Student Protest '96

December 6th, 1996

12:00 CET
(11:00 GMT)
Plato

Same as the past 14 days, the students of the University of Belgrade gathered at Plato today again, in order to hear the words of support for their protest. At today's gathering, letters of support from the students from Switzerland and Belgrade taxi-drivers were read.

Among the people who spoke to the students who were present today, were many public figures, such as Milorad Pavic, our famed writer, and actors Dragan Bjelogrlic and Dragan Nikolic, who stated that they "believe in our chances for success" and advise us to keep repeating that to ourselves and persist. In the name of the actors association, the demands of the protest are read in theaters every day and accepted with frantic applause by the audience every time.

All the theaters in Serbia have announced that there will be no performances on December 10, unless the demands of the protesters are not fulfilled by that time.

13:00 CET
(12:00 GMT)
THE WALK

Today the students walked along Vasina, Kolarceva and Srpskih Vladara streets, across Slavija Square, the down Nemanjina street, up Kneza Milosa street and past the National Parliament and back to Plato.

The students booed at the buildings of the Ministry of Education and "Borba" (regime newspaper), again, although today's protest was less noisy than those of the previous days, even though the number of students seemed to be increasing. There were approximately 40,000 students at the rally today. Some high-school students have joined the students in protest, and many citizens greeted the students in the streets and showed their support.

We should mention that today many individuals sent by the authorities could be observed in the procession. Some of them did not even try to remain unnoticed. You could recognize them easily because they had certain hearing devices in their ears, and brought their wrists to their mouth very often, whereas copies of "Demokratija" (an independent newspaper) were stitching out of their pockets. You could also hear the buzzing of their radio receivers, which they used to coordinate their actions.

The Student Protest has scheduled a rally for tomorrow, again.

EDIE


Back to Streets index
Back to the Home Page