Protests against the ruling Progressive Party in Serbian capital Belgrade have been going on for 3 weeks now. More than 40 thousand people are walking the streets in protest of de facto leader President Aleksandar Vucic.



The protests were ignited when a leader of the opposition Serbian Left party, Borko Stefanovic, was assaulted at an opposition meeting in late November by a supporter of the ruling party. It then developed into a broader call for an end to political violence and freedom of speech and media.

Demonstrators are boycotting the current government and the state in the country with complementary boards that say “Enough lies” and “End dictatorship”. Opposition was the first one to start the protests but they turned from political to civil protests with more and more citizens joining every day.



A lot of different political symbols can be seen in the crowds, people are carrying flags of Serbia, flags of Yugoslavia, LGBT flags, flags of Serbian Orthodox Church, flags of Serbian nationalist movement and many others. Serbian people, usually divided, have come together to protest for a common cause and that is the end of current political regime. People can be heard yelling slogans like “Until all of us are free none of us are free” and blowing whistles (a symbol of Serb protests since strongman Slobodan Milosevic held power in the 1990s).



Protesters leading the march carried a banner reading “#1of5million” in reference to an earlier statement by Vucic that he would not bow to demands of the protests even if five million protesters took to the streets and that he does not see what is wrong in his government.

While the protests are taking place in Belgrade the rest of Serbia was constantly being denied the right to know what was happening. None of the major TV stations covered the news and the ones who did, did it while compromising the truth. Studio B (one of the TV stations of Belgrade) covered the story with such lack of professionalism, condemning the protestors and saying that this peaceful protest was actually full of vandals calling for “Lynch, rape and beatings”, which was not true.



Following the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1992, current President Vucic joined the far-right Serbian Radical Party (SRS), whose core ideology is based on Serbian nationalism. After becoming the prime minister of Serbia, Vucic has adopted pro-European values and set Serbia’s membership in the European Union as the country’s strategic goal. After becoming the President he has not done one single thing to prevent the country from falling into further debt and to prevent the people from losing their jobs.

People of Serbia are angry and tired of constantly being lied to. How can we trust a man who changed his whole political view in less than a decade? How can we prosper if people like him continue being on top of the social ladder? The Serbian people have a right to much more than what they are getting, much more than the poverty the government keep putting us through. Serbia wants change.