Gazelle Blockade: When the police secure, not break up, protests

When students and high school students start - then there is no loss of walking rhythm. This morning in front of the Faculty of Agriculture in Zemun, at 9.00:XNUMX a.m. a gathering of students from that faculty, the College of Health Studies, the Zemun Grammar School and high school students - the goal is highway blockade on the Gazela bridge".

All ready for the trip to the bridge and the six-hour blockade from 11 a.m. to 18 p.m., accompanied by parents and professors, as well as numerous citizens. There is also an unusually large number of plainclothes police, plus traffic officers and those in uniform.

And this time, as in the previous few days, you can see the "synergy" of police officers and protest participants, that togetherness. Unlike the protests held in previous years and decades, where the police were "hostile" towards the participants and refused any communication, this is completely different now, as "relative".

"We also have children who are at protests," says an older policeman in civilian clothes, "are we going to consider them enemies of the state?"

Traffic drivers up to the task

The column starts at 9.30:10, which is XNUMX minutes late compared to the scheduled departure, and that is why the organizers, led by "Gandhi", a student of the Faculty of Agriculture, are accelerating the pace. Especially at the "Old Mercator", where he stops to greet the citizens who came to meet them.

At the head of the column are high school students and students carrying placards with the names of those killed in the fall of the canopy at the Railway Station in Novi Sad, which is why the protests started. The children who wear them have tears in their eyes.

Photo: Davor Lukač

Traffic police up to the task - a dozen vehicles follow the column in front, on the side and behind, plus their "pedestrian" colleagues, those at the intersections. No one can approach, and traffic stops for a minimum period, until the procession passes.

And none of the drivers protest - on the contrary, they greet the participants by waving their hands and honking their horns.

The convoy is led by traffic police major Vušković, there are two other majors with him - from the Brigade and the Police Administration for the city of Belgrade, who are in constant direct communication with "Gandhi" and others from the police service.

At the front, on the sides and at the back are members of the Department for Public Order and Peace, in civilian clothes, who monitor the possibility of incidents. You never know where a "Simo Spasić megaphone" will appear.

Good coordination

Spasić in question, the obligatory regime iconography that "mines" opposition gatherings by shouting into a megaphone, a state mercenary, was elegantly "eliminated" by plainclothes policemen in front of the RTS building on Friday evening.

At the municipality of Novi Beograd, new participants join and move towards Usce, again at an accelerated pace, with the obligatory noise when passing by the Palace of Serbia, where state bodies are located.

At Ušće, the column gains momentum, new ones join. A plainclothes policeman radios the chief to estimate that there are 750 of them. Passing by the Hyatt, Sava Center, to Vladimira Popović Street, they arrived "before the deadline", then a short stop and formation of a procession. One part goes immediately to the highway in the direction of Šid, the other under the overpass, to "block" the direction to Niš. And it all takes place in a few minutes.

Then the blockade begins, which will last until 18 p.m.

Photo: Davor Lukač

The losers of the protest

Those who are the biggest losers of the blockade are certainly the sellers of whistles, horns, badges and flags of Serbia, who gathered in large numbers around the Sava Center and on the highway, thinking that they will make a big, profiteering profit. The price of whistles is 200-300 dinars (otherwise it is 100), trumpets 300-500. They forgot that the participants of the protest already have those props, bought earlier, at a much lower price.

The losers are also those "recidivists of the past", people who are still living in the nineties and fighting against Slobodan Milošević's regime, by honking and whistling to the rhythm of "tu-tu-tututu", translated as "red band", which they try to animate young people.

The protesting children quickly saw through them, and started dictating their tunes with whistles and trumpets. They realized that they don't need those, because the "red gang" has been replaced by the "black gang" in the last 12 years, the blackest one.

And that's a good thing, that after the politicians, the youth also rejected those "activists".