Asphalt for Mala Krsna residents bused to Belgrade: SNS member assaults N1 crew

After years of repeated calls for the asphalt to be laid, this was now done in just a few days. Why now of all times? Our reporter tried to find out, however, instead of getting an answer, he was physically assaulted by a member of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS).

The timing of the beginning of the works on this road is interesting, since the residents of this settlement, people internally displaced from Kosovo, have been pleading for years for this problem to be resolved.

The machines arrived somewhere around the time when about 20 locals traveled to Belgrade, in an organized manner, as is suspected to change their registered place of residence ahead of the Belgrade elections. Of course everyone deserves to have a tidy street, but why was the decision to pave these 500 meters made only now, despite the many petitions and requests repeatedly made in the past?

The Smederevo mayor, who avoided N1 questions during our previous visit, toured the works on Friday and could have the answer to this question.

The locals said the mayor toured the works site again on Monday morning, but the N1 crew seemed to have missed her. Instead, they ran into Serbian Progressive Party member Dejana Milenkovic at the site.

N1: What did you say just now?

“Move that microphone,” Milenkovic told the N1 reporter.

N1: No, I’ll call the police if you touch me.

Milenkovic: Go on, call them, I’m telling you I’ll take it from you.

N1: That’s how you want it?

Milenkovic: Why are you filming me?

N1: We are in a public space. So I asked you.

Milenkovic: I’m also in a public space. What do you care what I… get that camera down.

N1: No one is taking the camera down…

Milenkovic: I’ll smash you camera…

N1: You won’t smash our camera, because we will sue you.

Milenkovic: Want to sue me?

N1: I’ll call the police now.

Milenkovic: You can call whoever you want, you can’t film me.

N1: I’ll call the police now.

After he physically assaulted the N1 reporter, Milenkovic again walked up to him and, in a calmer tone of voice, tried to “justify” himself, without explaining why he was there.

“I just wanted to tell you, I wasn’t talking to you directly,” said Milenkovic.

N1: But you, sir, physically assaulted me. I have it all on tape.

Milenkovic: We all do our job and work for a salary.

N1: Are you from the municipal administration?

Milenkovic: What? No, not any more, I used to work there.

Until just a month ago, Milenkovic was a member of the City Council for Infrastructure. He did not reveal why he was now overseeing the works that the locals in this part of Mala Krsna have been waiting for for a long time.

Some of the locals are happy but suspect that this is a form of compensation rather than true care for the citizens.

“What they are doing here now, the laying of asphalt, I can say with 99 percent certainty that it has to do with the people who were in Belgrade and, as they say – people from Mala Krsna went to Belgrade to vote for Belgrade Mayor Sapic and they got asphalt,” said a local.

N1: Otherwise it would not have been done?

“Probably not yet.”

N1: How long would you have had to wait for it?

“Maybe another year or two,” he said.

“We would wait for 50 more years, and it wouldn’t happen. I vote for (Serbian President) Aleksandar Vucic, a hundred TV crews can come, but that’s that,” another local said.