POLITICS-YUGOSLAVIA: Government Targets New Opposition Group ‘Otpor’

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Jun 6 2000 (IPS) - An increasingly popular anti-government movement called “Otpor” (Resistance) has captured the imagination of Serbs and the eagle eye of the Slobodan Milosevic government.

Led by students and numbering some 20,000 now, the group has earned the wrath of the government with its call for popular resistance to the ruling party.

Over the last couple of months, Otpor has plastered Serbia with thousands of posters calling for resistance to the repressive Milosevic regime, growing violence, civil war and poverty in general.

Its symbol is a clenched fist, shown on badges decorating teenagers’ colourful outfits, or T-shirts worn by its activists and sympathisers.

It has won so much support that at the end of a recent performance by the National Theatre, the actors, still on stage, removed their costumes to show that they were wearing the easily recognisable Otpor T-shirt underneath.

“It is our aim to wake up the individual mind of everyone in Serbia, to open the eyes of people so that they can see that things can change,” says 25 year old Milja Jovanovic, an Otpor member.

“After 10 years of wars, unprecedented impoverishment and isolation of Serbia, the time has come for everyone to wake up and to become aware that one can resist whatever else the regime is preparing for us. That is why we chose the clenched fist as our symbol.”

“We are too young to know that life was good under (former Yugoslav president) Tito,” said Kristina Peric, 24 years old. “But we are a generation that grew up under Milosevic, opposing the obvious disasters he pushed us into. This is why we are a generation that can bring something new. Besides, we are an alternative to the regime and the opposition, because people trust no one any more. The regime is notorious, the opposition barely united.”

Tito died 20 years ago and Milosevic has been in power here for the last 10 years.

Life has been difficult for Serbs under Milosevic’s rule. They have lived through the wars that broke up Yugoslavia, NATO air strikes because of Belgrade’s harsh treatment of ethnic Albanians, and two rounds of international sanctions – also triggered by their government’s policies – that have left the economy in a shambles.

Opposition to the government has been great; roughly 70 percent of Serbs would like to see the end of the Milosevic administration. However, none of the more than a dozen opposition parties have been able to provide a credible enough force to unseat Milosevic.

Otpor was formed by Belgrade students in November 1998, in response to a new University Law that banned all professors critical of the government from the institution. The group says its membership is now 20,000, made up of people from all walks of life.

Its non-violent and humorous short performances in town squares across the country have attracted large audiences and hundreds of new sympathisers and supporters.

“They come from all walks of life, there is no age limit,” says an Otpor spokesman Ivan Marovic, adding that in recent weeks, a number of prominent academics, intellectuals, respected former university professors, writers and economists have publicly joined the movement.

“The movement wants to remain a movement,” Marovic says. “It has no leadership or governing body in a classic sense. Otpor (resistance) should be a state of mind, it will never be a political party,” he explained.

Astonished by Otpor’s growing popularity, the government has responded with a propaganda campaign demonising the group. It has called it “the long hand of NATO”, a “terrorist organisation”, and has branded its activists “Hitler Jugend” (Hitler’s youth). A spectacular public assassination of a high government official on May 13 has been attributed to Otpor although the killer, who was arrested on the spot, was found to be mentally disturbed and had no connection with the movement.

A wave of 20 to 40 daily arrests of Otpor sympathisers followed, with even minors being taken in for finger printing. “Of course we are not terrorists,” Ivan Marovic laughs. “We are a non-violent group of people.”

Marovic says that Otpor is financed by “people who want good for this country. They are small private businessmen who print posters, T-shirts or make badges for free. A member of Otpor let the movement an empty, shabby flat he owns to use as its headquarters in downtown Belgrade.”

The movement also gets some money from Serbs who have fled the country since 1991. “They want better times for their homeland and they do not hesitate to finance us,” Marovic adds.

“The regime is clearly afraid of Otpor,” says Ivan Torov, a Belgrade political analyst. “Otpor presents constant, spontaneous and unpredictable pressure, nothing like Milosevic has seen in the past when he could outmanoeuvre, disunite or simply confuse the opposition parties. Otpor is an unusual phenomenon that he cannot simply wipe out. That is why he took to try repressing it.”

Zagorka Golubovic, a prominent sociologist and political analyst in Belgrade, recently noted a similarity between Otpor and the Polish Solidarity movement of the 1980s.

“Like Solidarity at those times, Otpor says that it has no intentions of coming to power. It also wants mass groups of people to join in, to prepare the ground for broad changes and a transition into civil society.

“And such a possibility is what scares the regime the most – popular resistance and overall, channelled desire for non-violent change,” she added.