Thousands Take to the Streets
Serbia "Will Never Be the Same"
By the Balkan Peace Team

Two simultaneous events in Belgrade Dec. 24 provoked the worst clashes thus far between demonstrators and the police and government supporters.

Federal Republic of Yugoslavia President Slobodan Milosevic scheduled a support rally at the same time as the daily demonstration against the suppression of the November election results. Two protesters were reportedly shot,one fatally, the other critically wounded,by Milosevic supporters.

The day after Christmas, according to the activist group Women in Black, 20,000 police blocked the center of Belgrade to stop the peaceful demonstrations. Further conflict was avoided because two groups of 30,000-40,000 demonstrators held rallies instead of marching through the streets. "Both policemen and demonstrators were peaceful," said Bojan Aleksov of Women in Black, " and people tried to make friends with policemen."

The protests continue.

RATTLING NOISEMAKERS, chanting witty slogans and exhibiting abundant good humor, crowds 20,000 to 200,000 strong have marched through the streets of Yugoslavia from Nis to Belgrade every day for weeks. The mass demonstrations began Nov. 19, and, at this writing, show no signs of ending any time in the near future.

The protests began in the southern Serbian city of Nis when it became clear that there had been substantial tampering with the second-round Yugoslavian local elections Nov. 17. Initial election results appeared to give a majority of contested seats to Zajedno (Together), the opposition coalition, but a revised count gave control of the city once again to the Socialist Party of Serbia, the party of President Slobodan Milosevic. The Center for Antiwar Action in Nis reported that Socialist Party of Serbia leaders surrounded polling locations with their own paramilitary formations, which harassed Zajedno candidates and members of the election commission. Ballots and voter lists were stolen or lost at polling stations, and returned ballots were falsified by crossing out numbers and filling in new ones to the advantage of the Socialist Party of Serbia. Despite intervention by a member of the City Election Commission from Zajedno, the final count gave the victory to the Socialist Party of Serbia.

The Daily Ritual
The first protest took place in Nis Nov. 19, when the annulment of the election was still an unconfirmed rumor. It attracted 20,000 people,20 percent of the city’s population. Local activists reported that there was a large police presence, including police from other parts of Yugoslavia and Republika Srpska.

The demonstrations spread to Belgrade Nov. 21, when it became clear that even the Belgrade election results were threatened. After gathering in the city’s central square, a crowd of 50,000 marched past the City Council building to a planned rally near the Parliament. But because the police had confiscated three sound systems, the rally was delayed, and the marchers moved through the streets in a large circle, returning to the center of town, where they were addressed from a working sound system at Zajedno headquarters.

This has now become a daily ritual, with the numbers growing larger each passing day. Protesters gather at 3:00 every afternoon in front of the Zajedno office with whistles, horns, pipes, bells, pots and pans and even beer cans, emptied of beer and filled instead with dried beans. After one or two short speeches they start walking. The routes differ slightly each day, but usually they pass by the City Council, Milosevic’s presidential office, the state television studios and the offices of one of the two state-owned newspapers, Politika and Borba. At each site people whistle, shout and chant "Ne damo pobedu!" ("We won’t give in!"), "Bando crvena!" ("Red gang!") or "Lopovi, lopovi!" ("Thieves, thieves!"). Much of the anger and frustration is directed against the state media.

But there are also sites that bring out great cheers of support and love from the crowd: the offices of independent Radio B92, and the apartment of an elderly woman who is out every day on her balcony waving a flag and cheering them on. The crowd chants "Grandma," and everyone waves.

In the first few days, eggs and some stones were thrown at the buildings, so that now the television and political buildings have broken windows and yellow-streaked facades. But Zajedno repeated its call for nonviolence and posted people at those locations to discourage further attacks, and in the more recent marches, people have been planting candles outside Political instead.

‘Handfuls’ of Thousands
The crowd is very mixed. While at first the marches attracted mostly young people, the participants now seem to come from all age groups and social classes, and the number of young people has diminished since the university student protest began. At the beginning of the march, there are men with large flags of the nationalist Serbian Renewal Movement or a loudspeaker truck, used as a platform for Serbian Renewal leader Vuk Draskovic. Around the wagon people carry nationalist symbols,Yugoslavian tricolor flags, posters and banners with the Serbian cross,and some wear chetnik (Serb nationalist) hats.

But in the middle and main body of the procession, the outspoken nationalistic symbols fade out, giving way to signs like "Snoopy against the Red Baron," "Watching too much state TV makes you lose your sight," "A ‘handful’ of 200,000 ...?" (referring to the state-TV comment portraying the demonstrators as a "handful of people, incidentally passing by"). People in the march are friendly; there are smiles conversations and laughter. Whistle and noisemaker duets happen spontaneously. People tend to start up their own chants rather than following anything coming from the sound truck.

At the end of every march, there is a rally with speeches from Zajedno leaders and messages of support from all over the world, but after the first few days, the rallies got smaller while the marches grew, a hint that people are protesting from their own personal motivations and not because of party politics.

There is no sense of latent violence and the crowds are remarkably disciplined. There are virtually no monitors along the route, except at the key buildings mentioned above. A handful of traffic police keep the traffic lanes closed but when they stopped for a few days, allowing traffic jams to build up, demonstrators spontaneously stepped in to keep the roads clear and ward off motorists angered by the delays. Both the bus drivers union and taxi drivers union are supporters of Zajedno, and their members have adapted willingly to the congestion.

The Students’ Protest
Soon after the demonstrations began, Belgrade’s university students began their own protest efforts. All the faculties are on strike, there are daily student marches, and students have set up e-mail communications with students around the world. They are very clear about keeping their protests independent of Zajedno and the political parties, setting their marches for 12:00 noon every day. The Student Protest ‘96 Committees work day and night.

The students’ main demand is for a commission that will investigate every claimed election irregularity. They also want the replacement of university officials who made public speeches denying the strength of the protests and characterizing demonstrators as criminals. Beyond those demands the students hope that their own protests will motivate others,not just students,to take part in the demonstrations. One leaflet was specifically addressed to protesters’ parents, explaining that the students would stick it out alone, but they would prefer to have their parents join them.

Prepared for Violence
The students are well organized and have prepared themselves for possible violence from the police. Designated monitors walk in front and along the sides and in the case of a clash with police, participants are prepared to sit down in the road en masse. The protests have been very creative. After the state media accused them of being destructive and fascist, they built a brick wall in front of the Federal Parliament building and spray-painted on it, "We are not destructing but constructing."

During the first marches in Nis, tensions ran high due to a strong police presence; some police had automatic weapons and riot control equipment. But the police have been largely absent from the protests in Belgrade, and there have been no police incidents. However, according to independent newspapers, 32 persons have been arrested and accused of damaging public property. The state TV broadcast a speech Dec. 1 by the president of the Federal Parliament, who called the demonstrators fascists and warned that police would no longer tolerate the demonstrations for security and traffic reasons. The warning had the opposite effect: An estimated 80,000 people were on the street the next day, despite heavy snow. Apart from a few policemen regulating the traffic there were no police to be seen, but we were told that about 2,000 special police sealed off the route to Milosevic’s villa.

There are sympathizers among the police. The independent newspaper Nasa Borba printed a letter of support from 65 police to protesters in the city of Kraljevo, reassuring their fellow citizens that they would not stop them but rather would protect them from police of a different mind, especially those from other towns.

Local Media
While there has been a substantial international media coverage of the protests, the only coverage in Belgrade has been by nongovernment media: two independent daily newspapers, Nasa Borba and Demokratija, have reported the demonstrations, as have the independent radio stations, Radio B92 and the student radio Index. The radio stations were jammed for several days and were finally shut down. Although their signals only reached a small geographical range, this elimination of independent radio brought out a new surge in demonstrators: the following day, there were 200,000 marchers. The next day the government unjammed B92.

The two newspapers have been reporting widely on mass demonstrations in other Yugoslavian towns as well as in Belgrade. The Democratic Party-backed Demokratija is a new paper, published by journalists who left Blic, another independent daily, after its Austrian owner Peter Kölbl wrote a public letter claiming that the demonstrators were not respecting democracy.

Belgrade activists from previously existing local non-governmental organizations who spoke with members of the Balkan Peace Team expect very little from Zajedno except for a change from the Milosevic regime. Many consider the coalition unreliable and too rooted in the nationalistic tendencies of its member party leaders.

Hoping for Change
Long-time activists have a range of assessments of the protests. Members of Women in Black said that they are not supporting Zajedno, but they take part in the demonstration every day because they hope for change. They see the protests as a hopeful sign that people have lost their fear of speaking out since the large demonstrations in 1991 and 1992 that were crushed by government tanks and ended in violence and death. Some Women in Black are worried that Zajedno’s handling of the demonstrations displas too little strategy, and Women in Black have been distributing leaflets at every march with suggestions about what to do in a case of violence and how to apply nonviolent resistance. Each leaflet contains five suggestions derived from U.S. nonviolent theorist Gene Sharp’s list of 200-plus forms of nonviolent action. Women in Black members have also offered their ideas to the striking students, and other non-student activists have been speaking at daily student forums.

Other activists have a more cynical perspective, choosing to stay away from something they see as a "walking Zajedno rally" or attending only on those occasions when it seemed important to stand up to the police threats. Feminist activists in particular have added to the critique, pointing out how strongly the demonstrations are characterized by nationalist male chauvinists.

Cracks in the Wall
As this report is being prepared, the situation is changing daily. Cracks are beginning to show in the government’s position. Five Supreme Court judges wrote a public letter distancing themselves from the Supreme Court decision annulling the local elections, and 90 more justices expressed their solidarity with this stand. The Socialist Party of Serbia leader in Nis has resigned, presumably under pressure from Milosevic, as has the Minister of Information and Communication. Predictions have it that some kind of negotiated solution needs to be found that lets the original election results stand and allows Milosevic to save face. Opposition leaders say that the local elections are their only immediate goal, that their efforts to unseat Milosevic will continue in the Federal elections next year.

But whatever the practical results, democracy and civil society have made giant steps in Yugoslavia in the past three weeks. It is hoped and assumed by many who live here that the country will never be the same.

[War Resisters League Website] [Nonviolent Activist Index]
January-February 1997: [Unearthing Guatemala’s Disappeared] [Serbia "Will Never be the Same"] [International YouthPeace Week] [Activist News] [Review: Religion & Struggle]

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