(Belgrade) Several thousand people demonstrated on Monday in at least four cities in Serbia against the resumption of controversial lithium mining operations by Australian group Rio Tinto, according to images from the N1 Serbia news channel.
Shouting “Rio Tinto, go away!”, they marched through the streets of Arandjelovac, Shabac, Kraljevo and Ljig against the Serbian government’s decision to give the green light to the mining project near Loznica.
“There is no antidote [à la pollution]”The only antidote is ourselves,” said chemistry professor Karolina Aleksandrovic from Arandjelovac.
“They occupy our institutions, our rivers, our forests… The authorities work for their own interests, never for the interests of the citizens,” Nebojsa Kovandzic lamented in Kraljevo.
PHOTO ZORANA JEVTIC, REUTERS
Several thousand people protested against Rio Tinto’s lithium mine project in at least four cities in Serbia.
On July 19, a week after Belgrade gave the green light to resume mining, Serbia and the European Union signed a partnership to ensure the supply of lithium, considered crucial in the ecological transition.
Several demonstrations have already taken place in the last two months against the project, notably in Belgrade, but this time there was a “strong participation of local populations”, noted the Serbian NGO Archives of Public Gatherings.
“This is undoubtedly a very high level of mobilisation of local communities, which was not the case in previous protest movements in Serbia,” she added.