Tens of thousands of people from across Serbia joined an anti-corruption rally in Belgrade on Saturday, in what is regarded as the culmination of months of protest that have shaken the grip of the country’s autocratic president, Aleksandar Vučić.
The sound of whistles and vuvuzelas echoed throughout the Serbian capital, which has been on high alert since the rally was announced.
Some carried banners that read “He’s finished!” Others chanted: “Pump it up,” a slogan adopted during four months of student-led protests.
The anti-government rally is likely to be the biggest ever held in the Balkan country.
Between 275,000 and 325,000 people took part in the protest, according to the Public Assembly Archive, an organisation that monitors crowd size. That figure is far higher than the government’s estimate.
One protester, Milenko Kovačević, said: “I expect that this will shake his authority and that Vučić will realise that people are no longer for him.”
Police said they had arrested a man who rammed his car into protesters in a Belgrade suburb, injuring three people.
Tensions were running high before the demonstration, after the president’s supporters began setting up a camp in a park in front of the presidential palace. Vučić warned earlier this week that the security forces would use force against people at the rally.
Belgrade city transport was cancelled on Saturday in an apparent effort to prevent people from attending the rally, while huge columns of cars jammed the roads leading into the capital. The transport company said the move was made “for security reasons”.
Vučić, who has dominated Serbian politics since becoming prime minister in 2014 and then president in 2017, said the demonstrators would never force him to stand down. “You will have to kill me if you want to replace me,” he said.
Authorities have faced near-daily protests since last November when a station roof collapsed killing 14 people in Novi Sad, Serbia’s second city. Many blamed rampant corruption for the disaster at the station, which Vučić had inaugurated in 2022 after renovations.
The leaderless protest movement has been largely peaceful, but Vučić has claimed that protesters “will try to achieve something with violence and that will be the end” and predicted that “many will end up behind bars” on Saturday.
Agence France-Presse reported that known ultranationalists, including members of a former militia linked to the assassination of then prime minister, Zoran Djindjic in 2003, have been seen among the group of activists camped near the presidential palace.
Djindjic, who led street protests that deposed Slobodan Milošević in 2000, was assassinated 22 years ago this week by a paramilitary police group known by its unofficial name, the Red Berets.
Vučić “has mobilised criminals, thugs and Red Beret members, bringing people from Kosovo and stationing them in Pionirski Park, knowing hundreds of thousands will gather there on Saturday,” Dragan Djilas, the leader of the opposition Freedom and Justice party, wrote on X.
Vučić and his Serbian Progressive party, which has successfully marginalised the official opposition, have been thrown off balance by the student protests, a movement seeking root-and-branch reform but without a clear plan for democratic change.
Protesters are demanding accountability for the disaster at Novi Sad, as well as transparent institutions based on the rule of law. More than a dozen people have been charged in relation to the canopy collapse. The then prime minister, Miloš Vučević, a former mayor of Novi Sad when renovation of the station began, resigned in January, as did the serving mayor.
Vučić, widely seen to have sacrificed his prime minister to protect his position, has ruled out forming a transitional government and holding elections in six months. Echoing Russian narratives, he has described the protests as a western-orchestrated ploy to oust him from power and destroy Serbia.
Dušan Spasojević, a professor at the University of Belgrade’s political science faculty, told AFP that the government’s use of provocative language was likely to be an attempt to discourage people from joining the demonstration.
Vučić was probably “hoping that protesters will spark some violence, giving the police justification to intervene and causing most people to withdraw from the protests”, Spasojević said.
Foreign observers are increasingly concerned about violence against demonstrators, after incidents where cars drove into protesters and some anti-corruption protesters were hospitalised.
“Serbia’s response to these protests will be a decisive test of its commitment to EU standards,” a cross-party group of members of the European parliament wrote in a letter to the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, this week.
Serbia has been an EU candidate country since 2012, but progress has stalled under Vučić’s leadership and its pro-Russian stance over the war in Ukraine.
The MEPs, spanning conservatives to radical left-wingers, argue that the EU has been “too lenient and indulgent” towards Serbia’s government. The group urges von der Leyen to ensure Serbia has “free and fair elections, an independent judiciary, pluralistic media, and the rule of law” before releasing any EU funds.
Serbia is due to receive €1.5bn (£1.26bn) in grants and cheap loans under an EU “growth plan” between 2024 and 2027.
Organisers have vowed that the protests will continue after Saturday. “We are not taking the final steps – we are making tectonic changes. If our demands are not met, we will remain on the streets, in blockades, in the fight until justice is served,” they wrote on Instagram.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
