A FEMALE STUDENT WHOSE HEAD WAS SMASHED AND TEETH BROKEN BY THE POLICE: “They beat me from behind while I was lying on the ground, I will sue the ambulance because they refused to help me!”

“On August 15, I went to a protest. At one point, I fell, just like the lady in front of me. The cordon of police officers who were following the crowd of people, which included the two of us, saw that we were lying on the ground and, regardless, we both received blows to the head area. That lady managed to raise her hands above her head and got a baton on her bicep, and I got three stitches on my head and they broke my teeth,” said Aleksandra Nikolić, a law student, for N1.

She states that soon after the blow, she also felt, as she says, moisture around her mouth and that she then realized her teeth were also injured.

“I started toward the ambulance that was standing in the middle of the street. I asked for help. A police officer in civilian clothes was standing next to it. When we got to the ambulance (with the lady who was hit), my face was bloody. We both asked for help, but the people from the ambulance refused to help us. They told us that they were an ambulance only for the police. The police officer who was standing there was silent, but he tacitly made it clear that they should examine me. However, the people who were in the ambulance just closed the window,” the student Aleksandra states.

She states that she started walking to the Emergency Room and that on the way there, she met two students who bandaged her head.

Studentkinja Pravnog fakulteta je večeras povređena pic.twitter.com/dfUHqpodHQ
— Ruža Helać (@RuaHela) August 16, 2025

“At the Emergency Room, they stitched my head; I have three stitches. My teeth were broken, my front tooth in half, and the other one was completely broken, and I had to have that tooth pulled and now I have an implant,” the student says.

When asked if she might have provoked the police’s reaction in some way, she says:

“We were all peaceful at the protest, and at the moment when we were injured, we were already on the ground. We didn’t even see the police because we were not facing them.”

Aleksandra also announces that she will file criminal charges, both against the police officers who beat them and against the healthcare workers in the ambulance.

“I would like to know why the ambulance refused to help me. Those people were in an ambulance, and that is not humane, and it is a criminal offense. My recovery is preventing me from living a normal life, but I plan to continue going to protests and taking my exams. For now, I’m still saving myself and waiting for everything to heal nicely, and then I’ll go to the protests again.”

Commenting on the police intervention on Wednesday night in Novi Sad, she says that it is a great shame for the police.

“Before I was injured, it was normal for me to approach a police officer or a police cordon to ask them anything; now I no longer feel safe in their presence. It is a great shame for the state apparatus that does not work in the interest of the citizens, and the police have succumbed to the whims of the regime. It is an abuse of the entire state apparatus in order to intimidate the people and sabotage the fight for justice, and to silence it as much as possible,” the student believes.

She points out that this tactic of the authorities will not succeed because the student rebellion has been going on for a long time and has a great impact on the collective consciousness.

“We should continue to focus on calling for elections because our demands have been ignored and the regime refuses to fulfill them. We believe that elections are the only way to get to the truth about what happened with the canopy, what happened after that, and who is the one who made and is making the decisions. There will be no answers or accountability until other people come who will work in the interest of the citizens,” concluded Aleksandra Nikolić, a law student.