Serbia erupts in nationwide protests after assassination attempts prompt fears of fascist resurgence

Mass protests have wracked Serbia after critics of nationalist strongman president Aleksandar Vui were attacked in a series of failed assassination attempts, compounding Vui's own human rights abuses and indifference to popular will.

Among those who were attacked are Serbian Left president Borko Stefanovi and two Serbian Left party activists, who was beaten with iron bars in the city of Kruevac; another assassination attempt was directed at the journalist Milan Jovanovi.

The opposition has demanded that Vui accede to a set of demands around respect for basic human rights; in response, Vui has said that he would not accede to the demands, "even if five million people show up on the streets" (Serbia's population is six million). In response, protesters have taken up the slogan "#1od5miliona ("one in five million").

Protesters are also marching under the slogan "#STOPkrvavimkouljama ("stop bloodying shirts") in reference to a TV appearance by Stefanovi in which he showed the bloody shirt he was wearing when he was beaten.

The protests have united Serbia's left and right for the first time since the 1990s, when similar protests brought down the regime of genocidal dictator Slobodan Miloevi (in whose cabinet Vui served).

Another slogan spotted both in the streets and on social media says it has begun (#poeloJe), a cry of hope that the protests would grow into a country-wide movement similar to that of the late 1990s.

In the past decade, Aleksandar Vui has re-branded himself as a moderate centrist by paying lip service to Serbian integration into the European Union, something his opponents claim is mere camouflage of both his growing authoritarian tendencies at home and his servility to the Kremlin.