEM went on to state that a record of all such incidents was published in a document titled “A Timeline of Attacks on Media Workers in the Area Between the Pioneers’ Park and the Serbian National Assembly.”

The document should serve as a reminder of all unsolved cases of media obstruction in a time and place that amounted to a kind of “forbidden city” for professional and critically-inclined media, the Association stressed in its press release.

In the camp’s nine months of existence, at least 25 cases of such obstruction and violence against journalists were reported as haven occurred there, ANEM stated.

According to the High Prosecutor’s Office, of all such reports filed, only one suspect was apprehended for attacking Natalija Mijuskovic, a reporter for the pro-regime Insajder TV. ANEM underlined that this was enabled by Mijuskovic recognizing her assailant in the Caci(ji): Party Protectors database, an online list of criminals seen and or active at Caciland which compiled and published by the KRIK investigative journalists network.

Only one other case was processed, ANEM added, with the criminal complaint “dismissed by the prosecutor.”

The press release further stated that members of the police, although always near or directly present during each incident, never acted to protect the media workers nor requested identification documents from the assailants, but did sometimes forcefully take the victims into custody.

“This forbidden city ruled by thugs with criminal records, convicted for murder and other crimes, is a test for society – [to see] whether all of Serbia can be transformed into a space where journalists and those of dissenting opinions will be persecuted and beaten,” said Veran Matic, the president of ANEM’s steering committee.

According to him, “the most important task in the year ahead [i.e. 2026] is to prevent such a possibility” and to prevent other such “violence zones” from cropping up elsewhere.

The first tents of what would become known as Cacliland were put up in downtown Belgrade’s Pioneers’ Park in March 2025, despite the park being a protected cultural site. From there, tents quickly spread to block the adjacent boulevard and plateau in front of the National Assembly of Serbia, in a sprawling, fenced-off encampment. The tents were finally removed in the night of Dec. 28, 2025, but concrete roadblocks remain, preventing traffic from passing between Parliament and the park through one of the capital’s main thoroughfares.