Tens

The student-led movement, which began after the Novi Sad rail station disaster in November 2024, is pushing for early elections.

Tens of thousands of people, led by university students, have rallied in the Serbian capital to protest against the government and call for early elections.

The Novi Sad rail station disaster in November 2024, which killed 16 people, sparked anticorruption protests, calling for a transparent investigation, forcing then-Prime Minister Milos Vucevic to resign.

Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic later pushed back hard against the protesters.

With students leading the anticorruption movement, the demonstrations have snowballed into a campaign to push Vucic to call early elections.

Vucic said this week that the ballot could be held between September and November this year.

‘Students win’

Protesters streamed into a central square in the capital, Belgrade, from several directions, many carrying banners and wearing T-shirts inscribed with the “Students win” motto of the youth movement.

Columns of cars drove into Belgrade from other Serbian towns earlier in the day.

Protester Maja Milas Markovic said students “managed to gather us here with their youth and wonderful energy; I really believe that we have [the] right to live normally.”

Serbia’s state railway company cancelled all trains to and from Belgrade on Saturday, in a bid to stop at least some of the people from coming from other parts of the Balkan country.

Vucic’s loyalists, meanwhile, gathered in a park camp outside the Serbian presidency building that he set up before another big antigovernment rally last March as a human shield against protesters. Folk music blared from a fenced area surrounded by riot police in full gear.

Students have said their rally will be peaceful. But there are concerns of violent conflict with Vucic’s loyalists, who are often hooded and masked and who have attacked student protesters in the past.

The protests have “huge support from the public, and that’s because they’re an all-encompassing movement … against the government,” Tetyana Kekic, a journalist in Belgrade, told Al Jazeera.

She said the challenge for the protesters is that they do not have a “clear political platform or policies … and they do not have a leader or a personality which could really challenge the president”.

Serbia’s push to join the EU

The Serbian president has faced international scrutiny for his hardline approach towards the demonstrators.

The Council of Europe commissioner for human rights, Michael O’Flaherty, criticised Serbia’s government in a report this week and said he “will monitor the situation closely” on Saturday.

Serbia is formally seeking entry into the European Union, but it has maintained close ties with Russia and China.

The democratic backsliding under Vucic could cost the country about 1.5 billion euros ($1.8bn) in European Union funding, the EU’s top enlargement official warned last month.

The venue on Saturday is Belgrade’s Slavija Square, the scene of a huge antigovernment protest in March 2025. That rally ended in sudden disruption that experts later said – and the government denied – involved the use of a sonic weapon against peaceful demonstrators.

Students now say they plan to challenge Vucic in approaching elections later this year or next, which they hope will oust the right-wing populist government.

Vucic, government officials, and the pro-government media have branded critics as “terrorists” and foreign agents who wish to destroy the country – rhetoric that has ramped up political polarisation.

British capital sees heightened security as right wing rally takes place at the same time as Nakba Day march.

Tens of thousands of people are marching through central London in two separate protests – one pro-Palestine demonstration a day after Nakba Day, and the other, a far-right rally staged by Tommy Robinson.

Police in the British capital deployed 4,000 officers, including reinforcements from ⁠outside the city, on Saturday and pledged “the most assertive possible use of our powers” in what they called their biggest public order operation in years.

Armoured vehicles, horses, dogs, drones and helicopters were also deployed to manage the separate protest marches, the UK Metropolitan Police said.

By 1200 GMT, shortly after both marches started, police said they had made 11 arrests for a range of offences. They had earlier forecast ⁠turnout of at least 80,000 – about 50,000 at Robinson’s “Unite the Kingdom” march, and 30,000 more expected to go to the Nakba Day rally.

Authorities had imposed various conditions on the two rallies over their routes and timings, in a bid to keep rival attendees apart.

Prosecutors were told to consider whether certain protest placards or chants may amount to offences and stir up aggression during the rallies.

“This is not about restricting free speech,” said the Crown Prosecution Service’s director, Stephen Parkinson. “It is about preventing hate crime and protecting the public, particularly at a time of heightened tensions.”

The police force, which estimates its operation will cost 4.5 million pounds ($6m), warned in a statement that it would adopt “a zero-tolerance approach”. That includes, for the first time, making organisers legally responsible for ensuring invited speakers do not break hate speech laws.

The British government earlier blocked 11 foreign nationals from entering the country for the “Unite the Kingdom” rally. Right-wing figures claiming to have been barred include Polish politician Dominik Tarczynski, Belgian politician Filip Dewinter, Colombian-American anti-Islam commentator Valentina Gomez and Dutch activist Eva Vlaardingerbroek.

On the eve of demonstrations, Prime Minister Keir Starmer warned: “Anyone who sets out to wreak havoc on our streets, to intimidate or threaten anyone … can expect to face the full force of the law.”

Starmer – facing intense pressure within his ruling Labour party to quit after far-right Reform UK scored huge wins in local elections last week – accused the organisers of Saturday’s far-right rally of “peddling hatred and division”.

Last September, far-right activist Robinson – whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon – drew about 110,000 people into central London for a similar rally proclaiming “national unity, free speech and Christian values”.

X owner Elon Musk addressed that event, which shocked many in the UK for its scale, directness, and clashes between participants and police, which injured dozens of officers.

Meanwhile, the Stand Up to Racism group has combined its antifascism march with the pro-Palestine event to mark Nakba Day, held annually on March 15 to commemorate the 1948 mass expulsion of Palestinians from their land during the establishment of the state of Israel.

The Met said live facial recognition would be used for the first time to police the protests.