At one of the stages on Slavija Square on Saturday, a protester who remained unnamed— part of the movement’s deliberately leaderless approach — rallied the crowd with a chant: “Look how many of us are here! Your voice counts! Let’s wake up Serbia together!”
Saturday’s demonstration was mostly peaceful, but police arrested a man who rammed his car into protesters in a Belgrade suburb, injuring three people, the AP reported.
Optimism and a deep sense of collective identity filled the air on Saturday in Belgrade, as entire families arrived — some on foot — from more than a dozen cities and towns, proudly displaying their callused feet as a badge of determination.
While the government initially moved carefully in its response to the protests, avoiding overt crackdowns or harsh criticism, a series of scattered brawls and attacks on protesters over the past four months have heightened tensions. Protesters claim these escalations were instigated by masked and hooded provocateurs.
Several ministers from the ruling Serbian Progressive Party, along with Prime Minister Miloš Vučević, offered their resignations in response to the events, but also proceeded to accuse the protesters of plotting to overthrow the government.
Speaker of Parliament and former Prime Minister Ana Brnabić accused protesting students and professors in Belgrade of “instigating a coup d’état and civil war in the Republic of Serbia,” in a statement earlier this week.