Novi Sad rally to mark police violence and university raid on Sept. 5

Students in blockade and the Free University Novi Sad have called residents to a rally marking one year since what they described as the police’s most brutal attacks on protesting citizens at the University of Novi Sad campus on Sept. 5, 2025.

Under the message “We do not forget brutality,” organizers announced two meeting times: 3:30 p.m. at Banovina and 5 p.m. at the campus. The plan is for participants to gather first outside the provincial government building, then walk in a protest column to the site where the violence occurred, in front of the Faculty of Philosophy.

The article places the events in a wider sequence that began with police entering the faculty on Aug. 26, 2025, and forcibly ending its blockade. It says police later reacted violently on Sept. 1 outside the Faculty of Sport and Physical Education and in the campus, attacking a group of citizens returning from a memorial for people killed beneath a canopy.

Numerous testimonies reportedly document police violence against citizens, the use of unauthorized substances instead of tear gas, restrictions on freedom of movement and attacks on journalists on Sept. 5. That evening, police also entered the rectorate building, where some citizens had taken shelter and where a medical team was providing first aid to injured people.

After the incident, an online database of testimonies from victims of police brutality was created at svedocanstva.labs.rs to preserve records of such cases.

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We do not forget brutality.