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Participants in an anti-migrant rally in Belgrade last week said that if the government doesn’t protect the people from migrants, they will take matters into their own hands.
Approximately 200 people joined the rally on Sunday, March 8, according to local media reports, which was held in the government district. Demonstrators shouted slogans such as “We don’t want migrants,” “Serbia for Serbs,” and “Fence for migrants, liberty for citizens,” according to a report in Balkan Insight. Banners they were carrying read “Terrorists not welcome” and “You will not replace us,” a reference to the “great replacement” idea first coined by the French anti-immigration thinker, Renaud Camus, which holds that native Europeans are being gradually displaced as a result of mass migration and will eventually become minorities in their own countries.
The protesters also said that if the government refuses to protect the Serbian people from migrants, they will do it themselves, such as by setting up more street patrols to provide additional security.
Radio Free Europe reported that representatives of the protest expressed “concern over the possible migration of migrants to Serbia and the return of those who have passed through Serbia.”
Serbia has found itself on the front lines of Europe’s migrant crisis in recent years, as it lies along the Balkan route that migrants use to get from Greece to the European Union’s Schengen Zone, where travel between states no longer requires a visa. The issue has come to prominence once again in recent weeks since Turkish President Recep Erdoğan announced that Turkey would no longer prevent migrants from crossing Turkish territory in order to enter Greece illegally at the end of February. Since then, Greek security forces have faced daily battles with the migrants, who are being aided by the Turkish police, as tens of thousands attempt to break through the border.
If Greek border controls do not hold, it is inevitable that migrants will once again be crossing through Serbia in an effort to get to the wealthier nations of Western Europe that welcome migrants, such as Sweden and Germany.
Since Turkey’s announcement, Serbian Right-wing organizations began conducting patrols in an effort to track down illegal migrants and prevent criminality. Serbia’s Public Prosecutor said that the patrols are being investigated.
While most Serbian politicians chose not to discuss the rally, Serbia’s Commissioner for Refugees and Migration, Vladimir Cucic, denounced it as “a great shame and a disgrace.”
Similar protests have occurred in other parts of the country, including Subotica and Pozarevac.