Following several weekends of road block protests against the Rio Tinto company’s plans to open a lithium mine in western Serbia, environmental organizations and their supporters gathered in front of the Serbian government headquarters on Saturday.

The Ecological Uprising organization and its supporters blocked traffic in front of the central Belgrade government building for an hour, listening to speeches and dispersing instead of heading to the highway through the Serbian capital which they blocked over the past few weekends. Signs carried by protesters called the country’s unions to join them, asked how many zeros it takes to write treason and called the state of speak up among others.

Speakers told the crowd that the protests can’t stop until Rio Tinto abandons its plans, adding that the fact that the Loznica city assembly decided to withdraw spatial plans which included the lithium mine are just the first step and warned that the authorities should not be trusted.

Ecological Uprising leader Aleksandar Jovanovic Cuta gave President Aleksandar Vucic till Orthodox Christmas (early in January) to remove Rio Tinto’s Jadar project from the national spatial plan and to make public all the documents signed by his government and the government before that going back to 2004. Jovanovic warned of a “general mobilization” of the public unless Rio Tinto is expelled.

There was no strong uniformed police presence at the protest gathering.