The blockade of the Freedom Bridge in Novi Sad ended without incident on Sunday at around 6 p.m. After seeing off their colleagues from Belgrade and cleaning up the blockade area, the students returned to the Novi Sad University campus.
The blockade was planned to last until 3 p.m., but the civic plenum decided to extend it for another three hours.
Several tens of thousands of students and citizens blocked three bridges in Novi Sad yesterday, and the blockade was organized to mark the three-month anniversary of the death of 15 people when the canopy of the Railway Station in that city collapsed.
The action was called “1.2. on 3. bridges”, and the students called on the citizens of Serbia to join them in this action.
All three bridges were blocked yesterday from 3 p.m., and around 6 p.m. the crowd moved to the Freedom Bridge, where they spent the night.
Several dozen tractors of agricultural producers from numerous towns in Vojvodina formed a ring around the blockade, or rather in the streets where the blockade was organized.
The tractors for the blockade arrived in Novi Sad the previous weekend and have been staying on the campus of the University of Novi Sad, near the Faculty of Agriculture since then.
During the blockade, students organized a camp in Limanski Park, where they slept, watched movies, engaged in sports activities and rested.
On Friday evening, numerous students from Belgrade arrived in Novi Sad, who had walked for two days.
They slept at the faculties of the University of Novi Sad, where fellow students, with the help of donations from citizens, provided them with places to sleep and food.
Immediately before the end of the blockade, when only a few hundred students remained who were cleaning the bridge, a crew from Radio Television Vojvodina arrived at the intersection of Narodni fronta and Bulevar oslobođenja to record an inclusion in the program of that television. The students present surrounded them and made noise during the broadcast, wanting to show their opinion on the way Vojvodina’s public service broadcaster reported, Beta writes.