Dacic: Police just doing their job in Novi Sad

”Expect a response when someone attacks the police,” Dacic told reporters following the police intervention at the Novi Sad University Faculty of Sport and Physical Education whose dead withdrew his support for the student protest and called in the police to clear them away. Under Serbian law the police cannot intervene at any university school or campus unless a dean calls them in or if lives are in danger.

Dacic said that Faculty of Sport and Physical Education Dean Patrik Drid was injured during the protest and added that protesters punctured the tires of an ambulance that was supposed to take him to hospital. Several protesters, both students and their supporters were injured when the police and Gendarmerie troopers intervened with batons. “This really never happened before, a professor and dead were attacked like this,” he added.

He said that the police were invited in by Drid and the school administration who want things back to normal and told the police that there were unidentified persons in the building. “That means that the police were on the job and were attacked while doing their job. They used a minimum of force just to divert the attacks and just intervened a the least possible level. The police were attacked as soon as they arrived, had things thrown at them, insulted, shoved. There was evident rioting inside the building and there were barricades. They entered by the windows,” the minister said.