Anger continues in Serbia. Thousands of protesters dissatisfied with the authorities' management of the coronavirus crisis demonstrated on the evening of July 9 in Belgrade, after two nights of violence and clashes with the police.

Earlier, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, on his way to Paris where he met Emmanuel Macron in the evening, had accused "criminal hooligans" of being responsible for this violence. "I promised you that we would be able to protect peace and stability, despite the violent attacks by criminal hooligans which shock us all," he said on the plane taking him to Paris.

The overwhelming majority of protesters protested Thursday evening seated in the square in front of the Parliament. Some carried placards. "Stay seated" and "Vucic more dangerous than the Covid-19" could be read on these.

Anger after the introduction of a curfew

A small group of young men, from far-right movements, according to media on the spot, tried several times to provoke incidents with the police, without success. They were ultimately chased away by peaceful protesters.

In the evening, the Minister of the Interior said in a statement: "As all citizens can see, when no one attacks the police ... the latter has no reason to intervene".

During the night of Wednesday to Thursday, he denounced "pure violence" and reported 10 police officers injured the day before. Medical sources, quoted by the N1 television channel, for their part reported 19 police officers and 17 protesters injured.

The protests, which started on Tuesday, erupted after the president's announcement of the reintroduction of total containment over the weekend in order to combat a resurgence of the pandemic.

The government officially announced Thursday that it was abandoning the idea of ​​confinement, replaced by other restrictions: ban on gatherings of more than 10 people - which amounts to prohibiting demonstrations -, reduced hours for bars, shops and other shops in Belgrade.

Serbia has more than 17,000 cases of people infected with Covid-19 and at least 340 people have died, according to official figures.

Citizens and journalists beaten by police

The discontent spread to several Serbian cities on Thursday: Novi Sad in the north of the country, Nis in the south, Kragujevac in the center, as well as Cacak in the southwest and Bor in the east. The demonstrators accuse the authorities of having favored a second wave of the epidemic by quickly lifting the confinement in order to be able to organize the elections of June 21 largely won by the SNS.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, the demonstrations gave rise to overflows. Citizens were beaten by the police, but also journalists, such as a Beta reporter who was beaten by the police after identifying himself as a member of the press.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) said it was "extremely concerned about the violence against journalists during the demonstrations", in a statement, adding "that at least 14 attacks against journalists have taken place".

Aleksandar Vucic estimated, before his departure to Paris, that the violence was damaging the image of Serbia, at the time when negotiations on the normalization of its relations with Kosovo, its former Albanian-majority province must resume which proclaimed its independence in 2008.

With AFP

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