March 9, 1991 was the first, and the most violent day, of the five-day protest in Belgrade (then Yugoslavia, now Serbia). This was the first anti-Milosevic protest in Serbia, just a couple of months after the first multi-party elections that he stole.
About 100,000 people gathered in the center of Belgrade. Soon, the police moved in and the fight started and spread around town to several different venues, especially in front of the state TV. One teenage boy and one policeman were killed (the former was shot by a moving cordon of police, the latter was thrown over the fence onto the street below – a several meters drop).
The demonstrators pulled the cops off the horses and beat up the horses (I know – the police veterinarian is a good friend of mine and I saw him the next day after he spent the entire night stiching up the horses’ wounds). The demonstrators took over the firetrucks that the cops placed as street barriers and drove them at the cops. The water cannons could do nothing – although it was freezing cold, people just stood there and took it, including the woman in the picture, the icon of that day.
Although it was early in the history of the Internet, much of information-sharing and coordination, as well as reporting from the scence, was accomplished via e-mail and Usenet. Some of that material was later published in a book.
In the end, with the police incapable (and in some cases unwilling) to stop so many angry Serbs, Milosevic called in the army. My house was on the southern end of town, towards the suburbs where the military barracks are located, so I was one of the first to hear the rumble. I opened the window to hear better and new immediately what it was. I got on the phone with a friend of mine who lives right in the center and told her to tell everyone on the street that the tanks are coming. I counted a total of 40 tanks passing under my window towards the city center. There, they parked, but they did not fire or do anything. I am not sure if they even had orders to do anything. Actually, they chatted with the people. This showed Milosevic that he could not rely on either the Yugoslav army (later, as Slovenes, Croats and others pulled out of the union what remained was, by default, a Serb-dominated army, a frame much loved by the Western press with its own axe to grind) or the current police, so later he built himself, out of refugees from Croatia and Bosnia, a parallel force, officially a police force, but armed with submarines and fighter jets. The old cops wore light blue uniforms and were nice – kind of cops you ask for directions. Their loyalty to Slobodan Milosevic was questionable at best. The new cops wore camouflage and were not to be looked in the eye at any cost – those were wild beasts, not people. These were Milosevic’s dogs, like Napoleon’s dobermans in ‘Animal Farm’, loyal to death.
The next day, I met several of the cops I knew. They became cops because of the quality of horses owned by the mounted police – the best shojumpers in the country, thus a guarantee for international competition. Within days, they all quit the force. Many left the country. As they all said “I don’t want to beat up my own people. That’s not what I signed up for this job for”.
Over the next four days, we made sure that there were anywhere between 20,000 (at night when it was really cold) and 100,000 people (during the day) at all times in the center of the city. We did ‘shifts’. We used humor. Had great placards (this was the first time Milosevic was compared to Saddam – a staple of later demosntations). We got some concessions: arrested people were freed; the amateur videos of police brutality was shown (many times, over and over again) on naitonal TV for all to see; the entire national TV programn turned into a local version of C-Span, continuously projecting the proceedings from the Parliament – so everyone, even people outside Belgrade who could not until then see anything but PR, could see that the Democratic opposition consists of smart, sophisticated, eloquent, educated people, while the old Socialists were dumb bullies (sounded kinda like GOP congressmen if you watch C-Span here these days).
So, what did we accomplish? Victor says it best:
Even though it seemed then that the protest didn’t have any results, it has nevertheless managed to show that the critical mass exists and that the people will, if not then, and if not in five years from then, manage to throw Milosevic down some day.
Nine years later they did.
Three months later, I was on my way to the USA. I sold my horse and saddle to get the money for the ticket. I spent the nineties here, getting information online during the day and frothing at the mouth every night watching with amazement how Jennings, Rather, Brokaw and Koppel blatantly lied every night about what is happening there. It is not just Republicans who use the media to sell their own PR. Clinton did it as well. ABC, NBC and CBS worked for him, just like RTS worked for Milosevic and just like Fox, CNN and MSNBC are now working for Bush. The first American myth that was busted when I arrived here was the myth of Free Press. Nothing has changed about it since 1991. Except, we have blogs now. We better put them to good use.
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