When Voja was beaten and dragged from a Belgrade street into a waiting car, the young activist thought he would die.
After an hours-long ordeal, his assailants freed him, bruised and bloodied.
“I feared for my life. I had no idea what they were planning to do with me,” Voja, who asked to be identified only by his first name, told AFP.
Weeks later, he is still visibly shaken when recounting the 29 April incident, just one report in a mounting pattern of violence against people connected to Serbia’s long-running protest movement.
But unlike many other attacks, Voja said his captors made no attempt to hide their faces – and had allegedly emerged from a van emblazoned with the campaign slogan of the ruling party of President Aleksandar Vučić.
‘Ready for violence’
For more than a year, student-led protests have swept across Serbia, with some rallies drawing crowds unseen since demonstrations toppled strongman Slobodan Milošević in 2000.
Demands for a transparent…
