After the address of the President of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić in front of the premises Serbian Progressive Party at Kneza Miloša 43 in Belgrade, journalists Kompasa Danica Ilić's mobile phone was confiscated after she tried to take a statement.
"When the president's speech ended, I followed my journalistic instinct and went to the president to ask a question in the interest of the public," said Iliceva, who reported from the protest in Belgrade on the evening of August 13 for Kompas.
"Even though we made contact and I mentioned that we knew each other from earlier days when the president was a young minister, he gave me a hand signal to come closer," the journalist pointed out.
Despite the established contact, when the president gestured that Danica Ilić could approach him, he then entered the premises of SNS.
"At the entrance there were men making a hoop, they started pushing me, not allowing me to approach them," said Danica Ilić.
The president's permission and journalistic credentials are insufficient
"I tried to explain to them that I somehow had permission from the president, but they were in a violent mood, they pushed me, they insulted me. I told them that I was a journalist and I had visible signs, the Kompas press abbreviation - I explained that I was on a work assignment and that I was in a public place," the journalist complained.
"That didn't mean anything to those men, and I think that one sentence was actually the trigger because I didn't understand who those people were and I asked: Who are you? Where are your IDs? I don't understand why someone in the center of Belgrade in a public place does not allow a journalist to do her job. After that sentence, a huge man came up to me and violently snatched my phone, threw it, took it away, I never saw it again."
"Five meters from the president of the country, I felt extremely unsafe," Ilić told N1 television.
She stated that there was physical contact and humiliation and insults.
The police did not react
After the attack, she sought help from the police, but the plainclothes officer refused and said he had to report the incident.
"I went to report the theft of my phone. What happened was not a theft of a phone, but an attack on a journalist on a work assignment. And so we stated, what the prosecutor's office accepted, was an attack on me and the confiscation of my means of employment," said the Kompas journalist.
Source: Compass
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