Belgrade Protesters Mark Anniversary of Nocturnal Demolitions

Campaign group Let's Not Drown Belgrade (Ne davimo Beograd) is organising a rally on Tuesday evening, starting on the street in the capital's Savamala district where the demolitions were carried out under cover of darkness a year ago.

Campaigners believe that the masked men were acting on official orders to remove buildings on land required by the government-backed, Emirati-funded Belgrade Waterfront redevelopment scheme.

They hope to highlight the fact that a year on, no one has been prosecuted for the demolitions, and to call for a state based on the rule of law.
"It has been a year since the demolitions happened and still we have nothing from the prosecutor's office," Let's Not Drown Belgrade activist Radomir Lazovic told BIRN.

The demonstration, titled 'In the Phantoms' Tracks' (Tragovima fantoma), will be joined by student activists from Belgrade and Novi Sad who have been participating in anti-government protests for the past three weeks.

It will also be supported by members of various trade unions - the Military Union of Serbia, the Police Union of Serbia, the Independent Union of Workers in Education Institutions of Vojvodina, the Independent Association of Unemployed People of Serbia, and one of the biggest umbrella unions representing workers from various trades, Independence (Nezavisnost).

They plan to march from Hercegovacka Street, where the demolitions took place, through the city to the government building and then to parliament.

Masked men armed with baseball bats and equipped with diggers demolished three small houses on the city riverbank on the night between April 24 and 25 in 2016, when public attention was occupied with the counting of the votes from the previous day's parliamentary...