SERBIA- MONTENEGRO: Hundreds of anti- Milosevic protesters demonstrated in Belgrade.
Record ID:
214267
SERBIA- MONTENEGRO: Hundreds of anti- Milosevic protesters demonstrated in Belgrade.
- Title: SERBIA- MONTENEGRO: Hundreds of anti- Milosevic protesters demonstrated in Belgrade.
- Date: 19th March 2006
- Summary: VARIOUS OF PEOPLE WITH BALLOONS/ BLOWING WHISTLES
- Embargoed: 3rd April 2006 13:00
- Keywords:
- Topics: Obituaries,Domestic Politics
- Reuters ID: LVAAYHIT7WMPQYFRGYDQ8IVHOR02
- 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. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
- Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2014. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
- Usage Terms/Restrictions: None