A club in the head of the student-cyclist Katarina and two activists in prison - this seems to be the state value of an open competition for the institution that controls the media in the country. So much brutal and unnecessary violence the state needed to try to justify its loyalists and those who still believe in the progressive order - that it agreed to open a competition for the REM Council.
If the state had not directly connected these two events, maybe, but just maybe, someone would have thought that they were not connected. Thus, on Monday, April 28, the government decided that the session of the Parliamentary Committee for Culture, to which the opposition called for a new call for the REM's highest body, postpones for an hour.
This information would, under normal circumstances, be completely irrelevant. Because, in the Serbian Parliament, everything is always late anyway. It is not so strange, because the sessions in other countries, which are democratic, are delayed and prolonged in order to negotiate, count the deputies or agree on strategies.
Is it strange?
It is strange that this prolongation is justified by an event from another city and a non-existent violence. It was reported that the session was postponed for only an hour - because of the violence against the dean of DIF, Patrick Dryd.
Citizens threw eggs at him in front of the Faculty of Sports and Physical Education in Novi Sad on Monday morning, so the ambulance had to intervene and try to transport him to the Clinical Center. It is not known what kind of injuries he sustained, that it was necessary to provide him with urgent help.
He was previously booed and was not allowed to enter the university, so he returned accompanied by the police.
How else?
It is not strange to almost anyone in Serbia anymore, but it is very sad that the police are hit the crowd and used pepper spray. Katarina, a student from Novi Sad, was injured when the police hit her in the head with a baton, and then she fainted. It's about a girl who is rode a bicycle to Strasbourg, so that in the headquarters of the European Union she would draw attention to just that - progressive violence and corruption.
The father of the injured girl told N1 that "these Vučićs who are beating are beasts".
Students in the blockade of the University of Novi Sad announced that the police illegally and unjustifiably arrested a student of the Faculty of Technical Sciences for an alleged attack on the dean of the DIF, Patrick Drid, and activist Brajan Brković was also detained.
As reported by the N1 reporter, the police first handed Brković a summons for an informational interview as a citizen, and then, with a ballpoint pen, they changed it so that he was summoned as a defendant.
Gazi, no one will understand the latter
What the government tried to do with all the brutal violence against the people in front of the DIF was to cover up or justify a momentary defeat.
Because the outcome of the Committee for Culture was the consent to the students' main request, who blocked the Public Service of Serbia day and night for two weeks, to announce a competition for the REM Council. The students reacted to it - with enthusiasm, declaring a great victory, but also by breaking the blockade, as was the plan.
"The battle is won, the war is still going on," they wrote on the networks.