Marko Čonjagić, a reporter for FoNet News Agency, was brutally attacked while covering a protest in Belgrade, with witnesses claiming that police officers present at the scene failed to intervene.
According to FoNet, four men — three of them masked — assaulted Čonjagić near a construction site in Vlajkovićeva Street, close to the Serbian Parliament, as he was reporting on the hunger strike of Dijana Hrka, the mother of Stefan Hrka, a young man who died in the collapse of a parliament canopy.
The attackers reportedly tried to drag him into a fenced area, and when he resisted, they knocked him to the ground and kicked him repeatedly, even though he was clearly identified as a journalist, wearing a fluorescent vest labeled “PRESS.”
Eyewitnesses called for help, but a member of the Gendarmerie told the injured reporter to “just move along.” Other plainclothes police officers nearby refused to take a statement, directing him instead to the Stari Grad police station, claiming they were “handling another case.”
FoNet issued a strong condemnation, demanding that Serbian police and prosecutors act immediately to identify the perpetrators and ensure the safety of journalists covering public events.
This attack adds to a growing climate of fear and intimidation toward independent media in Serbia, where reporters increasingly face violence, harassment, and state inaction — a trend critics link directly to the authoritarian practices of President Aleksandar Vučić’s regime.
