Protests in Serbia Archive
Serbian Renewal Movement: News Jan. 9 and 10

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Belgrade was filled with the members of the police forces yesterday. The police were brought to the Serbian capital from various areas of the country, and many police buses were parked in the auxiliary roads of the city.

The police were again for no apparent reason beating up people on the sidewalks of the city's streets yesterday! During the afternoon Zajedno Coalition action, when the streets of downtown Belgrade were blocked by the demonstrators' cars, members of the police forces were furiously beating any pedestrian, unlucky enough to have found himself in their way.
The pedestrians were attacked, even though they would normally get out of the policemen's way, rather then provoke them. The people tried to run away from the angry police cordon, but the police would follow the citizens down Knez Milos street. And so, tens of men, women and children were hit on their heads and backs.

The reporters noted a man who was beaten while crossing the street, together with his six-year-old child.

One woman was beaten while returning home from the rally, together with her thirteen-year-old daughter. The reason for the shock she and her daughter went through was the fact that they were both blowing their whistles on their way home. The woman now has bruises on her had and other parts of her body.

Addressing the gathered citizens yesterday, the SPO president Vuk Draskovic, inter alia, said, that the son of the Minister of Internal Affairs tempestuously celebrated the earning of his 1,000,000,000th dollar, which he acquired by robbing Serbian mines. Addressing the police, Mr. Draskovic said, that the same Minister send the children of Serbia against the nation.

Answering the requests of many citizens, who wanted to finally break though the police cordons, Draskovic said that Serbia did not rise against the police cordons, but against one other cordon.

In today's interview with a Belgradean newspaper Blic, Vuk Draskovic answered the question of what he thinks the demonstrations accomplished so far:

We accomplished quite a great deal. First, the regime started to disintegrate from the inside. SPS is in a complete chaos. I think that there is not a single reasonable man in Milosevic's party, who is not distressed and ashamed. Secondly, we exposed this regime to Serbia and the rest of the world as a regime of thiefs. After all the thefts, they committed a legislative theft. Members of the judicial system are rioting, the police forces are also disintegrating, at least 70% of them are not ready to follow the crazy commands of the de facto leader of the country, the spouse of Slobodan Milosevic. The policemen were also robbed. And so were the soldiers.

We also managed to completely relieve Serbia of the information blockade. In the past ten or so years, the wrong state policy has presented us as bandits to the rest of the world. In the 50 days of the protest of a kind the world has not previously seen, in terms of both the protest methods and the persistence, we managed to turn the anti-serbian feelings the world had into absolutely pro-serbian. There is no European capital where we were not the main topic of discussion during the past 50 days, and there is no country where people are not wondering -- my God, where were these great Serbian people before? We have now completely opened the road to the world for ourselves.

I was afraid that we would win over Milosevic on the elections, and that we would then need several years to remove the damnation from the Serbs and from Serbia. However, there is always a good side to a trouble. Due to his actions, Milosevic has done some good to Serbia as well, for he drove us to all kinds of resistance, he drove Serbia to doing something for itself, to waking up from delirium and from sleepiness, and from the hopeless situation the country found itself in. Serbia woke up from despair and disgrace, and stood up straight in front of itself and the rest of the world.

Jelena Lengold

Serbian Renewal Movement Information Service

PRESS RELEASE - URGENT! (9-Jan-1997)

According to reliable information from the State Security Service, given by supporters of the Coalition Zajedno, Mirjana Markovic, Chairman of the Yugoslav Left and the wife of the Serbian President ordered a parastate security of her party to organize a murder of the leader of the Colition Zajedno, Vuk Draskovic.

According to these information, the same criminals, under police control, who committed a number of murders in Belgrade last year, would assasinate Vuk Draskovic. This plan should be executed by January 20, in order to terify the people and stop the democratic rebellion in Serbia.

The leader of the Coalition Zajedno, Vuk Draskovic told the protesters gathered today in downtown Belgrade about this plan.

Serbian Renewal Movement Information Service