As the opening lines of the song "Live Freely" say, which is often performed here in Serbia these days, "The devil sat on your doorstep a long time ago, the land of Serbia...", I would have said a long time ago.
For 13 years, I, my generation and the generation of our parents, have silently watched and allowed ourselves to be ridden and destroyed by that same devil.
Tragedies, corruption, thievery, election rigging, lies, media darkness, destruction of institutions, decline in ethics, morals, upbringing and education.
All of this has happened significantly in the last few years, and some protests have stifled themselves. Without an idea and a sincere political figure that would pull us out of this hopelessness, the protests that would have started, after a few days or weeks, would have died down, and we, who are not supporters of this regime (read, who did not agree to side with them and become accomplices of that villainous group), would have remained deeply disappointed, without the prospect of seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.
And then, on November 1, 2024, a tragedy occurred in Novi Sad, when 15 people died when the railway station's overpass fell.
That tragedy, although the number of victims was smaller than those in Ribnikar and Dubona, led to silent protests by the majority of students.
They were quiet for a few days until a group of supporters of the criminal regime did not bother those fifteen-minute gatherings and attacked those same students.
Well, no one must beat our youth and our children!
If it had not been for the fall of that superstructure, the question of whether the embalmed people would have reacted to thievery, bribery and corruption regarding the reconstruction of that railway station (what was supposed to cost 3 or 5 million, was charged 15 or 16). But the attack on the students opened our eyes a little.
And so the awakening began.
The student marches woke up the sleeping people in various parts of our country, marching for several days to the cities where they called for peaceful gatherings. First in Belgrade at Slavija, when we saw that we have like-minded people and that the students have support in us.
So at Autokomanda, Novi Sad, Kragujevac, Niš.
And as the last in a series, a peaceful gathering in Belgrade on March 15, 2025.
This gathering was preceded by the blocking of the public media service RTS and RTV, which still works exclusively on the orders of the authorities (the criminal ones), including reports on what is in support of it.
At that blockade, the police are committing violence against the students, and the president himself (not to mention him here and pollute the Hive world with his name), is spreading false news that the students attacked the policemen...
The students' call for a rally on March 15 was followed by the government's spin that it would not be a peaceful protest, that there would be violence, bloodshed, that strong police or military forces would be brought to the streets...
And while they are spinning the news like that, they are making a scenario...
On one of the plateaus where the meeting will be held, the scoundrel sets up a camp with his supporters (fake students, officials of his party, petty and major criminals, thugs, and the most socially threatened category of the population who, whether under blackmail or out of the need to feed themselves with that criminal money, accept to exist in that scenario). He also pulls the tractors of his supporters, which he places in a ring around the park, in the valley known as "Ćaciland", from the word "Ćaci", which was written instead of the word "Đak" by one of his illiterate supporters...
"Hulja(Rescal)" is actually preparing that massacre scenario, while the students and other participants of the peaceful gathering are making a plan to prevent it from happening.
In order to prevent a large number of people from reaching the center of Belgrade, rail and bus traffic, both intercity and urban, were suspended, some pumps stopped filling fuel...
But that didn't help.
A large number of people flocked to Belgrade this weekend. The authorities state the figure as 107,000. The Mossad confirms one million, and some other reporters, mobile operators and foreign agencies use the figure as 1.6 or 1.7 million...
Our fake RTS does not advertise itself.
Students are marching, we support them and protest,
singing the song "Live Freely".
And so for more than 4 months.
Until when, it depends...
I had to give a little longer intro, so that they would understand the extent of this evil that we have been suffering for years and that they would understand how I felt the previous weekend and what emotions flooded my soul.
Students from universities in Novi Sad, Niš, Novi Pazar. they set off last Sunday on a march of over 200 km to arrive in Belgrade on Friday evening.
I've been planning to go out and to wait for them.
While I was approaching Terazije from Slavija, I passed by A
ndrić's wreath, where one of the entrances to Ćaciland was located, which was guarded by the police. None of the students gathered at the reception paid any attention to them.
We were not interested in garbage that evening.
The emotions that surged through me while I was walking with groups of other citizens took me back to the distant past In 1996, when we, the former students, protested against the government.
With every step, entering the growing crowd, passing by the cultured and well-mannered world, I felt proud, proud to live in this country with such people.
The welcome of the students was preceded by the arrival of the cyclists.
We happily jumped in place and sang "Who doesn't jump, that's Ćaci" and that known
"Pumpaj", until in the distance the arrival of the students was marked by fireworks.
The first group of students that arrived in Belgrade was a group of students from the University of Niš.
That youth, strength, joy, energy had an invigorating effect on me and brought tears to my eyes, tears of joy.
Accompanied by tractors, trucks, but also a large number of motorcyclists who were the guardians of pedestrian students on their entire route, a large number of students passed by us.
I didn't have the energy to stay late at night, the day of the big protest followed and with the beautiful emotions of the reception, I went home.
Saturday dawned and I, according to an earlier agreement with my friend from childhood, found myself in the neighborhood and started walking towards the city.
Public transport was not running, and even if it was, it would have been blocked very quickly.
An incredibly large number of people poured into the big boulevard from all the smaller surrounding streets.
approaching the buildings of the technical faculties, we already ran into a big crowd. The rest of the company was waiting for us at the Faculty of Law. so we had to make our way to them.
When we met up with our friends, we set off through the Tasmajdan park, then down Resavska we got to Knez Milos street. The crowd was big. Large groups of people were approaching the centre from a distance. We passed by the maternity ward in the Narodni Front street, and there we were completely calm, so that from Zeleni venac we headed towards Terazije.
Terazije, Beogradjanka, Slavija square, Beogradska Street, are the places where we spent the whole day, walking and spending time in the great company of my fellow citizens and all our guests from all over the country...
A day that will forever be remembered as the largest gathering in the city where I was born.
In a comment from Friday, when I announced this protest to which I would dedicate the whole weekend,
galenkp wrote "Protests huh? Hopefully it's for the right cause."
What happened shows that this protest is not a question of wanting, but of having to.
At 19:00 the silence began.
Hundreds of thousands of people turned on the flashes of their mobile phones and pointed them to the sky, and in silence, prayed for the souls of the victims under the overhang.
Source
At exactly 7:11 p.m., insanity forced the government to break the silence with some sound (sound cannon, vortex, etc. are mentioned), which was so penetrating and strong that thousands of people fled before it.
Fortunately, the sound spread so that it separated people, and did not force them into a stampede, which would have led to deadly outcomes, which was the idea of the authorities.
Is the goal of the protest right, it absolutely is, and I am glad that I participated in it.
The idea is to expose the truth about the abnormal criminal top of the government that wishes bad things to its people.
With the unsuccessful attack of the thugs who were stationed in Ćaciland, whose task was to start a riot, which they would then blame on the students, the students prematurely stopped the meeting, calling people to disperse.
I didn't know then what I know now, when emotions calmed down a bit and when I watched hours of reports from the protests.
Because when you're on the ground, you only see a small part of what's happening around you, you don't see the mass of people or events. You only see endless columns of people, wherever you turn around.
When I went home according to the instructions of the students, I also saw columns of police vehicles, which were heading towards the city center, and I prayed to God that all the participants of the protest had gone to safety.
I found out that they did, and that the student protest succeeded, until the scoundrel's plan to lead to bloodshed succeeded and that his plan to introduce a curfew or a state of emergency failed.
Yes, it was a wonderful weekend, which filled me with so much positive energy, because even though I have covered a large number of steps, days after the protest I feel some new strength, awakened energy and I am ready to "Pumpaj(Pump)" or "Dinstaj(Dint)" further.
I used several shots and made a film that briefly shows where and in what environment I spent this weekend, and I present it to you in the #weekend-experiences community, as one of the best weekends spent in recent years.
