Serbia: People Clash with Police While Protesting Against New Lockdown, President Backtracks Plans

People in Serbia love freedom way more than Americans, so much that they — unlike Americans — are willing to fight to defend it.

Americans are only willing to fight when a black male dies of a heart attack.

Daily Mail:

Serbia’s president has backtracked on plans to reinstate a coronavirus lockdown in Belgrade after thousands protested and violently clashed with police in the capital.

Chaos erupted as thousands of protesters fought running battles with police and tried to storm the parliament building yesterday.

The protests came after President Aleksandar Vucic announced a weekend curfew will be reintroduced in Serbia as health officials reported the highest single-day death toll from Covid-19 cases.

Today, Mr Vucic backtracked on his new lockdown plans that were to take effect during the coming weekend, claiming the measure cannot be implemented without proclaiming a nationwide state of emergency.

Mr Vucic said that although he still supports the lockdown, ‘most probably, there will be no curfew’.

He said that the government will decide on new measures that could include shortened hours for night clubs and penalties for those not wearing masks.

He said foreign secret services were behind the Tuesday night protests by ‘right-wing and pro fascist demonstrators’.

He did not identify the alleged spy agencies and strongly defended the police action against accusations of brutality.

‘We will never allow the destabilisation of Serbia from within and abroad,’ Mr Vucic said, adding that the protest had ‘nothing to do with the coronavirus’.

Mr. Vucic’s statement sounds kinda like America’s “Russian meddling” trope.

It’s hard to picture foreign secret services somehow trying to get countries to do less lockdown stuff, considering that virtually everyone in power — from the media/government to billionaires — is on the same page, supporting the house arrest lifestyle and demanding even harsher social distancing measures.

Police fired several rounds of tear gas at the protesters, some chanting ‘Resignation! Resignation!’ as they gathered in front of the downtown parliament building in the Serbian capital.

Some of the protesters briefly managed to enter the parliament by force, but were pushed back by riot police.

The protesters responded by hurling flares, stones, bottles and eggs at the police. Several clashes erupted between some of the most extremist rioters apparently belonging to far-right groups and the baton-wielding police.

Protesters also clashed with police in front of the state TV building. The broadcaster is accused by the opposition of having a pro-government bias. A number of police vehicles were set on fire.

Serbian police said 23 people were detained in the clashes that lasted for more than six hours.

Police chief Vladimir Rebic told state-run RTS television that authorities are working to identify more people who took part in the rioting that left 43 police officers and 17 demonstrators injured.

That brought the total to 16,719 confirmed cases and 330 virus-related deaths since the start of the pandemic in Serbia, which went from having one of Europe´s strictest lockdowns to a near-complete reopening at the beginning of May.

Earlier, President Aleksandar Vucic called the virus situation in Belgrade ‘alarming’ and ‘critical’ as the city’s hospitals neared their capacity limits after health officials reported highest single-day death toll from the coronavirus on Tuesday.

Serbia went from having one of Europe’s strictest lockdowns to a near-complete reopening at the beginning of May.

Now they’re calling them “virus-related” deaths, because it was quite obvious that no one was really dying directly from the virus. They’re just counting people who died while having the virus as a “virus-related” death, which is as insane as having something like “sneeze-related” deaths for counting people who sneezed close to their time of death.

It’s been proven that coronavirus is about as dangerous as the flu, and that the lockdown is useless, so I’m happy that at least some people, somewhere, are actively resisting the insanity of our rulers.