"I was scared only at the beginning, while they were arresting us. But I knew they had nothing to keep me on."
This is how 2-year-old Tijana Marjanović begins her story for "Vreme", who was detained with her friends on Wednesday evening (July XNUMX) during Gendarmerie interventions in front of the Faculty of Law in Belgrade.
"I was with my friends at the Faculty of Law, we were sitting on the sidewalk near the tram tracks. At one point, police officers appeared on Kralja Aleksandar Boulevard, I think there were three of them. They all started running towards the Faculty of Law. I saw people entering the faculty en masse. After we saw that the Gendarmerie was heading towards them, we took cover near a nearby tobacconist," continues the interviewee of "Vremena".
Recordings attempted Gendarmerie raid the university was heavily buzzed on social networks. And Tijana confirms that there were "very ugly scenes".
"Some girl was on those stairs, they fell one after the other, the Gendarmerie took them out of the college. They were very violent. Since we were standing on the sidelines, I didn't believe that anything could happen to us," she adds.
Aggressive plainclothes policewoman
Still, she was wrong.
"I saw a friend and a friend standing with their backs turned, leaning against the bus stop. I came to see what was happening. At that moment, an aggressive plainclothes policewoman grabbed me, asked me what I was looking at, pulled me to the station and tied my hands with plastic ties," says our interlocutor.
She adds that she didn't know what the procedure was, but that she "knew she didn't do anything."
"I didn't resist or curse. At that moment, all I cared about was that something didn't fall out of my purse because my hands were tied," he added with a laugh.
Tijani, along with other detainees, then ordered them to sit on the sidewalk. As he says, there were about twenty of them. Everyone was tied up, except for a few girls who complained that their ties were too tight, so the police took them off.
Intervention by Biljana Stojković
This scene was also attended by Biljana Stojković, a professor of the Faculty of Biology and a member of the Presidency of the Democratic Party, and a former candidate for the presidency of Serbia.
"They told her she was free, but she insisted that if we weren't free, she wasn't either, because she did the same thing as us - she was there and walking around."
In the meantime, an aggressive plainclothes policewoman started filming the citizens who were waiting to be escorted to the police station. According to our interlocutor, she filmed their faces three or four times.
"I asked her myself if I could know why she was filming us. She was silent. Her friend asked her to see her ID, to which she replied something like: 'You're going to ask me for my ID'. She was very aggressive and uncomfortable, it seemed like she was enjoying what she was doing," continues the story of nineteen-year-old Tijana.
He adds that the same policewoman stole the professor's phone after Biljana Stojković started filming the introduction of citizens to the police station.
Subsequently, the police officers tried several times to remove the professor from the scene, and even to physically lift her up and prevent her from entering the police station with the arrested nineteen-year-olds. Since people started protesting and filming this attempt, they gave up on that intention, and Stojković and the detainees headed in an unknown direction.
An equation with many unknowns
When we say unknown direction, we mean it literally. The police did not want to tell the detainees where he was driving them.
"We realized that they were taking us to the Savski Venac Police Station based only on a look through the back window of the car," says our interlocutor.
When they arrived at the station, the police searched the detainees and took their identity cards. After an hour and a half of sitting, nobody knew anything because none of the policemen wanted to tell them what was going on.
"There was talk that they were going to take us somewhere to talk to someone, I heard the words 'judge' and 'prosecutor', among other things. Then there was talk that we would soon be leaving. One girl was injured by an aggressive policewoman - she pulled her hair, grabbed her head and hit her against something. She also had bruises on her knees. When they asked if anyone was injured, she came forward and after an examination, she was transported to the VMA," he says Tiana.
During that time, the police tried several times to fire Biljana Stojković, who did not give up on her original thesis - "if they are not free, neither am I." They were all released only after an hour and a half.
"They said that we were free and that we were expecting a call in the next period. A friend asked him why, but it seems to me that the policeman did not answer," says the "Vremena" interlocutor.
Not even a day later, the situation is not much clearer.
"At no time did they tell us if we were charged with any offense. We asked the police officers who arrested us, as well as those in the station, why exactly we were arrested. Those who were in the station said that it was not their job and that 'when they arrest, they say why they arrest,'" concludes nineteen-year-old Tijana.
She is one of the 79 persons who, according to them, "brought to the official premises" by members of the MUP last night. As they announced, 72 people are charged with a misdemeanor, while seven are charged with a criminal offense. All they have to do is, as the police say, "wait for the call".
