Original article (in Serbian) was published on 13/06/2023
After more than a month and six “Against Violence” protests, the pro-regime media announced yesterday as an exclusive discovery that the protests are organized by the opposition, thus manipulatively trying to prove that the protests are not legitimate because they are “political” and not “civil”. This information, however, is not new, nor was it ever a secret – immediately after the two mass murders in early May, part of the opposition called on citizens to protest, announcing their demands and routes, which continued during the following weeks.
“THERE’S A CONFESSION: THE LEADERS OF THE OPPOSITION GROUPS ORGANIZE A PROTEST!”, this was published yesterday as a “discovery” by numerous media such as Informer, Republika, Vecernje novosti, but also the oldest daily newspaper in the Balkans, Politika, referring to the pro-regime Twitter account “Detektor lazi”.
They used part of the statement of MP Marina Lipovac Tanaskovic from the People’s Party, who said during her guest appearance on N1 that the heads of parliamentary clubs will agree on what will happen at the next protests.
“Marina Lipovac Tanaskovic from Jeremic’s party admitted that the so-called protests against violence are not civil protests as they claim, but are directly organized by the opposition”, pro-regime web portals in Serbia concluded, presenting the matter as a revealed secret.
However, it was never even questioned that the opposition was involved in these protests. Namely, already on May 5, a part of the MPs of the opposition parties invited the citizens to go to the “Against Violence” protests on Monday, May 8.
As stated by Ne davimo Beograd, the “Against Violence” protest is organized by the Democratic Party, the People’s Party, the Together Party, the Freedom and Justice Party, the Movement of Free Citizens, the Syndicate of Harmony, and the Movement for Turnaround – United. They add that the protest is not party-oriented and that “all citizens and all organizations that want to support the fight against violence are welcome, without any divisions”.
This alleged discovery goes hand in hand with various attempts by the pro-regime media to delegitimize the “Against Violence” protests. Raskrikavanje has already written about the methods of manipulation regarding protests in a separate text, and one of such methods is insisting on the claim that the protests are not civil and spontaneous, but “political”, and therefore allegedly disputed and illegitimate.
In addition to the tabloids, similar, manipulative reporting can also be observed in the newspaper Politika.
For example, in mid-May, Politika wrote that the protest was marked by fights and incidents, although apart from a few minor incidents, the walk was peaceful. At the time, they also assessed that blocking the Gazela bridge was “a kind of violence against our citizens, but also a violation of the law”.
At the end of May, in an attempt to discredit the participants of the protest, this newspaper wrote about an LGBT activist who appeared with his wife and child.
They were no less biased even after that – at the beginning of June, they claimed that the goal of the protest was “to remove Aleksandar Vucic from power”, while repeating that the protest was organized by “pro-Western parties”, suggesting, apparently, that it was about “foreign mercenaries” and “domestic traitors”.
As a reminder, since last year this newspaper has been co-owned by businessman Boban Rajic from Smederevo, a man who also bought the pro-regime Vecernje novosti in 2019. Raskrikavanje then revealed that Rajic hired Igor Isailovic, a lawyer close to Minister Sinisa Mali and Prime Minister Ana Brnabic, to establish his company “Media 026”, according to KRIK.