(Corrects to replace word “when” with “a month after” in paragraph 8 to clarify timeline)
BELGRADE, March 31 (Reuters) – Hundreds of Serbian students clashed with police on Tuesday during a protest against a police search of University of Belgrade offices, which inflamed tensions between authorities and anti-government activists that have flared up regularly for more than a year.
Crowds in Belgrade’s city centre scuffled briefly with the police, who used truncheons to disperse demonstrators chanting “dogs” and “traitors”, according to a Reuters witness.
Police said the search was part of an investigation into the death of a female student, 25, last Friday after falling from a window in a nearby faculty building.
University Rector Vladan Djokic later told the crowd of protesters that police entered the building without a valid legal explanation looking for documents, and had seized computers.
“You can raid university premises, but you cannot raid people’s conscience,” he told the cheering crowd.
Dragan Vasiljevic, director of the Serbian police, said the officers were acting on a court order when they entered the university’s offices to seek evidence related to the student’s death.
He told a news conference in Belgrade that police had found firecrackers, walkie-talkies, gas masks, banners and first-aid supplies during the search.
Anti-government protests have swept across Serbia since December 2024, a month after 16 people died in the collapse of an awning at a railway station in the northern Serbian city of Novi Sad.
Last year, protesting students occupied university faculties in many parts of the country, including the main administration building of the University of Belgrade.
Protesters, opposition leaders and rights watchdogs have accused populist Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and his allies of rampant corruption, ties with organised crime, violence against political opponents and stifling media freedoms. Vucic and his allies have denied the accusations.
(Reporting by Aleksandar Vasovic; Editing by Edmund Klamann)
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