Students: Every woman has the right to walk without fearing the mayor will break her nose

“Students in Blockade” have reacted following the allegation by Kreni-Promeni movement councilor Tanja Mićić that Belgrade mayor Aleksandar Šapić hit her, as well as to the reaction of the prosecution, the public broadcaster and government representatives, as the newspaper Danas reports.

In a statement published on their website studenti.org.rs, the students recalled, according to Danas, that “eight days ago Ana Brnabić, at the SNS headquarters, surrounded by party officials, held a conference on the ‘protection of women’”, saying that women are “the pillar of society” and accusing the Student List that women would be at risk if the students came to power. “Today a woman has a broken nose after a meeting with the mayor of Belgrade. Tanja Mićić says Aleksandar Šapić hit her when she stepped between him and her husband. The medical report shows a fracture of the left nasal bone and of the frontal process of the left maxilla, with displacement”, the students’ reaction says.

The students say that “Šapić, after all that, came before the cameras and spoke about his ‘male code’”. They reproached the public broadcaster for reporting that the mayor “physically clashed with the councilor”, rather than that she reported him for hitting her: “‘Physical clash’. As if two people had met in an equal duel, and not that one side after the event has a broken nose and is going for surgery”, Danas quoted the students.

Meanwhile, according to Danas, the students add that they are not surprised by the government’s reaction, since “they pardoned those who dislocated our colleague’s jaw, rewarded those who threatened rape, put proven abusers on lists”. For the Prosecution, “the fracture of the nasal bone and part of the upper jaw was put into the formulation ‘light bodily injuries’, and because of this formulation Šapić was released from the police station after a few hours. When it came to students, detention of up to 48 hours was ordered even before they appeared before the prosecutor: after Vidovdan alone, 29 people were held, students were held for as long as 48 hours, with house arrests, ankle bracelets and media hunts against them”.

“The question is not whether the law recognizes detention. It does, and we have seen how it is applied. The question is what its application looks like when the person at the police station is not a student, but the mayor of Belgrade and a senior government official”, the students said, closing the reaction published on studenti.org.rs: “women are not divided into suitable and unsuitable, into ‘theirs’ and ‘ours’, into those who deserve protection and those who do not. Every woman has the right to be safe — on the street, at the workplace, in institutions. And each one has the right to walk without fear that the mayor will break her nose.”