Tensions high as pro- and anti-regime gatherings face off

Tensions seemed to run highest in Cacak where the police first had to bring in reinforcements in riot gear to separate the two groups and then had to clear the roads for the buses that brought supporters of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) to that western Serbia city.

The Internal Affairs Ministry (MUP) claimed that more than 100,000 people attended the pro-regime gatherings. Live TV coverage showed medium-sized crowds in a number of places across the country. Crowd numbers have been a point of contention since the protests started last November with the authorities, especially the president, claiming numbers which organizers and crowd size estimate software varying hugely.

The crowds bused in as a show of support for the SNS were biggest in Cacak and the southern city of Nis where the regime supporters dispersed and were chased down central city streets. One of the protesters told N1 that Nis is a free city after the regime supporters were forced to flee. The crowd of several thousand people included war veterans and students all of who marched past the city’s police headquarters as well as the SNS and Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) offices. That march ended peacefully.

The central city of Kragujevac staged a gathering of support for Novica Antic, retired army NCO who heads the Military Union and was recently released from police custody following an investigation for alleged attempts to overthrow the authorities. That anti-regime protest was titled Who Defends the Constitution, Who Violates It.

In Belgrade, pro-regime gatherings were staged in three suburbs with Vucic appearing in the Borca suburb along with ally and fellow SNS official Parliament Speaker Ana Brnabic while Prime Minister Djuro Macut appeared in the suburb of Lestane. None of the pro-regime gatherings were staged in central parts of the Serbian capital, with organizers preferring to stay in areas known as SNS strongholds. The crowd in Borca included a group of elderly men who claimed to be veterans of the wars of the 1990s wearing T-shirts similar to those worn by the veterans who have been supporting the student protests.

Tensions also ran high in the town of Kosjeric, where the SNS and its allies won a very close local election victory this summer. A police cordon separated pro- and anti-regime gatherings with angry local pelting a variety of things at the police.

In the southern city of Leskovac, the pro-regime gathering was organized by the local SNS headed by Mayor Goran Cvetanovic who marched through central streets.

In the city of Sabac, men in hazmat suits sprayed the streets where the pro-regime crowd marched saying they were there to clean them.

In the northern city of Subotica, a crowd of several hundred students gathered with organizers saying they were there as a show of support for teachers who have been under political pressure for months and for their counterparts at Novi Sad University.