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The protest concentration or “cleaning of migrants”, as announced on social networks, was organized today by the “People’s Patrols” in the park near the Faculty of Economics. On the other hand, as a show of solidarity with the refugees, leftist organizations met. A cordon of police officers interposed between the two groups, which emptied the park where migrants usually stay during the day, since it is located near the bus station.
The patrols say that this is not the end and that they will continue to monitor the movement of migrants and that they will be on the streets of several cities.
In the park, Karadjordjeva and Gavril Princip street, where refugees and migrants usually meet, today almost none of them. The police watched the park today and took them out of that place so that the “People’s Patrol” would not “clean” them.
At the scheduled time, this group appeared first in the park, then leftist organizations, and a police cordon between them. There were no conflicts, except for verbal ones.
The chant was followed by a speech by the leader of the patrol, the former vice-speaker of the Serbian Parliament, Zavetnici Damnjan Knezevic.
“What we promise you from this place, from today, thousands and thousands of people will be the People’s Patrol in the streets of Belgrade, Loznica, Pirot, Sombor and Subotica, and when we see that there are diverted migrants somewhere, when we hear that our “Citizen, let’s all get down and react. We have the right to defend our citizens, to defend our children, “Knezevic said.
The leftists point out that he did not dare to attend this meeting.
“Not only until this meeting, but the state powers were not allowed to be assumed by the right-wing parapolice formation. It is obvious that the government and the state cannot deal with the refugee crisis at the security and humanitarian level due to the austerity measures, solidarity society and citizens, ”says Ivan Velisavljević of the Radical Left Party.
Representatives of the Coalition for the Protection of Refugee and Migrant Children against Abuse and Neglect called on the police to ban the demonstration, which apparently did not happen. The coalition did not take to the streets, because they believe that today they had no place there.
We do not want to assume the same model that the “popular patrols” use, they take justice into their own hands, it is a job of the state. We believe that the state has the ability to protect all its citizens, but also all foreigners in the Republic of Serbia. that will prevent incidents, ”says Tamara Vlaškalin, from the IDEAS Research and Development Center.
Those who should have prevented the incidents and the rights of people passing through Serbia have been violated in the previous days. This was recently witnessed by Info Park activists.
“We saw that they searched the water for peaceful and non-violent migrants who were staying in parks or in the surroundings of Belgrade and asked them to raise their hands, and then they brutally beat them, verbally abused them shouting to get out of here, to they would break their legs if they were to be seen again and so on … These are absolutely inadmissible things, ”says Gordan Paunović of the Center for Migration Info Park.
It is necessary, Paunović explains, to send the migrants peacefully to the camps, which was done earlier, when the barracks behind the train station were demolished. It is true, he says, that the situation is more uncomfortable now, because, according to his information, there are about 6,000 in the camps and almost the same number outside the camps. However, it stresses that it is important to manage migration responsibly.
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