Vučić expects major violence at protests on March 15 and announces that everyone will be arrested in 15 minutes

AUTHOR:M.J. GDNUS

Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić said that he expects the opposition to organize major violence on Saturday, March 15, and stressed that everyone who participates in it will be arrested and held accountable.

The largest protests in Belgrade so far are scheduled for March 15, and were announced by students in a blockade, who have been peacefully protesting for more than three months across the country, demanding criminal and political accountability for the death of 15 and serious injury to two people in the collapse of the railway station canopy in Novi Sad on November 1. They are also blocking more than 60 faculties in Serbia.

"Everyone who participates in it will be arrested," Vučić said of the allegedly planned major violence on March 15.

"Maybe it will take us 15 minutes, maybe an hour, maybe two," Vučić said, answering questions from reporters during a tour of the Monastery of the Holy Archangel Gabriel Pinosav near Smederevska Palanka, Radio-Television of Serbia (RTS) reported.

"So the state will know how to behave like a state and there is no philosophy there, and we will only call on them to be peaceful, not to try violence, but I know them and, unfortunately, I have always been right so far," Vučić said.

Vučić said that only violence is happening every day because "everything is clear to them now and they understand perfectly well that there is nothing like a bloody revolution." He also said that "they know that their deadline is Saturday" and added that he hopes and expects the students to withdraw.

"They know that this must not be 'D-Day', that they should get out of it, continue and fight for their demands, and not be remembered for the fact that someone was killed during an attempt to break into the Parliament. But the opposition is in a hurry, the owners of N1, Nova are in a hurry," Vučić said.

The students are demanding the criminal prosecution of the attackers of students and professors during the protests, the publication of all documentation on the reconstruction of the Novi Sad Railway Station, the suspension of proceedings against those arrested during the demonstrations, and a 20 percent increase in the budget for faculties.