Yesterday, on 4th of December 2021, many roads in Serbia were blocked for 2 hours. People gather in several cities, in bigger cities on a few locations, and blocked main roads. These people were there to protest against government decision to support and allow Rio Tinto company to make mine and extract lithium in few places in West Serbia. This will destroy those places, and all nature around. Protests were not political at all, people are on streets fighting for nature, rivers, land and fresh air, not power or money. This is the second Saturday in a row that protests took place, and there will be more. They are together with protests against air pollution, because Belgrade and some other cities in Serbia are on top of lists for air pollution during winter days, and thousands of people die each year as cause of bad air. Basically we are fighting for air, water and land. Protests were mostly very calm with no incidents. There were thousands of people all over the country and everything stopped for 2 hours.
Reason more for me to be there is because my home is in West Serbia and I always imagined living somewhere in village and forest, in beautiful nature, that they want to destroy. Also, many people there live from land they have, they do agriculture and with no land or clean water they have no income at all. People don't want mine and money, they want clean nature and their land.
There were many interesting transparent, most of the saying "Rio Tinto march from Drina" (Drina is river), "We don't want others, we don't give our own", "I will not give my river, for your mortgage"...
Government corrupted media tried to make false picture saying there was "20 people blocking the road" (no, I'm not kidding, they wrote 20) but luckily we live in 21st century, and we can't be fooled so easy, everything is filmed and transparent and all over the internet.
I was on one place, Slavija square, but I'm sharing some links with more photos from other places, if you want to see, and also some outside of county media made articles about this, so you can check them out too if you want:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CXECu2-s2b_/
https://www.instagram.com/p/CXEz7X_tx4I/
If we don't have fresh air, clean water and our land, what do we have?
Good coverage. Why the govt doesn't listen to its people, do they live in the same country or not. Maybe they don't breath the same air and eat the same food?