BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Protesters clashed with police on Tuesday in a southwestern Serbian town following the reported forced expulsion of a group of students from a faculty building where they had been camping for months as part of nationwide anti-government demonstrations.
Hundreds of protesters in Novi Pazar chanted slogans against Serbia’s populist President Aleksandar Vucic and demanded that the students be allowed to return to the building.
Protesters threw bottles at police who responded with batons and shields. Police said in a statement they were attacked and acted with restraint while preserving public peace. Officers later withdrew as the students chanted “victory.”
The students alleged that the unidentified men who broke into the state university building between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. on Tuesday, with faculty officials, were members of a private security company in nearby Kraljevo. Videos of the alleged break in were posted on social media.
Parliamentary speaker Ana Brnabic said the intervention was requested by the faculty management.
Tensions are high in Novi Pazar, a multi-ethnic town some 300 kilometers (180 miles) from the capital Belgrade. There is a divide between Bosniak Muslims, who make up the majority of the population, and Serbs which stems from ethnic wars in the 1990s triggered by the breakup of former Yugoslavia.
Student-led demonstrations first erupted in Serbia after the collapse of a concrete canopy collapse at a renovated train station killed 16 people in November. Many blamed the tragedy on alleged widespread corruption in state-run infrastructure projects.
Vucic has stepped up pressure on universities to curb the protests challenging his increasingly authoritarian rule.
Most faculties in Serbia have restarted lectures and exams in recent weeks to avoid a study backlog but street protests persist, with protesters demanding snap parliamentary elections.
A large student-led gathering in Novi Pazar in April was seen as an important step toward bridging the ethnic divide there.
