SERBIA: Rally in support of Bosnia's protesters takes place near Bosnia and Herzegovina embassy in Belgrade

Record ID: 214172

  • Title: SERBIA: Rally in support of Bosnia's protesters takes place near Bosnia and Herzegovina embassy in Belgrade
  • Date: 12th February 2014
  • Summary: BELGRADE, SERBIA (FEBRUARY 12, 2014) (REUTERS) RIOT POLICE STANDING ON PAVEMENT / PAN TO BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA EMBASSY BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA FLAG ON EMBASSY POLICE STANDING MEMBERS OF "NEW COMMUNIST PARTY OF YUGOSLAVIA" AND COMMUNIST YOUTH LEAGUE, STANDING WITH FLAGS SURROUNDED BY RIOT POLICE T-SHIRT OF PROTESTER WITH PORTRAIT OF SOVIET DICTATOR JOSEF STALIN RALLY IN PRO
  • Embargoed: 27th February 2014 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Serbia
  • Country: Serbia
  • Topics: General,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA8C20TY1CEA09QT0MQ094A4PHX
  • Story Text: Some hundred people, mainly members of "New Communist party of Yugoslavia" and the Communist youth league, gathered near the embassy of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the centre of Belgrade on Wednesday (February 12) in a show of support for the ongoing workers protests in Bosnia.
    "Today, Bosnia is a puppet state, in the hands of imperialism," said Dragan Andjelkovic, one of the organisers and member of Communist youth league.
    "In Bosnia today, neither those in Sarajevo nor in Banja Luka are in power. Today in Bosnia, the (Office of) High Representative is the one who decides," he said, referring to the OHR which was established in 1995 following the Dayton Peace Agreement to oversee the implementation of the agreement that ended the 1992-95 Bosnian war.
    The protesters said they wanted to show their support for the protest in Bosnia which started on Wednesday (February 5) in the industrial city of Tuzla and quickly spread to towns across the Bosnia, where more than one in four of the workforce is jobless.
    "We want to support the people in Bosnia and Herzegovina," said Biljana Knezevic from Belgrade. "And the people from other parts should protest too, against the bourgeois programmes."
    Also among the protesters was Svetozar Markovic, the president of the "Communist party of Serbia".
    He called the protests a "justified, powerful social insurgency" and predicted that they might spread to neighbouring countries.
    "And for the same reasons - maybe even more so - it could appear in Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia," he said.
    Protesters were carrying the old communist and Yugoslav flags with red stars, with pictures of former Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito and Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.
    Around hundred riot police were securing the area around the embassy during the protest.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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