Opposition Activist: Vucic is Paying Quasi Students for Protection

BETAPHOTO/Milan Ilic

In a move made out of sheer desperation ahead of the coming March 15 major protest in Belgrade, President Aleksandar Vucic is paying quasi university students to camp at the park in front of Novi Dvor, which houses his presidential offices, and serve as his last line of defense, KTV journalist Nemanja Sarovic, who is also the head of the Love, Faith, Hope movement, told N1 on March 10.

“The daily wage differs. Those who are more important get EUR100, while those less prominent get EUR50,” Sarovic said, adding that these people are being paid not by the state but “by Aleksandar Vucic’s regime.”

The journalist visited the camp, organized by the Students 2.0 movement – i.e. those who claim to want to study, not protest, and have been sleeping in tents at the capital’s Pioneer Park – on March 8. For over six hours, Sarovic broadcast a live feed of interviews with said students until he got into a verbal altercation and was taken into police custody.

A fence was subsequently erected around the entire camp.

Commenting on being detained by law enforcement, Sarovic said he remained calm because he knew he had done nothing illegal, but that his treatment included having a microphone slapped out of his hands, being doused in hot coffee and then shoved into a police car.