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PROTESTS IN SERBIA

December 11, 1996

Dragan Cicic, reporter for Serbia's NIN magazine and Massimo Calabresi, Time Magazine's correspondent in Belgrade, have answered your questions.

NewsHour Backgrounders

December 6, 1996:
An update on the spreading protests in Serbia, the resignation of its information minister and the unbanning of Radio station B92.
December 2, 1996:
A panel of Yugoslavia experts including Dragan Cicic and the former U.S. ambassador in Belgrade, Warren Zimmerman, discuss the protests in Serbia.
December 2, 1996:
An ITN report on the protests in Bosnia.
CIA fact book on Serbia and Montenegro.
U.S. State Department summary of the Dayton Peace Accord.
Complete NewsHour coverage of events in the former Yugoslavia.
OUTSIDE LINKS
The Web site for radio station B92, which was recently reopened after being shut down by the government.
The official site of the protest against the Serbian government.
Yugoslavia Online is a Serbian government sponsored site that contains officially sponsored news and history.

For over a week, hundreds of thousands of Serbs have peacefully protested the decision by their President, Slobodan Milosevic, to overturn opposition victories in recent municipal elections. Despite huge scale marches on the capital Belgrade, the state run media has either ignored the story or wrongfully portrayed protestors as violent agitators. And Serbia's Supreme Court has refused to reverse the decision by the President.

But the overturning of elections and a censored media are only a part of what has prompted marchers to take to the streets. The collapse of the Yugoslav (Serbia-Montenegro) economy is also a critical factor. A mere shadow of it's former self, the economy has seen wages devalued by war and corruption to 10 per cent of their worth ten years ago. These are symptoms of the strong nationalist hand of Milosevic, who has been accussed of ruthlessness and demagoguery in his ten year reign.

The Serbian leader is in the strange position of being both one of the keys to the collapse of Yugoslavia and to the implementation of the Dayton Peace Accord. His extreme Serb nationalism led to the secession of Croatia, Bosnia and Slovenia, from the Yugoslav Republic. Conversely his command over Bosnian Serb leaders allowed war weary Bosnia a year, and counting, of peace after a long civil war.

The latter fact makes his political future important to more than to just those in Yugoslavia, but to the whole of the former Yugoslavia, and to the Western nations involved in peacekeeping in the region.

Our Forum asks: What would the collapse of Mr. Milosevic mean to the Bosnia's fragile peace? How long can he be expected to tolerate protest before resorting to violence? Is there a solution that could see Mr. Milosevic retain power, or is his demise inevitable? Who are the opposition parties that oppose him? Could they govern?

Our Forum guests are Dragan Cicic and Massimo Calabresi. Mr. Cicic is a reporter with NIN, the oldest political news magazine in Serbia. As an employee owned news operation NIN has remained beyond the reach of President Milosevic's media crack-down. Mr. Cicic is currently an international Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. Mr. Calabresi is the Time Magazine correspondent for Central Europe. He is presently covering this story in Belgrade.

Scroll down to read Dragan Cicic and Massimo Calabresi's answers to your questions.

A question from Paul Vicary of Miami, FL

In an article in the New York Times of today (10 Dec.), many of the student protesters were described as "fierce Serb nationalists" who blame President Milosevic for failing to create a greater Serbia. While Milosevic has been cracking down on any movement toward democracy, I was wondering how representative these students are of the rest of the protesters fighting for "democracy." I ask this as it would seem imprudent to support the ouster of one tyrant only to have him replaced by someone far worse, i.e., someone representative of these students' ideas.

Massimo Calabresi responds

There is no shortage of nationalists in Serbia, and certainly no shortage of them among the leadership of both the student and the opposition demonstrators. However, it seems to me the article you mention may have tarred many of the demonstrators with the same brush it did some of their leaders. The latter admit that the number of Serbs taking to the streets in protest would not have been near as great nor near as persistent had their only motivation been support for particular individuals or their changeable policies. Across the board, the primary motivation among protestors appears to be the desire to break Slobodan Milosevic's absolute grip on power by forcing him to accept defeat in local elections.

The most important change effected in the last month in Serbia is the population's demonstration that under certain circumstances it can and will call it's leaders to account. That is a lesson that will have been learned not only by Milosevic, but by the opposition leaders as well. The nationalist affiliations of many of those leaders, taken with the relatively underdeveloped civil society here, mean that a rapid move to democracy is unlikely, but the progress towards political accountability has been significant and it outweighs the shortcomings of those at the top. In this sense, the position of the United States, while somewhat slow to be enunciated, has been correct, namely voicing support for the democratic aims of the demonstrators without backing any of their individual leaders.

Dragan Cicic responds

Upon reading the New York Times article, I anticipated such a question. They should be addressed and your concern is legitimate. I was concerned myself, so I contacted the organizers through the Web. I suggest that anyone interested in their views do the same. You can access them through the Web site owned by the B 92 radio. The URL address is: http://www.siicom.com/odrazb/.

Once there, click on the Student Protest 96 icon. I did that and found nothing redolent of Serb nationalism. To check further, I sent them an e-mail message asking them to tell me about their demands in regard to Serbian nationalism. In their reply, they resolutely denied their support to Serbian nationalism. They insisted they want two things only: democratization and an end of oppression.

I then asked them about the treatment of the former French minister Jack Langue whom they refused to meet. They replied that they sent a letter of apology in regard to that, but they decided not to maintain contact with any active politicians. They are afraid (with a good reason) that Mr. Milosevic's propaganda machinery was going to use any such occurrence to present them as being youth groups of the opposition parties and as such not representative of the student body as a whole.

Also, if the New York Times reporter was told by somebody from the crowd that the students are nationalistic, one should bear in mind that Mr. Milosevic's secret police permeate all the pores of the Serbian society. There are hundreds of secret policemen infiltrated among the students and their duty is to paint all the opposition to the Serbian dictator in the worst possible light. That is why the students' committee in charge of the demonstrations insists that only the statements made by its members can be seen as representative of the real intentions of the demonstrations.

Finally, all the minority politicians in Serbia (e.g. ethnic Albanians from Kosovo, Hungarians from Vojvodina, Slavic Muslims - same people as the Bosnian Slavic Muslims, etc.) pledged their full support of the demonstrators. If they don't see them as frighteningly nationalistic, I guess we can safely assume they are not.

A question from Kainam Thomas Wong of West Lafayette, IN

In what sense may the recent Serbian protests be viewed as part of the political movement to topple cold-war era Communist dictatorships throughout Eastern and Central Europe? What has been Serbia's internal politics with regard to a Greater Serbia? And how would the present Serbian political unrest affect the politics for a greater Serbia?

Massimo Calabresi responds

Where democracy fits between communism and nationalism in this region is an interesting issue. The rise of nationalism in the former Yugoslavia did defer the dismantlement of communist era political and economic structures by subverting popular opposition to centralized authority beneath fears of other ethnic groups. Slobodan Milosevic was certainly one of the earliest and most adept at employing this tactic for his own political gain. It is worth noting one element which facilitated that subversion in Serbia, however. Unlike the situation in central and eastern European countries where communism was seen largely as an imported evil, in the former Yugoslavia communism was widely perceived as home-grown, thanks to Tito's insistence on independence from Moscow.

The twist in rump Yugoslavia came as early as 1993 when Milosevic began distancing himself from the idea of a greater Serbia after having initiated the wars in other parts of the region largely on the basis of that idea. In doing so, he left open a window for a small but vocal opposition to adopt the nationalist rhetoric he had abandoned. Several of the politicians now battling Milosevic for control of Serbia's cities, notably the changeable Zoran Djindjic of the Democratic party, were among the most vocal in that opposition. However, they never gained much outright support on the basis of nationalism alone. The discussion of greater Serbia, therefore, was ongoing but limited, and did not create much backing for the idea among everyday Serbians the way it had among their minority Serb brothers in Croatia and Bosnia. This is another reason for distinguishing between the leadership of today's protestors, who used nationalism in an attempt to gain power, and the protestors themselves, who seem to have joined them only now that they have abandoned their nationalist rhetoric.

Regarding the future of greater Serbia, it is difficult to gauge exactly how much support there is in rural areas for such an idea. However, if the tone of the demonstrations in Belgrade can be taken as an indication of the popular mood, then they have been heartening, as speakers have ever more fervently adopted democratic and western rhetoric.

Dragan Cicic responds

The ongoing protests in Serbia can really be seen as a postponed part of the process that took place in the rest of eastern Europe in the early '90s. President Milosevic, to put things briefly, was selected in 1987 by the hard line Bolshevik wing of the Serbian communist party. He was expected to retain communist domination despite the new winds of changes that were emerging in that period. However, he soon realized that his extreme communist ideas could not mobilize sufficient support among the population. To enhance his performance, he forged a coalition with extreme nationalists and adjoined this doctrine to his Bolshevism. When opposition forces continued to ask for democratization, Mr. Milosevic kindled wars in first Croatia, then Bosnia. In that way he was able to plead for unity in the face of war. That campaign worked well. Mr. Milosevic used his total and probably unprecedented, even in the communist world, control of the Serbian TV to fan fears, hatred and bigotry.

But once he was forced to withdraw from Bosnia and Croatia, the war was over. Serbian people are now slowly shaking off their coma - like a nightmare into which they were induced by Mr. Milosevic's propaganda. What they see is total governmental control of economy, media, their private lives. They see utter poverty for them and Milosevic's family rolling in incredible luxury, with yachts, airplanes, Ferraris, settled in a villa built on a plot confiscated from the family of a Jew killed by the Nazis . . . In short, they see the oppression and corruption that the citizens of other east European countries saw when they woke up in the early '90s.

The opposition to Mr. Milosevic, as it is easy to imagine, had a hard battle to fight. Some of the opposition leaders flirted with Serbian nationalism, hoping to undermine Mr. Milosevic's power by taking away a non-communist but still nationalist part of his supporters. However, there is only one party today that still pursues that line. It is called the Serbian Radical Party. That party does not participate in the ongoing protests on the grounds that the coalition fighting Milosevic is pro-Western and liberal and as such less to their liking than Milosevic.

As for the leaders of the coalition which is orchestrating demonstrations against the government now, they have mixed results. There are three of them. On is Vuk Draskovic, a novelist. He used to be known as a nationalist until the war begun. Ever since then, he has preached peace, for which he and his party were praised by, among others, President Clinton and the Bosnian government, which had his delegations invited to visit Sarajevo while it was besieged by Milosevic, which they did on several occasions. The second leader is Zoran Djindjic, a German-educated philosopher who was a teaching assistant to Jurgen Habermas. Mr. Djindjic was very liberal for a long time and then tried to court the Bosnian Serb leaders to elicit his support which he intended to use against Milosevic. However, he severed his ties to Mr. Karadzic when Mr. Karadzic was indicted for war crimes. The third leader is Vesna Pesic, a sociologist. She has an impeccable record. She was praised by President Clinton and some American media - Christian Science Monitor for one - as the most consistent fighter for peace and democracy in the Balkans. None of these leaders support the Greater Serbia project.

A question from Nella in Michigan

1. How would you describe the latest decisions of the Supreme Court relating to the validity of the electoral results? 2. What are the options for providing support to the demonstrators in Belgrade from the United States? There is e-mail, of course, but are there ways to get organized and inform the public about the latest happenings there? How much can we contribute individually, aside from accessing the Web sites and writing words of encouragement (individually)?

Massimo Calabresi responds

Milosevic has consistently used Yugoslav federal authorities as a shield for his own policies. What remains of Yugoslavia, namely the republics of Serbia and Montenegro, is joined in a federation that is nominally ruled by its own government, but is in fact controlled by Milosevic. As Serbian president, he has consistently blamed federal authorities for one outrage after another, even as he has acknowledged his control over everything from rump Yugoslavia's finances to relations with the Bosnian Serbs. The federal Supreme court ruling, therefore, must be interpreted as an expression of Milosevic's will, one over which he can later deny having had any influence.

As for ways of supporting the demonstrators here, I am afraid I have little advice beyond accessing the informative Internet site of B-92 radio, the Belgrade station that was shut down by Milosevic last week, but allowed back on the air after international outrage. The journalists at B-92 are independent not only of Milosevic's regime but also of the opposition leadership, and would be able to suggest ways that you might contribute.

Dragan Cicic responds

The decision of the Serbian Supreme Court to uphold Milosevic's annulment of the election just confirmed that the courts in Serbia are nothing more than yet another outposts of Mr. Milosevic's regime. By saying this, I am just repeating what several judges of the Supreme Court said themselves in their letter to the public in which they complained that they have no judicial freedom in deciding legal matters.

As for your second question, the U.S. could help the Serbian people. One of the things that the administration can do is influence its allies to pull back their embassies from Belgrade and refuse to have their diplomats meet Mr. Milosevic. Also, an investigation should be launched into the personal wealth the Milosevic's family has stashed in Cyprus and Greece. Huge sums of money acquired during the war may have come from war booty, supplying weapons to Libya (as reported in the New York Times in October) and even tolerating heroine transportation to the West using Serbia as a pipeline (as reported by Interpol.)

A question from Danijela Trachtenberg of West Henrietta, NY

Hi, I am born Serbian and U.S. citizen. I am concerned about the current situation in Serbia. I wonder if Slobodan Milosevic is really a root cause for the wrecked economy and imbalanced living standard among the people in Yugoslavia? I was told by my mother that due to high taxes, some small private businesses had to be closed (meaning some small business couldn't survive due to the very high taxes). Is that true, is the government to be blamed? What is your opinion? Thanks and regard from Danijela T.

Massimo Calabresi responds

The worst crime that Milosevic perpetrated against his own people may well have been in the economic sphere. According to the respected Belgrade University economist, Mladjan Dinkic, during hyper-inflation from 1992 through the beginning of 1994, Milosevic harnessed economic chaos for the financial benefit of his family and his cohorts. Dinkic, who has done extensive research on the subject including thorough inspections of government accounting records and interviews with those involved on most levels of the scam, claims that Milosevic's government established a network of para-state banks and street money changers to siphon off the stockpiles of foreign currency that the population had stashed away for emergencies. Dinkic estimates that these stockpiles totaled some 8 billion Deutsche Marks, or $5.3 billion, and that Milosevic may have made off with as much as $4 billion of it. With inflation over 50% per month during that period, reaching a high of 313 million % in its last days in January 1994, the only way to buy goods was to exchange foreign currency for Dinars just before going to the store. By issuing free, unaccounted-for credit to the para-state banks which then channeled local cash to street changers, Dinkic alleges that Milosevic not only produced "false" local currency to buy Serbians' "real" foreign currency, but also fueled the hyper-inflation that was forcing Serbians to part with their savings in the first place. The disaster was equally hard on small businessmen as it was on the rest of the population.

Dragan Cicic responds

The question here was whether the Serbian government was to be blamed for outlandishly high taxes that drive private entrepreneurs out of business. The answer to that is that there is a little doubt that in general the governments are responsible for the taxes, since they are the ones who levy them. In Serbia it is even more so, given the fact that all decisions are taken by a small coterie of Mr. Milosevic's. Serbian parliament not only does not have any real influence, but has recently been deprived of formal one as well. Namely, Mr. Milosevic decided to cancel all the sessions and throw all the deputies out on the grounds that the parliament building "does not meet necessary sanitary requirements" because "too many rats and insects have spawned there."

The reason why the private businessmen are being busted is that Mr. Milosevic is a fierce proponent of a state dominated economy.

A question from Phil Wright of Woburn, MA

It seems to me that the U.S. is somewhat beholden to keeping Mr. Milosevic in power as he was an integral part of the Dayton Accord and the Pentagon, with thousands of troops in Bosnia, certainly doesn't want the kinds of problems in the area that a power vacuum in Serbia might cause. How much diplomatic pressure is there being applied to Mr. Milosevic from the United States Government?

Massimo Calabresi responds

As I mentioned above, the U.S. was somewhat slow in getting off the mark to support the demands of demonstrators here. I was concerned that the U.S. government felt Milosevic was a partner they were unwilling to lose. However, last week the U.S. became more vocal, openly supporting the demonstrators and publicly applying political and economic pressure on the Serbian president. It should be noted that while there have been numerous calls for Milosevic's ouster, his removal is not among the official demands of the opposition. This means that the demonstrators can achieve their primary aim, namely reinstatement of their local election victories, without forcing Milosevic out. This is no doubt an appealing solution for the U.S. It should also be noted that Milosevic's party did secure a majority in the November 3 elections for the presidency of Serbia, and the opposition has not contested that vote, so it would be difficult for them to justify calling for his removal no matter how much momentum they might gain from their backers on the streets. It would likewise be difficult for the U.S. to call for his ouster.

Dragan Cicic responds

It is hard to say that Mr. Milosevic is "an integral part" of the Dayton Accord. True, he signed the paper. But we must not forget that he did so only after being militarily defeated by the American Air Force. Hence, praising Mr. Milosevic for the Dayton Accord and current cessation of hostilities in Bosnia seems to me like disarming a dangerous bully by force and then praising him for not shooting.

More to the point: the American military presence in Bosnia is such a strong deterrent that for as long as the U.S. troops are there, there is no possibility that any of the parties would launch another bloody campaign. The American soldiers literally took away their weapons, so there are simply no means at the potential warriors disposal. And Mr. Milosevic is irrelevant in that part of the Accord.

And where he is relevant, like in the civilian part, there is no progress at all. On the contrary, he thwarted all the attempts to help refugees back into their homes, refuses to allow Bosnia's reintegration, laughs at proposals to extradite war criminals. Without him at the helm of events, the situation in Bosnia can only be better.

A question from Orde W. Lawrence of Victoria, B.C., Canada

Why has the labor movement in Serbia stayed out of the protests? I keep hearing that the main part of the protest is by the disgruntled middle class, but that the union movement, particularly the miners, has deliberately stayed neutral. Why?

Massimo Calabresi responds

One reason the labor movement has stayed out of the protests is that many of them are in precarious financial straits. Many, for example, are only nominally employed by state factories crippled by sanctions which no longer produce goods. For them to go on strike would not only have no effect on stopping production, but would also cut them off from the government stipend they receive. There is also a distrust among the workers of the opposition leaders, who are seen as changeable and wily. Whereas many workers supported the presidential candidacy of the respected former central bank chairman Dragoslav Avramovic, after he dropped out of the race, support from workers for the opposition fell.

Dragan Cicic responds

The reason why the Serbian blue collars stayed neutral in this protest so far can be found in sociological analysis. It has been observed that the poorest, worst affected parts of a society are, contrary to some expectations, the least likely to be active in seeking changes and thus improvement in their own position. For example, in the U.S. the time span between 1990 and 1994 saw the decline in the election turnout rate of the poor from 32.2 percent down to only 19.9 percent.

People who are very poor seem to feel beaten down, apathetic and disappointed in their ability to change their circumstances. In Serbia, the entire working class is in that position. The ten years of Mr. Milosevic's rule lead to a 75 percent decrease in the standards of living. The worst affected has been the working class, one third of which is undernourished today according to statistical data.

A question from John Bellini of Dallas, TX

My question goes back a few years. Why did it take the Serbian people so long to protest? When this man came to power in 1987, it was clear to many that he was a bigot and destructive. Why weren't there protests then when they could have made a difference and might have saved several hundred thousand lives?

Massimo Calabresi responds

There were widespread, largely student-led protests in Belgrade against Milosevic in March 1991 before the outbreak of war in Slovenia and Croatia. At the time, Milosevic was eager to portray himself as willing to use force to hold together former Yugoslavia, and he responded to the demonstrations by sending tanks into the streets on March 9, killing 2 people and injuring many others. Despite that violence, there were further protests in Beglrade in 1992 and 1993 against his authoritarian rule, but they were smaller and did not have the clear goals that these latest ones do.

Dragan Cicic responds

In 1987, when Mr. Milosevic became first the head of the Serbian communist party and then the president of Serbia, he had no serious opposition in the country. It is due to some peculiar circumstances. First, the former Yugoslavia, of which Serbia was a part, enjoyed at that time fairly high standards of living and did not have a multi-party system. The consequence was that people did not care much for politics, and their understanding of political processes was poor. This means that they could be easily manipulated, especially since the first thing Mr. Milosevic did when he was installed to the position of power by the hard line wing of the communist party (he was not elected) was to assume full control of all the television stations in Serbia, more than 95 percent of radio stations and 90 percent of print press.

Secondly, since there was no organized opposition at that time, people just assumed that all the opposition to communists was the same. During the communist era, all the dissent had been jumbled together to encompass nationalists and liberals alike. Milosevic forged a coalition with the nationalists and then presented them - which he could do thanks to his total media control easily - as the representatives of the entire opposition. In return, they pledged their full support to him. Therefore, Serbian people were under a distinct impression that no politician, artist, writer, scientist or businessman in Serbia was critical about Milosevic (which was not true, but there was no way of knowing it for people).

In 1991, when the population begun to understand this, Mr. Milosevic provoked the war in Croatia and, in 1992, in Bosnia. In this way he diverted the public attention from the domestic issues. All the sociological studies show that people are in general very reluctant to change their leaders in the times of war. They actually tend to homogenize in the face of a real or perceived danger.

Now that the war is over, people are waking up to the reality.

A question from Eric Marins of Portland, OR

I read that Mr. Milosevic's Information Minister resigned. Is this a freak happening or is it a sign that the Serbian President is losing his grip on power? Are there other ministers who are rumored to be resigning?

Massimo Calabresi responds

There have been several heartening indications of a weakening of Milosevic's grip on power over the last weeks. The resignation of his information minister, Alexander Tijanic, was one such indication, as were the declarations of support from some 90 Belgrade judges for the opposition's demands and the open letter written to an independent newspaper here by five of the more than 50 Serbian supreme court justices. In addition to the population's willingness to call their public officials to account, one of the most important developments of the last month has been the recognition by observers both inside and outside of Serbia that Milosevic is not necessarily in power forever. For the time being, however, he maintains what appears to be a firm grip on the 80,000 man police force he has created and kept well paid, and still can rely on much of the communist-era apparatus that runs the country on the day to day level.

Dragan Cicic responds

A week ago, not only did the information minister resign but some more important political factors distanced themselves from Milosevic. Most notably, his coalition partners from the tiny state of Montenegro which makes the rump of the Yugoslav federation with Serbia. Also, hundreds of judges publicly complained that they were not allowed to observe the laws of the country and were instead forced to take orders from Mr. Milosevic. The association of lawyers and legal experts upheld their complaint. The university professors expressed their woes publicly as well.

But that movement seems to be losing its momentum in the last couple of days after Mr. Milosevic has stepped up police oppression with dozens of demonstrators arrested and tortured, some of them sexually abused by his secret police.



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