Tuesday, August 5. The evening once again brought two Serbias to the streets of New Belgrade.
It is not the old division about the first and second Serbia from the Milošević period. This is a new division. On the students in the blockade and the citizens in the choirs who come to walk, protest, call names in front of the progressive offices, on the one hand. And on the other hand, to the driven progressives who go out on command to defend their local communities and committees. There are more and more of them.
Is this hot atmosphere waiting for us in autumn in other cities of Serbia? Will the summer's political hot spots flare up once the summer is over? It is even more important - who will control all this, if it is known that there is certainly not enough police to prevent every street fight, which was also seen during road blockades in recent weeks throughout Belgrade, but also throughout Serbia?
Civil conflicts
What happened
So they were in Tuesday, August 5, citizens gathered in Zemun, and the occasion was Vučić's abolition of Milica Stojanović, who ran over a female student at a protest a few months ago. The woman who ran over the student was released from the threatened heavy prison sentence, and the president of Serbia personally forgave her everything.
Students and citizens from the choir came in a protest walk to the premises of the Serbian Progressive Party in John Kennedy Street and in front of Stari Mercator, where they were met by sympathizers and activists of that party. There was a scuffle, bottles and eggs flew.
The crowd shouted "Aco Shiptare", and the progressives answered them with "Ustasha, Ustasha". The only thing they agreed on was that "Kosovo is the heart of Serbia", which they all shouted.
Spillover
Ever since the students gave the green light for civil disobedience after the Vidovdan protests, a riot of discontent seems to have spilled over everywhere. In the streets, offices, to the official's window, so citizens massively started visiting places where they believe progressives live.
Intersections were massively blocked, citizens spent hours and hours symbolically crossing pedestrian crossings.
Even the opposition woke up, so Miroslav Aleksić invited to a round table, and announces a new one. For September 1, the Democratic Party intends to invite people outside.
However, these different levels of dissatisfaction also showed that the police were overworked. "Vreme" already wrote that there is no one to work in those cases, that they do not have enough members of special units. Some people are pulled out of the "mothball", and the policemen are transferred as needed - today you are in Vranje, tomorrow in Belgrade, the day after tomorrow in Novi Sad, then in Užice... Especially there is a lack of members Gendarmerie or those "intervention units" established overnight.
Does the police have the capacity for mass blockades?
So they sent a combined Police Brigade and Gendarmerie in front of the Old Mercator to separate the progressives and the gathered citizens.
They started going out.
The tour of progressive offices and houses brought them to the streets as well. Sporadically, across the road, the SNS also let its staff, as a rule at night, walk, throw, answer and argue with the citizens in the blockade. Bones, hitting, pushing and insults are happening more and more often.
If similar riots continue or suddenly start popping up, like blocking intersections, in every local community run by SNS, the police will be overburdened and potentially disabled.
Especially if the progressives, who are still gathering in small numbers to defend boards and offices, get reinforcements. And that masked.
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