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Location: Home > Serbian Case > About Otpor > October 5th & Beyond it
OCTOBER 5TH -
THE NATIONAL CLIMAX AND BEYOND IT
After loosing presidential elections, Milosevic decided to deny the results, calling up for the re-elections. Opposition parties and OTPOR responded immediately with a country-wide demonstration, and a general strike. The final scene of Serbian drama took place at the national capital of Belgrade, on October 5th, 2000.
Contents:
On the general strike and Kolubara: by Ivan Andric
"You know, we were trying all the time to make that non-violent thing the first thing and the only possible thing. We didn't want to have civil war on the streets of Belgrade, because we thought it was very bad, for example. And we tried to make only one way possible. And it was the non-violent way. And then it came, you know. On the 25th of September, Kostunica called when we saw what the results were like - that DOS [Democratic Opposition of Serbia] and [Vojislav] Kostunica have won. He called people to civil disobedience. When he understood that SPS [Milosevic's party] and the regime will not be accepting the results, he called for the civil disobedience.
And there was an idea which had been here for five or six years, about people coming from all different cities in Serbia to Belgrade on a joint rally. It's a very old idea. Then, first of all, they decided to make blockades on all the main roads in Serbia . It was really impressive, how people reacted. There was a very big response to that.
In three days from the first call of Kostunica, all roads in Serbia were blocked. The manager of the biggest newspaper in Serbia called me, it's Blic, and asked me if we have some special [Otpor identification] cards, you know. Because his trucks with the newspapers could not pass the blockades. And those newspapers are independent. And those people on the blockades read those newspapers. But they didn't want to let him pass. We don't need your newspapers. So it was like that. I know that there were many rallies during those ten days. Everyone who was involved in politics was going to all different towns in Serbia and making speeches, or some panel discussions and rallies. But small rallies, like a few hundred people. And make speeches at the blockades, on the roads.
And finally, that thing [the coal miners' strike] at Kolubara happened. You know, it's the first time - we had a joke that only once has everything stopped in all of Serbian history. And it was the moment when Tito died. And it was the only general strike we had in Serbia . So we thought it was not going to happen, the general strike. And then, at that moment, we had the general strike in Serbia . No one went to their own job, or went to his workplace. And then, just to meet friends, colleagues, and then go out of the building and join the protests.
And in Kolubara, those miners, they made a blockade in their mine. They made barricades and all that stuff, and they didn't want to let anyone into their area. So in that mine, a big thing happened. Because we had that kind of situation in several different areas, but we decided to make Kolubara the top issue. And we decided to make it very, very famous in public, and to make those people in Kolubara, those miners, their image like they are very brave, and they are risking their lives. And we made that by having many leaders of DOS visit them, go to Kolubara. And all the time, they were going to Kolubara, sitting with those people, making conversation, explaining to them what was happening in Belgrade and in Serbia . And the whole thing started from Kolubara, because the people from that region came to defend the miners of Kolubara, when the army started to ruin their barricades.
So it wasn't a protest, it was just a gathering of people around the gates of Kolubara. And there were so many people. Kostunica himself went there. And Svilanovic spent one night there. And, I don't know, Milan Protic, the mayor of Belgrade , also spent a night there. Everyone was there. And Otpor people were there to organize things outside. Our activists were outside and organizing people to stand there, to be there the whole night. To in some way give protection.
And then we decided to call all the people to Belgrade . And it was the fifth of October. And it was clear, from that morning, it was clear that by the end of that day, it will be all finished."
On October 5th: by Ivan Andric
"We had also the second part of the story, about defending our votes. It was on the fifth of October and when you [look at] the surface, it was a nonviolent day. I think that's the first time in modern history there was a revolution without victims. No one died that day, except two people. One of them had a heart attack, and the other girl was in some traffic [accident]. It was nonviolent. And I think that was a great day for Serbia . For me personally, it wasn't so much because I was so tired. I hardly understood what was happening. I was in different places on the street, of course. And, you know, I understood what happened five days after that.
I came back to my party, Civic Alliance, and tried to help them after the elections of the 24th and to make a campaign for them, like ' Victory ', and to motivate people to stay in the streets.
And, you know, at that time, Otpor, we understood that 70 percent of people voted for DOS. And then DOS had the main role, you know. DOS took it from Otpor, you know.
And I must say that the leaders of Otpor were acting totally, surprisingly, in a positive way. They were very wise. They were acting very wisely. And, step by step, getting their victory. And it was totally amazing for me to help them. And I knew them in some other occasions. And some of them were totally idiots, I must say.
But in those seven days, everyone had the best time of their lives. Like defending their own victory. They were revolutionists, revolutionaries, in the end. And, you know, on the fifth of October, everything was clear. I was there in front of the Federal Assembly at noon. I was waiting for the guys from Cacak, the Velimir Ilic guys, because I had a message from Goran Svilanovic.
I was waiting in front of Federal Assembly, and then five or six buses came from Cacak and they start to get out of the buses. And I understood that they were only men, no women and no kids. And I understood that that's it.
They came to fight, nothing like nonviolent protest rallies or something. They came to finish the job that day. All guys, all middle aged and some other younger guys. But ready to fight, like the army. It wasn't like the people who we saw at other rallies and protests. Those were the guys with the wife and kids. But that day, everyone came alone, with the clear idea of to finish the job that day."
Serbia after October 5th: by Srdja Popovic
"The problem is changing the system here. It was not problem just to remove Milosevic. And what Otpor was actually doing is to wipe out all the Milosevic incarnations in the society. Leadership concept, communicating with the people with public issues, hate speech in state media, building adrenalin out of hatred to the international community, and that was something that opposition leaders were doing all the time. They were trying to motivate their - their, their party membership and functionaries with hatred.
Milosevic was doing that. He was poisoning the society with that model in which hating Slovenes, Croats, Bosnians and Albanians was mobilizing power, which of course led to the destruction and the bloodshed. But it mobilizes people so they don't have to think why their stomachs are empty - because they hate Croats.
And the incorrect word for that disease, used often by the international community is 'nationalism'. The nationalism is a good thing. I am a nationalist. I like my people. And when somebody asks me for an example about The Hague I am using a sentence of ex-American president and I say 'First justice in Serbia then justice elsewhere'. Also if you look from that point of view, this is nationalism. But what Milosevic did is to produce hatred to mobilize power in the society and the political leaders in this country for a very long period were copying what he did.
You cannot move society towards a good aim using hate as a fuel for your engine. It's absolutely impossible. What we like to say - I always use two examples, the New Year's Eve of 2000 when we perform a big situation in which we gathered 20,000 people and then send them home. This is something nobody ever did here. So we collect them here, try to gave them - they came here asking for fun because it's, you know, Orthodox New Year Eve, it's a term over here which, you know, there is always a public performance on the street and 70 percent of the population here are waiting that New Year. Serbian, Orthodox New Year, January 13th - in the streets. So they came there waiting for the fun, we gave them performance before the midnight, after midnight we - we broadcast them through big screen - the tragic film of people dead, refugees, all the bad things and we said, "There is no reason for the celebration, go home and think what to do - so the next Orthodox New Year we have a reason to celebrate and to make the biggest party in Balkans." But the key sentence was 'This is the year - 2000'. This is 'The Year', with a capital 'T'. So this year life finally must win in Serbia. So this is one example.
The second thing was the famous speech of Srdjan Milivojevic (Otpor activist from Krusevac, a town in central Serbia). Well there was a rallying cry there because the local TV has been put off the air - their transmitter was removed by the regime. People were very angry. The atmosphere was very creepy. The organizers hardly prevented people from destroying SPS [Socialist party] office in Kraljevo that night. Ten thousand people is about half of Kraljevo's population and Milivojevic made a speech which even today, you know, gives me a creeps when I repeat it. He was saying, 'We must protect our media because the right to have media is the right to truth. And the right to truth is like the right to live. And the right to life we will protect with our own lives.'
So I think we succeeded because we simple loved life more than them. Generally those guys were the preachers of the death. Their hatred, their propaganda was the preaching the death and giving the last infusion to the system which already provokes so many tragedies, burned homes, refugees, young people in brain drain abroad, uh - so many things. You know their language smelled like death. And we won because we loved life more. We decided to love life. And-and you can't beat life. Even the technological civilization never found a way to kill the nature. It always comes back. So this is what Otpor did. We were a group of fans of life. And this is why we succeeded."
Excerpted from an interviews with Steve York: Belgrade , November 2000.
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