Students in the blockade announced that the protest near Ušće, in Belgrade, ended tonight at around 9:15 PM, during which police were targeted with flares and, as they claim, several students were arrested.
"We ask that you slowly withdraw and return home in larger groups," the students said on Instagram.
They had previously appealed to citizens who participated in the protest to move only in larger groups "for their personal safety", that is, not to separate into smaller groups and not to move alone.
Student accounts blocking several faculties announced that their colleagues were detained tonight near Ušće, but the exact number of those detained, as well as the stations to which they were taken, are not yet known.
Some of the protest participants in New Belgrade, who oppose the construction of a public aquarium in Ušće Park, entered the fenced area designated for investigative work for the construction site earlier this evening, and the students in the blockade subsequently announced that several of their colleagues had been detained.
As reported by several portals, including N1, Nova, Zoomer and Mašina, protest participants lit several flares and threw them at police in riot gear, who repeatedly chased the crowd.
The Mašina portal published a video of the arrest of a young man, stating that the police first held him in a fenced area near the "Jugoslavija" hotel, and then took him away.
Photographer Gavrilo Andrić announced on his Instagram that he was a student at the Faculty of Media and Communications, and that he was attacked by police while trying to film the arrest.
Tonight's protest began around 18 p.m., when, at the call of students in the blockade, several hundred citizens gathered right next to the fence that was erected around the part of Ušće Park where the construction of a public aquarium is allegedly planned, and police in riot gear did not allow them to approach.
Citizens occasionally changed the location where they stood, walking along Nikola Tesla Boulevard and through the park, forcing the police to also change the location where they had set up the cordon.
Choirs and activists have been protesting the planned construction of a public aquarium for several days, as they believe it will destroy the greenery in the part of Ušće Park located near the former "Jugoslavija" hotel, and earlier today they were tearing down fences and tearing down posters with the aquarium project.
Bonus video:
