December 17 (SeeNews) - Thousands of people participated in a rally in Belgrade on Saturday evening called by opposition parties in protest against political violence and the governing SNS party led by Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic.
The protest action, the second one held under the slogan "Put a stop to bloody shirts" since December 7, gathered about 20,000 citizens, the organiser of the rally, opposition Alliance for Serbia led by former Belgrade mayor Dragan Djilas, said in a statement on Saturday.
Commenting on the protests, Vucic said that SNS is ready for a snap vote, but will not bend under street pressure, according to media reports.
"I do not make politics as someone else wants but the way I think is the best one and that is why I won the confidence of the citizens in the elections. I will not bend under street pressure," local media quoted Vucic as saying on Saturday.
The rally was held as a response to the November 23 assault on Borko Stefanovic, leader of the Serbian Left party. Alliance for Serbia accuses SNS and Vucic of provoking the attack against Stefanovic, who was assaulted by a group of men in Krusevac, in southern Serbia, and suffered minor injuries from being beaten with an iron rod.
"I condemn this attack, it is important that the state has done its job, and I have no right to stand for a stricter punishment because it would be an involvement in the work of the judiciary," Vucic said in November.
During Saturday's protest, Stefanovic symbolically handed over a white shirt to deputies in front of the Serbian Parliament, saying that "Serbs do not want to live in bloody shirts".
Like the previous protest, the rally ended in front of the building of public broadcaster RTS where protesters shouted anti-government slogans and demanded media freedom. Protesters accused RTS journalists of biased reporting on president Vucic.
Earlier this month, Serbian entrepreneur Srdjan Milovanovic, brother of the SNS leader in the southern city of Nis, Zvezdan Milovanovic, acquired local private TV broadcasters Prva TV and O2 TV, as well as news portals prva.rs, o2tv.rs and b92.net.
Alliance for Serbia was established before the local elections in Belgrade earlier this year. The alliance was later joined by leading opposition parties in Serbia - the Democratic Party, Serbian movement Dveri and the People's Party. The Serbian Left party is a member of the alliance.
Djilas, a former Democratic Party chairman, was a mayor of Belgrade between August 2008 and November 2013, when he lost a motion of no confidence.