POLITICS-YUGOSLAVIA: Opposition Vows to Continue Street Protests

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric-Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Oct 4 1999 (IPS) - The Alliance for Change , a Serbian opposition group, vowed Monday to continue its campaign of street protests against Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, in spite of last week’s police crackdown and possible legal action against its leaders.

The police did not intervene, however, in the weekend’s protests in Belgrade, where some 15,000 people took to the streets to demand Milosevic’s resignation. Clashes between riot police and anti-Milosevic protesters left some 40 demonstrators and ten journalists injured last week.

P in full anti riot gear prevented some 30,000 demonstrators to march near the President’s residence Wednesday. On Thursday, some 50.000 people were stopped at a bridge over Sava River when they tried to reach the federal government compound.

The police action proves that “Milosevic is nervous,” Milan St Protic, a coalition leader told IPS. Zoran Djindjic, another Alliance leader, termed the police action a “Milosevic’s declaration of war against his own people.”

The Alliance for Change has organised daily demonstrations against Milosevic since September 21, in an attempt to bring down the country’s leadership, but it have so far failed to gather massive rallies such as those of 1997, in which some 300,000 people participated.

Pro-government media and officials say the rallies are “NATO sponsored,” hinting at the undisclosed recipients of U.S. and British financial aid to Serbian opposition groups, while the Alliance is often called “Alliance for NATO” or the “prolonged arm of NATO aggression.”

The events of Wednesday and Thursday were “attacks of hooligans on police engaged in regular duties,” the Interior ministry said. The authorities announced an investigation into violence at antigovernment protests, which prompted opposition leaders to predict legal actions against them.

Belgrade’s public prosecutor ordered police “to collect the necessary information on perpetrators and ringleaders of violence,” the official Tanjug news agency reported.

The police action against demonstrators was counterproductive and exposed the Yugoslav leadership’s restlessness, said Jiri Dienstbier, former Czech Foreign minister and United Nations special rapporteur on human rights for Yugoslavia, according to Belgrade’s B2-92 radio station.

“Police brutality just worsens the situation for all sides of the conflict. It leads nowhere”, Dienstbier was quoted as saying.

Momcilo Perisic, former chief of staff of the Yugoslav Army (VJ), now an opposition activist, warned that the government may try to use even more force to crack down on opponents. Milosevic “will certainly try to use all means, including the Army” he told journalists on Sunday.

He claimed that his contacts with the military have suggested that a majority of officers would not obbey orders to attack protesters.

Vuk Obradovic another former general and Army spokesman, told the crowd on Saturday that his Army friends expressed on the phone their support for the opposition movement. “They told me: you shall win” he said.

The Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO) of Vuk Draskovic, Serbia’s largest opposition party, is not taking part in the street protests, but has joined ranks with 19 other groups including those within the Alliance, to negotiate a common platform for the future elections in Serbia.

Representatives of 20 opposition parties are drafting a joint document to be presented to the ruling coalition, which comprises Milosevic’s Socialist party, the Yugoslav United Left (JUL) and the nationalist Serbian Radical party (SRS), in order to secure free elections as soons as possible.

Socialist party and government officials have expressed their willingness to hold anticipated elections, but opposition leaders demand greater guarantees and even international supervision of the electoral process.

In the meantime, a survey of some 1,600 people conducted by the independent Centre for Alternative Studies reported that 53 percent of the populations wanted a swift but peaceful change of the country’s political and economic system.