Vranje: Police Cordon Separates Cyclists From SNS Rally
In central Vranje, a police cordon stood between two crowds on Tuesday night: cyclists welcomed after a constitution tour, and a Serbian Progressive Party rally held at the same spot.
Vranje became the site of two simultaneous gatherings on the evening of September 23: a welcome for the Student List’s “Guardians of the Constitution” bicycle tour, and a rally of Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) supporters staged at the same location at the same time. Crowds began gathering from around 6:30 p.m. outside the Robna Kuca department store in the city center, where the welcome had been scheduled, while an SNS counter rally formed nearby. A police cordon stood between the two groups throughout the evening.
According to N1, the cyclists were expected to reach Vranje around 7:45 p.m. Reporter Radoman Iric, who covered the event on the ground for the outlet, said he had never seen so much police in Vranje before.
“Student List supporters from Vranje had been living for this moment and this day. Look at this youth, all of this moved me to my core,” Iric said.
Of the SNS supporters gathered nearby, Iric said they had been “brought in to be extras.” None of the sources reviewed reported any incident between the two groups, nor did they give a crowd estimate for either gathering.
When the cyclists arrived, residents of Vranje and members of the local Zbor Vranje 017 group welcomed them with torches and music and had refreshments ready. Addressing the crowd from the stage were actor Dragan “Gagi” Jovanovic, Vranje student Anastasija Smiljkovic, and Danijela Stosic Panic, a professor at the Faculty of Economics in Nis who is running for parliament on the Student List.
Jovanovic urged the crowd to stay calm.
“Let’s be calm, smiling, the way we’ve been,” he said, before also calling on people to vote: “This is now or never for us, we won’t get another chance, so everyone to the polls together.”
Smiljkovic spoke about students carrying “the most sacred thing the Serbian people have, the Constitution,” for kilometers on end. Stosic Panic said the Constitution marks a line no government may cross.
“And the Constitution is a line no government is allowed to cross,” she said, closing her remarks with words addressed to the tour’s participants:
“So thank you to those of you carrying this torch across Serbia. Keep carrying it. Let it keep shining.”
The “Guardians of the Constitution” bicycle tour set out from Belgrade on September 17, with participants carrying copies of Serbia’s Constitution through towns and villages along the way. Vranje was the latest stop in a series of welcomes, following Novi Sad, Kraljevo and Nis, which Srpske Novine covered earlier in a report on the Kraljevo welcome ahead of the leg to Nis. Based on available sources, the Vranje welcome was the first stop where police had to keep two crowds of residents apart.
That same evening, a second group of cyclists was welcomed in Sabac, also with torches and music, where the crowd broke into a traditional kolo dance at one point.
From Vranje, the tour sets out Thursday at 10 a.m. on its final and most demanding leg, to Nis.
The Serbian Progressive Party did not issue a statement or comment on its supporters’ rally in Vranje, nor was any such statement found among the sources reviewed.
