Serbian students, who are blocking the Radio and Television of Serbia (RTS) for the eleventh day, saw off the student marathoners who will run a relay marathon from Novi Sad to Brussels in order to inform the international public about the social and political crisis in Serbia, which is negotiating membership in the European Union.
They will run the route Novi Sad, Osijek, Virovitica, Varaždin, Graz, Oberpullendorf, Vienna, Seitensteten, Salzburg, Munich, Ulm, Stuttgart, Strasbourg, Metz, Luxembourg and Liège, and they should arrive in Brussels on May 11 for the session of the European Parliament, where the report on Serbia should be adopted.
The start of the marathon is at the train station in Novi Sad, where 16 people died in the fall of the canopy on November 1 last year, which sparked anti-government protests throughout Serbia.
The students, supported by 60 percent of citizens, demand from the authorities criminal and political responsibility for the tragedy in Novi Sad and demand the fight against corruption and the independent action of institutions.
21 students will run to Brussels, although it was originally planned that 16 students would run through six countries in order to symbolically pay tribute to those who died in the fall of the canopy at the railway station in Novi Sad.
At the same time, students and citizens continued to block RTS on Friday, despite the promises of the Serbian authorities, who announced the start of the procedure for the election of new members of the Council of the Regulatory Agency for Electronic Media (REM), which is also a student request.
The blockade of RTS began last week, and students are dissatisfied with RTS’s coverage of student protests and the crisis in the country, and announce that the blockade will last until a new competition for REM Council members is announced, which is also demanded by the Serbian opposition.
The management of RTS maintains that the students are “illegally blocking” the public service, and that this is “inadmissible pressure on a medium in which citizens have shown the greatest trust for years.”
The Serbian government, under whose influence or control most of the print media and television with a national scope, calls the student protests a “color revolution” and tries to disunite the students who have been blocking more than 60 faculties of four state universities for more than four months.
Photo: archive
