Serbia's protesting students demand a snap election
Serbia's protesting university students are demanding a snap election after months of anti-corruption demonstrations that have shaken President Aleksandar Vucic's tight grip on power in the Balkan country.
A statement posted to a joint social media account late Monday said that an early vote is the only way out of a deep political crisis in Serbia triggered by a train station disaster that killed 16 people on Nov. 1, which was widely blamed on government corruption.
The station building in the northern city of Novi Sad had been renovated twice before its concrete canopy crashed on the people below. Critics said fueled negligence and disrespect for safety rules caused the huge construction to collapse.
The disaster sparked months of protests demanding justice and the rule of law , which have garnered huge support among Serbia's citizens drawing hundreds of thousands of people.
'Government corruption is so deeply rooted in state institutions that they are unable perform their duties independently,' the protesting students said. 'We believe that democracy is the only right way to solve a political crisis of such proportions.'
A snap election would entail dissolving of dominated parliament and scheduling the early vote. The ruling Serbian Progressive Party leader and former Prime Minister Milos Vucevic has rejected the idea, saying it would spell a 'disaster' for the country.
Vucic, a right-wing populist whom critics accuse of stifling democratic freedoms, has alleged the student protesters staging a 'color revolution' under orders from the West.
Vucic is formally saying he wants Serbia to join European Union while boosting ties with Russia and China.
Serbia's protesting students post statements and protest announcements on the joint social media account Students in Blockade. They have no leaders or spokespersons and make decisions at faculty plenary sessions.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Al Arabiya
24 minutes ago
- Al Arabiya
Scuffles erupt in Los Angeles as soldiers sent by Trump fan out
Demonstrators torched cars and scuffled with security forces in Los Angeles on Sunday as police kept protesters away from the National Guard troops President Donald Trump sent to the streets of America's second-biggest city. Unrest broke out for a third day, with protesters angry at action by immigration officials that has resulted in dozens of arrests of what authorities say are illegal migrants and gang members. The raids -- which began in broad daylight on Friday in a city with a large Latino population -- were always likely to spark reaction among the public in the liberal city. But opponents say Trump, who has made clamping down on illegal migration a key plank of his second term, was deliberately stoking tensions with his deployment of California's National Guard, a stand-by military usually controlled by the state's governor, Gavin Newsom. 'We didn't have a problem until Trump got involved,' Newsom wrote on X. 'This is a serious breach of state sovereignty -- inflaming tensions while pulling resources from where they're actually needed. Rescind the order. Return control to California,' he added. At least three self-driving Waymo cars were burned on Sunday, with two others vandalized as protesters roamed around a limited area in downtown Los Angeles. Traffic was halted on a key freeway for over an hour while scores of people thronged the roadway. They were moved off by California Highway Patrol officers, who used flash-bangs and smoke grenades. But after a limited early confrontation between federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security and a few dozen protesters at a detention center, the clashes all involved local law enforcement. By early afternoon LAPD officers established containment lines some distance from federal buildings, preventing contact between angry demonstrators and the scores of armed National Guardsmen from the 79th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, who had gathered in helmets and camouflage gear. As night fell a few dozen people -- many wearing masks and hoodies -- remained in hotspots, with some lobbing projectiles and fireworks. Law enforcement have arrested at least 56 people over two days, and three officers have suffered minor injuries, LAPD said. 'Troops everywhere' Trump, asked about the use of troops, was unrepentant, hinting instead at a more widespread deployment in other parts of the country. 'You have violent people, and we are not going to let them get away with it,' he told reporters. 'I think you're going to see some very strong law and order.' Responding to a question about invoking the Insurrection Act -- which would allow the military to be used as a domestic police force -- Trump said: 'We're looking at troops everywhere. We're not going to let this happen to our country.' US Northern Command, part of the Department of Defense responsible for national defense, said 'approximately 500 Marines... are in a prepared-to-deploy status should they be necessary to augment and support' the ongoing federal operations. The National Guard is frequently used in natural disasters, and occasionally in instances of civil unrest, but almost always with the consent of local authorities. Trump's deployment of the force -- the first over the head of a state governor since 1965 at the height of the civil rights movement -- was criticized by Democrats, including former vice president Kamala Harris who called it 'a dangerous escalation meant to provoke chaos.' 'Intimidation' But Republicans lined up behind Trump to dismiss the pushback. 'I have no concern about that at all,' said House Speaker Mike Johnson, accusing Newsom of 'an inability or unwillingness to do what is necessary.' Demonstrators told AFP the purpose of the troops did not appear to be to keep order. 'I think it's an intimidation tactic,' Thomas Henning said. 'These protests have been peaceful. There's no one trying to do any sort of damage right now and yet you have the National Guard with loaded magazines and large guns standing around trying to intimidate Americans from exercising our First Amendment rights.' Marshall Goldberg, 78, told AFP that deploying Guardsmen made him feel 'so offended.' 'We hate what they've done with the undocumented workers, but this is moving it to another level of taking away the right to protest and the right to just peaceably assemble,' he said. Raids by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency in other US cities have triggered small-scale protests in recent months, but the Los Angeles unrest is the biggest and most sustained against Trump's immigration policies so far. A CBS News poll taken before the Los Angeles protests showed a slight majority of Americans still approved of the crackdown.
Arab News
26 minutes ago
- Arab News
‘Better if he was dead': Kenyan mother's search for son year after protests
NAIROBI: Susan Wangari has lost count of the morgues, hospitals and police stations she has visited in search of her son, who went missing at the height of Kenya's mass protests last June. She last saw Emmanuel Mukuria, 24, on the morning of June 25, 2024, the day that thousands of Kenyan youths thronged the streets of Nairobi and stormed parliament in protest at planned tax rises and corruption. 'It would be better if my son were dead; at least I could visit his grave,' she told AFP. Rights groups say at least 60 people were killed during the protests in June and July, and more than 80 abducted by the security forces since then, with dozens still missing. Mukuria's friends say he was arrested during the protests in the city center, where he worked as a minibus tout. 'We do not have peace in this house,' his mother, 50, told AFP during a visit to her single-room home in the Kasarani slum area. 'I sleep lightly at night in case he comes knocking at my window like he always did,' she said. 'Every time we hear that bodies have been found somewhere, we are anxious to know whose they are.' Two men told her they shared a cell with Mukuria, but they are too afraid to speak publicly about their ordeal. One was only released in February, giving her hope that her son is still alive in captivity. 'They told me they were beaten and questioned about the protests. They were being asked who paid them to participate,' Wangari said. Last month, President William Ruto, in a clear admission that security forces had engaged in kidnappings, said all those abducted during the protests had been 'returned to their families.' Rights groups say dozens are still missing and police have shown little progress in investigating the disappearances despite Ruto claiming an 'accountability mechanism' was put in place. Questioned by AFP, the president's office said the police were 'handling the brief,' while a police spokesman referred AFP back to the president's office. The police spokesman said they had no information on Mukuria's case. An officer-in-charge at the station where Wangari reported him missing said the matter was still under investigation. Many other families are still dealing with the aftermath of the violence. Rex Masai, 29, was the first to die during the protests, shot and killed in the city center on June 20. The inquest into his death is still dragging on. 'We are hoping for the best but we are not near the truth,' Masai's mother Gillian Munyao told AFP at her home, where a photo of her dreadlocked son hangs on the wall. She found her son lying lifeless in a pool of blood at a clinic where he was taken that day. The state prosecutor has said a lack of witnesses has delayed progress in the case. One potential witness was scared off for fear he might be 'forcibly disappeared' by the police, Munyao said. Hussein Khalid, head of rights group Vocal Africa, blamed a 'lack of cooperation by the authorities.' 'When you get evidence, the unfortunate bit is you have to take it to the police themselves,' he said. He lost count of the number of funerals he attended after the protests, estimating between 20 and 30. 'Was it necessary to unleash this kind of brute force against young, innocent Kenyans?' he said. Politicians have shown little interest in accountability or learning from the unrest. 'People were killed, we sympathized, we moved on,' Bashir Abdullahi, a member of the ruling coalition, told parliament during a debate on the protests last month. But for victim's families, the search for justice 'means a lot,' said Masai's father, Chrispin Odawa. 'The wound will never heal,' he said.
Arab News
14 hours ago
- Arab News
National Guard troops arrive in Los Angeles on Trump's orders to quell immigration protests
LOS ANGELES: National Guard troops began arriving in Los Angeles early Sunday on orders from President Donald Trump in response to clashes in recent days between federal immigration authorities and protesters seeking to block them from carrying out deportations. Members of California's National Guard were seen staging early Sunday at the federal complex in downtown Los Angeles that includes the Metropolitan Detention Center, one of several sites that have seen confrontations involving hundreds of people in last two days. The troops included members of the 79th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, according to a social media post from the Department of Defense that showed dozens of National Guard members with long guns and an armored vehicle. Trump has said he is deploying 2,000 California National Guard troops to Los Angeles to quell the protests, which he called 'a form of rebellion.' Early Sunday, the deployment was limited to a small area in downtown Los Angeles. The protests have been relatively small and limited to a downtown section. The rest of the city of 4 million people is largely unaffected. Their arrival follows clashes near a Home Depot in the heavily Latino city of Paramount, south of Los Angeles. As protesters sought to block Border Patrol vehicles, with some hurling rocks and chunks of cement, federal agents unleashed tear gas, flash-bang explosives and pepper balls. Tensions were high after a series of sweeps by immigration authorities the previous day, as the weeklong tally of immigrant arrests in the city climbed past 100. A prominent union leader was arrested while protesting and accused of impeding law enforcement. On Sunday morning, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the National Guard would 'keep peace and allow people to be able to protest but also to keep law and order.' In a signal of the administration's aggressive approach, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also threatened to deploy active-duty Marines 'if violence continues' in the region. The move came over the objections of Gov. Gavin Newsom, marking the first time in decades that a state's National Guard was activated without a request from its governor, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. Newsom, a Democrat, said Trump's decision to call in the National Guard was 'purposefully inflammatory.' He described Hegseth's threat to deploy Marines on American soil as 'deranged behavior.' Trump's order came after clashes in Paramount and neighboring Compton, where a car was set on fire. Protests continued into the evening in Paramount, with several hundred demonstrators gathered near a doughnut shop, and authorities holding up barbed wire to keep the crowd back. Crowds also gathered again outside federal buildings in downtown Los Angeles, including a detention center, where local police declared an unlawful assembly and began to arrest people.
