Police in the northern Serbian city of Novi Sad used batons and tear gas against protesting students outside the Faculty of Sports and Physical Education who tried to prevent Dean Patrik Drid from passing through the blockade, the Belgrade-based Beta news agency reported. Two professors were reportedly injured.
Students, opposition party activists and citizens gathered outside the Faculty of Sports at the University of Novi Sad today to prevent the Dean of the faculty, Patrik Drid, from entering the building. Drid had earlier said he would break the blockade of the faculty.
Police used batons and tear gas to disperse the protesters and allow Drid to pass. The injured were professors from the Faculty of Philosophy at the same university, Jelena Kleut and Smiljana Milinkov, who were hit while protesting with the students.
"I think my main duty is to be with the students, the policeman was in front of me, I raised my hands, and he grabbed me and threw me to the ground", Milinkov commented to Beta.
Several people have been arrested.
The tragedy in Novi Sad on November 1 last year sparked a wave of protests across the country, led mainly by students. The publication of the full documentation for the reconstruction of the local train station building is a key demand of the protesters. A month later, the government and the president of Serbia announced that the documentation had been published and made publicly available, but under pressure from the protests, new documents repeatedly appeared. The students are also demanding that those who attacked protesters in dozens of incidents be punished, as well as the suspension of criminal proceedings against protesters arrested by the police.