SERBIA: Students lead anti-Milosevic protests
Isolation, skyrocketing poverty, unemployment rates of almost 70% and an infrastructure devastated by NATO's bombing last year has left Serbia in a worse state than its notoriously poor neighbour Albania. The ferment in the general population is at boiling point and street demonstrations are becoming increasingly frequent.The authoritarian and chauvinistic regime of President Slobodan Milosevic is desperately seeking to keep a lid on popular discontent by attacking bastions of dissent. A number of television and radio stations (including the radical Studio B) have been closed and newspapers critical of the government are being fined astronomical amounts.
Arrests of activists and oppositionists are occurring daily. Members of the vibrant student-led movement OTPOR (Resistance) are being targeted as supposed terrorists and a threat to national security. OTPOR poses a unique danger to the Milosevic regime because, unlike most mainstream opposition parties, this movement is free of the taints of corruption and elitism.
Milosevic is now attempting to introduce a new anti-terrorism law which would allow him to, in effect, declare martial law. The new law would also aid in the repression of groups like OTPOR.
In an effort to curb anti-government protests by students, the government has also decreed that university grounds will no longer be accessible to students except for exams. As well, the university holiday period has been brought forward, ending classes. The regime has black-listed and banned from university grounds many lecturers critical of the government.
Milosevic has also taken control of strategic public services in Belgrade in an attempt to topple that city's administration, currently in the hands of Vuk Draskovic's liberal opposition Serbian Renewal Party.
Despite the violent response from police and special army units which meets any public opposition to Milosevic's increasingly totalitarian actions, massive protests are taking place frequently in Belgrade, Novi Sad, Kragujevac and other larger cities. The majority of Serbs are fed up not only with Milosevic and his chauvinist supporters but also with the mounting corruption in the established opposition parties. Many are looking for more radical solutions and OTPOR may suit them well.
BY MARGARITA WINDISCH