Category: Violence against citizens
Period: from 9 Aug 2025
Outcome: Under investigation (as of 13 Aug 2026)
On 9 August 2025 in Bački Petrovac, a group of men whom the organisers describe as supporters of the SNS tore up protest photographs on display during the Slovak National Festival. When the police withdrew, the group came back and attacked the citizens and war veterans who had gathered there. The police reportedly did not stop them, and detained two of the veterans. A year later, the Higher Public Prosecutor's Office in Novi Sad says that a criminal complaint against several people was filed on its orders and that five suspects have been questioned.
On 9 August 2025, during the Slovak National Festivities, an informal group of citizens, Slovaks from Bačka, Banat and Srem, put up around thirty photographs in a park in Bački Petrovac. The photographs showed protests in towns where Slovaks live. A group of men burst in and tore them up; according to eyewitnesses, the police did not react.
Organiser Ivan Bartoš says the police had earlier demanded that the gathering be registered with a licensed steward.
The same day, citizens put the photographs up again. Once the police withdrew, the attackers came back, with reinforcements according to Nova.rs, and physically attacked those gathered, among them women and war veterans. Several people were injured, and Bartoš says he was struck as well. According to him, the police arrived but did not file a report.
Police detained two war veterans during the night. On 10 August, the day after the attack, a police intervention unit blocked access to the site from the direction of Novi Sad. Residents made their way in across the fields and the river, and the exhibition was opened for a third time. On 11 August the Novi Sad prosecutor's office proposed house arrest for the two veterans for obstructing an official.
Bartoš told the media that “the entire municipal leadership” was with the attackers and that state secretary Goran Đaković introduced himself to him personally. He later added that everything, or so it appears at least, was organised and carried out by SNS members and local officials together with the state secretary, in collusion with the police.
Veljko Milić, the lawyer for those attacked, says complaints have been filed for violent behaviour at a public gathering, incitement to national hatred and grievous bodily harm. Complaints have also been filed against the police officers who were present. According to Nova.rs, the prosecutor's office acted only once those attacked had hired lawyers.
In August 2026 the Higher Public Prosecutor's Office in Novi Sad replied that it had conducted pre-investigation proceedings and that on its orders the police had filed a criminal complaint against several people. It said five suspects had been questioned, with the sixth scheduled for 31 August.