Students leave Kragujevac University Rector’s Office after ten-month blockade

They made the decision at a student plenary meeting after the rector and staff entered the building on Wednesday, along with security personnel who cut the chains on the entrance doors and locked the students inside.

“Leaving the building does not mean we are giving up the fight. Our blockade was violently broken. We won’t give up, we will keep fighting,” the students told the local residents assembled outside the Rector’s Office, and called on their peers from other faculties to continue the struggle as well.

Police briefly entered the Rector’s office on Thursday morning to allow staff to enter the building, a move the student protesters condemned as “violating the university's autonomy.”

“We no longer have, nor can we establish, control over the Rector’s office building,” a student said in an address outside the Rector’s Office on Thursday.

“Heads up, people, we are continuing the fight,” the students said.