Serbia protests: students set up tents, start blockade in Belgrade
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00:00 Well let's get you more on those protests. Our cyber correspondent Laurent Rui joins us in the studio.
00:05 Laurent, good to have you in the studio with us today. We understand that today's protests are ongoing.
00:10 A blockade, if you will, was called in the capital Belgrade, principally triggered by students calling today's protests.
00:17 Yeah, I mean many civil society organisation and informal groups are participating into these protests,
00:24 denouncing the fraud after the December 17th election. And one of these leading groups is a group of students,
00:31 students against violence. They changed their name, though they call themselves Struggle,
00:38 and they called for the first time to a 24-hour-long protest that started a couple of hours ago.
00:45 It will last until tomorrow. They just put some tents in the centre. And I mean, this is a very youth atmosphere.
00:55 I mean, they're going to play music, they're going to have chanting of slogans, and they will explain why they are protesting.
01:03 What is interesting is that after these 24 hours of continuous protest and blocking of the centre of Belgrade,
01:10 a group of intellectuals that called to participation, to vote to turn out before the election, is going to have a public meeting.
01:21 And this will be followed by the standard, if I should say, daily protest in front of the Electoral Commission.
01:30 So we could face a period of protest of more than 36 hours. It's the first time it could be so long after the election.
01:39 As you speak, Lauren, we're seeing images of those tents being erected in the centre of Belgrade today.
01:44 So things clearly gaining momentum there. There's also another momentum that's being gained.
01:49 International support for what's going on in Belgrade and in Serbia as a whole is equally increasing.
01:56 Yes, definitely. The first reaction, international reaction, was the one of the government of Germany.
02:03 I mean, they say that it was totally unacceptable for a EU candidate country to hold such a bad election.
02:12 And this international support is ongoing. Yesterday, a member of the parliament of the SPD in Germany said that Vucic lost its credibility as a European partner.
02:27 The European parliamentarian said that the election should be clean. And there is also an ongoing fight between the Russian ambassador and the American ambassador,
02:36 one accusing the other of trying to destabilise Serbia. So it's gaining an international momentum very clearly.