A student demonstrating in the streets of Belgrade in October 2000.
© Otpo
“Because I love Serbia.”
“We started from nil.”
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Key
dates
December
1989: Slobodan Milosevic elected president of Serbia.
Summer 1991: The Yugoslav Federation is dismantled.
November 1996-January 1997: Unsuccessful student demonstrations in Belgrade.
October 1998: Otpor is founded in Belgrade.
September 24, 2000: Milosevic loses the presidential election in Yugoslavia.
October 5, 2000: Otpor activists take part en masse in the demonstrations that
overthrow the dictatorship.
October 6: DOS candidate Vojislav Kostunica is elected president of the Republic
of Yugoslavia.
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The
writing on the wall
Otpor became
famous because of its favourite weapon: caustic slogans spray-painted on the walls
of Serbia’s cities. The first, when nobody had heard of them yet, was the clearest
and simplest, a kind of birth certificate: “Resistance until Victory.” In December
1999, Otpor wished everybody a “happy new year of resistance.” A few months before
the events of October 5, “The year 2000 will be the one” could be read on walls everywhere.
They were right. They also invented a new resistance measurement unit called the
“otpormeter.” After the September 24 elections, the famous “Gotov je” (“He’s cooked”)
became the slogan spray-painted most on walls, staircases and in bar restrooms. On
October 5, when a bulldozer broke down the door of the state radio and television
headquarters, the government’s main propaganda mouthpiece, Otpor printed posters
and calendars with the slogan, “A bulldozer-operator is asleep in all of us.” Leery
of all politicians, even if they belong to the opposition, Otpor’s new slogan is,
“We’re keeping an eye on you.”
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It
took a generation of 20 year-olds without a manifesto or leader to shake Serbia out
of its lethargy. Armed only with slogans and spray paint, they dealt a fatal blow
to the dictatorship
Slobo, save Serbia:
kill yourself,” chanted a band of youth in the streets of Belgrade, Yugoslavia’s
capital city. Defeated in the presidential election on September 24, 2000, Slobodan
Milosevic–Slobo for short–kept clinging to power. On October 5, the dictator fell.
Opposition parties, international pressure and mass demonstrations contributed to
Milosevic’s doomsday. So did Otpor (“Resistance” in Serb), whose story is unique
in the annals of eastern European protest movements. Without leaders or a clear cut
political ideology, the group played a decisive role: like a termite colony, Otpor
gnawed away at the regime’s foundations before the top realized that the whole edifice
was rocking.
Founded by a handful of libertarians in October 1998, Otpor counted 4,000 members
by the end of 1999, a number that has swelled to 100,000 today. The overwhelming
majority can’t even remember when the movement was born.
Vague
memories of the war’s early days
All
it takes to meet them is a visit to 49 Knez Mihajlova Street, Belgrade’s most stylish
pedestrian thoroughfare, where anti-NATO demonstrators sacked the French, British,
German and American cultural centres during the March 1999 bombing campaign. Otpor
squatted an old, run-down Belgrade university annex there. In this tiny beehive of
activity, covered with stencils of the resistance movement’s famous black fist and
jam-packed with files, leaflets and posters, initiatives were hatched that brought
a 13-year-old mafia-ridden political system to its knees.
Sofia, Ana, Milos and Mihaïlo are between 17 and 24 years old. When a western
journalist arrives, many of their friends in the office join in the discussion, held
in a small, narrow room. Soon the tiny desk is cluttered with cups of Turkish coffee.
Everyone serves each other and trades cigarettes in a good-natured atmosphere. The
first observation is that all those present come from the same social background.
Like most Serbs, their parents get by on $40 to $80 a month, working occasional odd
jobs. Their grandparents, who still live in the countryside, send a little food to
help out.
It doesn’t take long for the conversation to switch to recent history. In 1989, nationalism
of all stripes was tearing the Yugoslav federation apart. In June 1991, war broke
out in Slovenia, spreading like wildfire to Croatia and, in spring 1992, to Bosnia.
The Yugoslav army was made up of draftees, and an entire age group was mobilized.
By the end of 1991, Belgrade’s youth were in the streets, and the police brutally
cracked down on the protests. Otpor’s young activists only have vague memories of
these events. Barely 10 years old at the time, they were living in a climate of war,
deprivation and impoverishment.
On November 17, 1996, Slobodan Milosevic lost the municipal elections and annulled
them. Tens of thousands of Serbs took to the streets in Belgrade and other cities.
Students, who spearheaded the protests, demanded that the results be recognized.
Eventually, after three months, Milosevic made concessions and the movement ran out
of steam.
Recruiting
the disenchanted
Sofia
Jarkovic, 17, is in her penultimate year at a Belgrade high school. She took part
in these demonstrations alongside her parents. Their failure made a lasting impression
on her, and on March 20, 2000 she joined Otpor, whose sole aim was Milosevic’s overthrow.
Ana Vuksanovic, 24, who is working on her master’s degree in French literature, participated
in every day of the 1996-97 protest marches . “The problem was, we had set our sights
too low,” she says. “We were demanding recognition of the voting results, when in
fact we should have been demonstrating for new municipal, legislative and presidential
elections, under the supervision of international observers. Like many people, I
took this failure hard. That’s why I joined Otpor as soon as it was founded two years
later.”
The movement got off to a quiet start outside Serbia’s mainstream opposition. Milosevic
had managed to corrupt several opposition municipalities while students had become
disgruntled with politicking and established parties. The leaders of the 1996-97
movement went into exile, as many deserters and draft dodgers had done during the
1991-1995 wars. Soon, they were joined by deserters from the Kosovo war (March-June
1999). In less than ten years, several hundred thousand Serbs became expatriates.
And most of them were the elite of pro-democratic youth.
The next generation found itself isolated. They had to come up with their own methods
of struggle, forge their own experience, and above all, avoid selling out. These
teenagers had political acumen, but more than anything else, intuition. And they
wanted to stop a regime that was stealing the fire of their youth.
Armed with their impetuousness, they managed to shake their parents and grandparents
out of lethargy. Adults started feeling ashamed of their apathy. Rather than stir
up revolt in army barracks and corridors, they preferred to convince the people around
them. Police manuals had no chapters on how to stifle the awakening of civil society.
Meanwhile, Milosevic, shut up in his ivory tower, was incapable of sensing the agitation
that was about to sweep him off the stage.
One of Otpor’s greatest strengths lay in its absence of hierarchy, a rule of thumb
for a movement grounded in joyous anarchy. It’s a free-wheeling, anything-goes protest
movement. “I showed up at their headquarters on March 20, 2000,” recalls Sofia Jarkovic.
“I was a little scared. I opened the door and said, ‘Hi, my name is Sofia and I want
to be an activist.’ They handed me a membership form. I filled it out and left. Two
weeks later, they called me up, gave me an appointment and I joined.” Milos Stankovic,
17, is in his penultimate year at a Belgrade high school and has belonged to Otpor
since February, 2000. “I joined Otpor because it was against political parties,”
he says. “I wanted to help change things, because I couldn’t stand seeing people
dealing with so many problems in their day-to-day lives anymore.” Ana Vuksanovic
adds, “What got me excited was that there weren’t any leaders, so there was no risk
of being betrayed.”
Within a year, the movement took root in four Belgrade universities, mostly with
first and second-year students. The hard core consisted of three small groups: Democratic
Students, the Students’ Union and the Students’ Federation. Otpor forged relationships
with Nezavisnost (Independence), Serbia’s only free trade union, as well as with
the defence workers’ union and the pensioners’ organization. There were no ulterior
political motives for these choices. It was just that the kids had parents in these
organizations. That’s vintage Otpor.
Sowing
revolt in the family
Milosevic
took a harder line after losing Kosovo in June 1999, but graffiti calling for “Resistance
until Victory” began flourishing on walls. Slogans were increasingly disrespectful
and, therefore, incomprehensible for rank-and-file militiamen and their leaders (see
box). Some 100,000 copies of the newsletter Serb Resistance were secretly circulating.
During school vacations, university students, joined by many high school and even
junior high school students, sowed the seeds of revolt in their families, neighbourhoods
and villages. Otpor infiltrated the provinces. The democratic termites were at work.
They scored a major success when they went after the sacrosanct Yugoslav army. Activists
held demonstrations in front of military tribunals every time a deserter went on
trial. Adults, who had lost so many children on the Croatian and Bosnian fronts,
could only be deeply moved. Otpor was changing mentalities. The teens struck a painful
nerve, without ever resorting to violence. The police were baffled by this type of
protest movement. In one year, they arrested 60 people for spraying graffiti or wearing
badges with the black fist, but balked at beating up the kids, who were the same
age as their own children.
Sofia took part in her first street demonstrations in April 2000: “One day, a policeman
tore off my badge. But he didn’t dare arrest me.” Ana and her boyfriend, Branko,
were expelled from their university dorm rooms for protesting, and her parents were
summoned to the police station.
“What
got me excited was that there weren’t any leaders, so there was no risk of being
betrayed.”
In
July 2000, Milosevic laid the groundwork for a constitutional coup d’état
and announced a presidential election for September 24. The divided opposition managed
to cobble together an 18-party coalition, the DOS (Democratic Opposition of Serbia).
At the first meeting, Otpor representatives solemnly offered their black flag with
a white fist. They were not joining, but warning: Otpor will keep an eye on you until
the final victory. No more wheeling and dealing.
The Otpor wave had risen. “I wasn’t old enough to vote on September 24,” says Sofia.
“My parents were against Milosevic. My mother, Mira, wanted to vote for the DOS,
but my father, Dragan, thought of abstaining. I talked him into voting.”
The defeated dictator annulled the election results. The wave swelled, covering the
whole country with the same graffiti: “He’s finished” and “Slobo, save Serbia: kill
yourself!” Provincial opposition municipalities, the DOS, trade unionists and veterans
started talking to Otpor.
On October 5, all of them were ready. “That day, I dragged my father to the parliament
building at 2:30 in the afternoon,” recalls Milos. “I joined Otpor in front of the
philosophy department at the university,” says Sofia. “We stayed there until three
o’clock before converging on the parliament. I was always afraid of the crowd the
whole time.” Ana adds, “With four boys, I was part of an Otpor group in touch with
the DOS. Our job was to call on Belgrade’s citizens to come out into the streets.
We were among the first wave of protesters who occupied the B92 radio station, which
the government had taken over. I couldn’t sleep several nights in a row. I was afraid
the government would launch a counter-attack.”
Otpor could have disbanded on October 6, but, mistrustful of politicians, the movement
decided to stay alert and uncompromising until democracy is firmly established. Mihajlo
Cvekic, 18, is in his last year at Belgrade’s vocational school, where his major
is tourism. He became a member of Otpor on October 8 “because of their decisive role
on October 5,” he explains. “Before then, I didn’t dare join because I was afraid
of retaliation, but also because of my parents and grandparents, who were hard-core
Milosevic supporters. Today, they feel ashamed.” The teenagers have quietly instilled
democratic aspirations into the minds of family members corrupted by nationalism.
“I’m as mobilized as ever,” asserts Sofia. “I don’t want to join a party. There’s
still a need for Otpor. I don’t have a sense that any meaningful changes have taken
place in everyday life.” Ana adds, “I’m not afraid anymore. I’ve found an apartment,
I feel relieved and free. I’m optimistic, but we have to be patient. Anyway, I want
to spend my life in Serbia.” “So do I,” Milos chimes in. “Even though I know there
won’t be a brighter future for a long time to come.” |
