>>2284458Not a Serb, but I can confirm this. I was walking around late at night in Beograd, and suddenly I saw a bunch of tents blocking a critical road intersection of the city, and a shitton of cops.
So I went to the supermarket that is still open at this time of the night, got some snacks and beer, and when I got out, I saw a bunch of people who looked like students, so I asked them what was going on, and they confirmed to me it was a teacher protest.
They told me the government passed a law or decree reducing the time spent on research by teachers from 50% to 5%, which means it limits their pay to 50€. While Beograd is a relatively cheap city by Western standards, this is an unliveable situation.
They told me the government passed this decree basically illegally or almost, it's a weird legal situation. I told them it's unsustainable for a country to stop doing scientific research, especially when Serbia is more or less known for having very good education, but it's basically a power play.
More importantly, they told me the teachers will stay there for as long as needed to get what they want. To me, this sounded kinda funny at first, but this is actually ballsy. The protest seemed rather peaceful, because in several other countries, they would have been kettled and suffocate in a cloud of tear gas. But then, during another day when I wanted to see a few buildings bombed by NATO (holy shit, can't describe how I felt when I saw this), I passed by the camp, and damn, it's hot as fuck in this country, and they were still there, and the camp was much larger than I initially thought. And when you have 5000 dinars for the month, well you better spend them well collectively. I think some students offered them food, mutual aid stuff.
The students confirmed another few things discussed in this thread: the use of a LRAD, the sketchy contract regarding the canopy in Novi Sad. And it's true that a couple of public squares were blocked with tents with almost no one in there, what a weird sight to behold. One in particular had barriers coated with some strange orange substance that is probably a kind of glue. A few people were hanging around in this one big park, but they had to pass a police check I believe.
I also saw students in front of an university building, but I didn't feel like asking them questions, cops were fucking every
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