Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić said on Friday that a rally will be held on February 15, Serbian Statehood Day, or a day earlier, at which a national declaration for Vojvodina, the autonomous province in Serbia, will be adopted.
"Vojvodina is Serbia, forever. And there is no surrender, no retreat before those who would destroy our country," Vucic wrote on Instagram on Friday.
Vucic claimed that in recent weeks there have been "attempts to abuse the country's youth" in northern Serbia, pushing back on initiatives to grant wider autonomy to Vojvodina.
"From the declaration of Vojvodina as a republic, to the language of Vojvodina, to the idea of separating Vojvodina from Serbia," Vučić wrote.
He stressed that he will oppose these attempts with democratic and political means. Vojvodina is an autonomous province in northern Serbia, which has 45 municipalities and cities with nearly 2 million inhabitants.
During the ongoing student protests in Serbia over the past two months, demanding criminal and political accountability for the deaths of 15 people in the collapse of a train station shelter in Novi Sad on November 1, senior government officials from the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) have linked the protests to Vojvodina's alleged aspirations for independence.
"The opposition that wants the secession of Vojvodina sees opportunities for its plans in the protests," outgoing Serbian Prime Minister Miloš Vučević said on February 2.
He resigned on January 28 after a student was beaten with wooden sticks and had her jaw broken at a protest in Novi Sad.
The Speaker of the Serbian Parliament, Ana Brnabić, declared on January 13 that the protests in Serbia are political.
"Part of it is separatist demands for the secession of Vojvodina as a republic," Brnabic said. The protesting students did not respond to the accusations of state officials.
They have repeatedly said that President Vučić is not responsible for any of their demands and that they will continue to protest until the institutions fulfill them.
The protesting students are demanding the publication of full documentation for the reconstruction of the Novi Sad Railway Station, the punishment of the attackers of students in the protests following the tragedy, the suspension of proceedings against arrested protesters, and a 20 percent budget increase for higher education.
Goran Jesic, a former official of the Democratic Party (DS) and the Government of Vojvodina, who was labeled by the authorities as one of the alleged "Vojvodina separatists", stated that it is about spreading fake news that the authorities have discredited and weakened the protests.
"Vucic knows that people are afraid of separatism, so he slanders that we are separatists. The students are only in the blockades and the opposition has nothing to do with it," Jesic told Danas on January 14.
Marinika Tepic, an official of the opposition Party for Freedom and Justice (SSP), denied the authorities' accusations of an alleged attempt to enforce the secession of Vojvodina through protests.
"You are inventing that people are demonstrating to separate it from Serbia or to create a republic. You came up with this to divert the topic from the 15 dead in Novi Sad who were killed at the railway station by your corruption," Tepic said in a written statement on January 13th.
A group of students in Serbia have been blocking more than 60 state faculties at five universities for more than two months, demanding that their demands be met. Their protests have led to mass demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of citizens on the streets of more than 200 cities and towns across the country.
The government claims that the demands have been met by calling for the reopening of faculties, while the students deny this and say that the blockades are continuing. Their demands were supported by a number of educators, lawyers, university professors, farmers, pensioners and other citizens. /REL (A2 Televizion)
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