Serbians Protest as Controversial Demolitions Remain Unexplained

The Let's Not Drown Belgrade movement has scheduled a protest for April 24 to mark the anniversary of the demolitions, which are believed to have been carried out in order to clear the ground quickly for the building of the showpiece government-backed Belgrade Waterfront development project.

"Three years since this crime, although it is completely clear who organised and committed it, nobody has been held accountable," Let's Not Drown Belgrade said in a press release urging people to join the protest.

The movement was formed shortly after the demolitions and has been organising protests ever since:

Activist Dobrica Veselinovic told BIRN that the protesters will gather in Savamala and march to the Belgrade city assembly downtown.

"What remains for us is to fight on every street corner, neighbourhood and block until there are no 'phantoms' in power anymore," Veselinovic said. Protesters often refer to the masked men who carried out the demolition - and the officials who they believe were behind them - as phantoms.

Police 'declined to take action'

On the night between April 24 and 25, a group of masked men blocked Hercegovacka Street in Savamala, seized mobile phones from eyewitnesses, tied some of them up and then, using bulldozers, demolished several buildings in the street where the huge Belgrade Waterfront complex was to be built.

A witness told BIRN that around 20 masked people ran around the site looking for potential witnesses while the bulldozers were busy demolishing the buildings, which were mainly commercial premises.

The demolitions occurred on the night of the Serbian general elections. Several days later, the investigative website Crime and Corruption Reporting Network, KRIK, published a...