SERBIA- MONTENEGRO: Hundreds of anti- Milosevic protesters demonstrated in Belgrade.

Record ID: 214265

  • Title: SERBIA- MONTENEGRO: Hundreds of anti- Milosevic protesters demonstrated in Belgrade.
  • Date: 19th March 2006
  • Summary: PEOPLE WITH BALLOONS
  • Embargoed: 3rd April 2006 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: Obituaries,Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVAE5WEJOT7RT7P7X5IP3XM5YYFD
  • Story Text: About two thousand anti-Milosevic protesters rallied in central
    Belgrade on Saturday (March 18) to counter diehard
    loyalists lauding him as fallen hero. The high spirited crowd blew whistles
    and waved balloons.
    Wary of a bid to rewrite history for the old guard still in denial of
    his role in the breakup of Yugoslavia, young democrats had issued a call by
    mobile phone text message for a counter-rally in the capital at the moment
    Milosevic was laid to rest.
    See you on Saturday in the central square, it said, urging Milosevic
    opponents to bring a balloon.
    "People came today in the square of the Republic to protest a
    celebration of Milosevic as an important person and a big politician, for
    doing what he did and how much he destroyed the country, our neighbours and
    ourselves," said Vesnja Pesic,
    former ambassador to Mexico while the late Zoran Djindjic was Serbian Prime
    Minister.
    On Friday (March 17), the former anti-Milosevic resistance movement
    Otpor issued a statement criticizing the government and
    media for acquiescing in celebrating the name and deeds of Slobodan
    Milosevic.
    "Big no to the funeral in front of the Federal Parliament which we
    are really disgusted," said a young woman. "We dont
    want to have him back, we dont even want to have his body back. I think
    that mass murderers should go to mass graves," she added.
    "To show the other face of Serbia in this moment, to stop this
    whole circus that we can see in the past few days," said
    another young woman.
    A handful of Milosevic supporters arrived at the scene, looking to
    provoke the crowds. After some shouting and minor
    scuffles, the supporters left.
    On Friday, a hard-hitting memorial was published in the daily Politika,
    among dozens of traditional death notices
    extolling the former Serb strongman who died in detention in The Hague last
    Saturday of heart failure
    It read, 'thank you for the deceit and theft, for every drop of blood
    shed by thousands, for the fear and uncertainty, for the failed lives and
    generations, the unfulfilled dreams, for the horrors and wars you waged in our
    name, without asking us, for all the
    burdens you've placed on our shoulders. We remember tanks on Belgrade
    streets and blood on the pavements. We remember Vukovar. We remember
    Dubrovnik. We remember Knin and Krajina. We remember Sarajevo. We remember
    Srebrenica. We remember the air strikes. We remember Kosovo. We'll be
    remembering that one for a while. And dreaming of it. We remember those who
    were killed, and those who were injured. We remember the suffering ones, the
    refugees. We remember our destroyed lives.'
    Milosevic ignited and stoked a virulent, racist form of Serbian
    nationalism in the 1990s that turned the might of the Yugoslav army loose on
    Catholic Croats, Muslim Bosnians and Kosovo Albanians as they fought free of
    Serb dominance.
    His regime used state television to portray the enemy as monsters who
    gouged eyes and pitchforked children.
    A sizeable section of the public backed him while he funnelled big guns
    to the fronts and piled national treasure onto the altar of a Greater Serbia
    that never came to pass.
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