The Formal Start of a Coup d’Etat

In 1986, when a group of Kosovo Serbs came to Belgrade they met with the tears of Belgrade residents and compassion for their suffering which later culminated into events we all know too well. Now things have changed. Sloba’s men who managed to get all the way to Slovenia once and whose shouts expressed a populist protest and the leader’s will, now met with a completely different mood in Belgrade which didn’t show any understanding for its "liberators" or any will to show respect for people carrying pictures of the man who draws up to 30 minutes of whistling and booing. Groups of young and old people surrounded the counter-rally participants wherever they went, whistling, booing and shouting abuse, asking them who they’re here to defend and why they came.

A group of Kosovo Serbs arrived at the monument to Prince Mihajlo, the cult gathering place of the Belgrade opposition between 11:00 and noon and were surrounded. Fighting broke out after the whistling and booing and a Belgrade lady tried to prevent further fighting by shouting: "Turn your backs on them". Just after noon, the Belgraders pushed the group towards Terazije square with shouts of Shiptars (derogatory term for ethnic Albanians) and You Stink. The posters of Slobodan Milosevic and banners with slogans supporting him were trampled and the poles they were on were used for fighting.

Between noon and 2:30 On Terazije, the site of what the president would later describe as "a glorious rally dedicated to the ideals of peace, freedom and the independence of our country", the two impoverished and miserable Serbias met face to face to shout Red Gang, Thieves, Thieves and Traitors Out at each other.

The Counter-rally participants were surrounded by a large number of Belgraders who cursed them, booed and whistled and showed clear signs of surprise and confusion. They stood close together in the rain on the square.

One man of about 40 climbed onto a platform erected so the state TV (RTS) could broadcast the rally live and try to raise morale, waved a framed picture of Milosevic up to the moment the artillery saw him. He tried to hide behind the portrait when a rain of eggs was hurled at him. The angry people, with no security guards and no coordination, showed a dangerous mix of anger and pity which usually leads to tragedy.

All across Terazije square Belgraders tried to push the counter-rally people away from the speakers’ platform while the people bussed in for the rally used the poles they were given to beat them back. The fighting went on for two hours. The crowd was on the verge of a stampede twice.

The day was getting very gray when a rumor broke through the crowd on Terazije: "They killed a boy in Knez Mihajlova". The rumor came after a someone in a group of SPS supporters from Vrbas and Novi Sad shot Ivica Lazovic in the head. Lazovic was taken to hospital where doctors are fighting for his life. Several young men who had witnessed the shooting described it for the people at Terazije. The crowd got restless and there were shouts of Let’s Go, Let’s Go, Let’s Attack.

the catastrophe loomed very, very close. Someone asked: "Is it worth it going on as Ghandi". Others said: "those miserable people are our brothers", "they were brought in and tricked," "The regime wants just that". At that moment the PA system on the Democratic Party windows was turned on with a call for people to move back to Freedom (Republic) square, to ignore provocation, that the tyrant wants a civil war. Vuk Draskovic and Zoran Djindjic appeared at the window and pointed the crowd towards Knez Mihajlova. Djindjic came down into the crowd and got the people moving away. At that moment all the 40,000 Milosevic supporters were on Terazije while the crowd moving back towards Knez Mihajlova was five times that size. The crowd was still restless but the pressure on the head of the column dropped and the police, using batons, waded into the opposition supporters and created a buffer zone between the two groups. The crowd was still thick at the entrance to Knez Mihajlova and there was pushing with some people falling and getting trampled. The crowd moved back to Republic Square with some displeasure because the police advanced a little more to get another cordon in place. The last very risky and unnecessary conflict came during Vesna Pesic’s speech in which she called the police to disobey the orders of the man who would start a civil war.

That day, 58 people were injured in clashes of all kind. Who knows what might have happened if the opposition leaders hadn’t shown self-control and hadn’t taken the angry crowd away for their daily walk away from Terazije. The huge stage, lights, and sound system would have been the place where the two groups would meet and we can only imagine the number of casualties. The police cordon between the two groups would have been no protection. An escalation of the conflict was prevented by the opposition leaders.

There are several details that indicate the SPS and JUL wanted to cause riots in Belgrade. As usual, they consciously underestimated the danger of the gathering. They obviously used their logistical machine, commandeered public transport to get their supporters to Belgrade. They even interrupted a parliament session to bring their officials to the rally. They took workers out of factories as if they were party property just because they worked in state-owned companies.

At one point there was fighting everywhere.

Counter-rally participants clashed with protesting students, who hadn’t clashed with anyone up to that point, in front of the French embassy. There was fighting from Terazije to the Belgrade University Law School.

Even though they had seen that their counter-rallies in Kragujevac, Valjevo and other places caused conflicts, the SPS rally organizers seemed to want people with sticks and poles in their hands in Belgrade to "deal with the Belgrade (protest) walkers". They purposely spread their columns through central Belgrade to frighten their opponents and show their presence. They never told their supporters not to carry weapons and several of them were seen drawing guns. They had security men but they were only interested in keeping the groups together. One middle aged man was seen charging at opposition supporters with a butcher’s knife in his hand. The column that included the gunman was walking in front of the Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO) offices which had to draw suspicion that they wanted to demolish those offices. Earlier that morning a group of young men demolished the SPO’s Srpska Rec cafe and bookstore. The counter-rally participants showed that they had been indoctrinated to "fight the fascists" who one JUL official said "aren’t even capable of throwing bombs, only eggs". An elderly man who got a heart attack when he saw the true size of the student protest is a victim of RTS propaganda. Symbolically, in terms of propaganda and verbally, the ruling party actually did start a real civil war, living up its role of "defender against the fifth column" and against a foreign enemy who wants to weaken Serbia. Ordinary folk, deep in poverty, were pushed into buses and special trains and taken to Belgrade where no one would even say hello to them, where they met with curses and abuse all across the city. That evening, miserable after the day’s events, they found a moment of happiness at the "glorious" rally when they saw the ruling couple and shouted: "Slobo We Love You". "I love you too," he replied unwillingly.

"Sloba’s counter-rally" was basically the sad fiasco of Stalinesque iconography. Surrounded by cordons of police, the ruling couple and their entourage waved at the poor while, just a short distance away a different crowd shouted "Go Away" and "Red Gang". After that the police stood guard around the RTS equipment while the two crowds chased each other down the streets of Belgrade.

The late Nicolae Ceausescu lost his power and his life on one December 24 in the same kind of badly directed performance. Events in Belgrade didn’t take that course. Milosevic came out among his supporters when he was sure that the site was well protected by the police and when he heard that his opponents had taken their supporters away.

He told his crowd that he had promised the students he would help right some wrongs but added that "the fifth column can’t destabilize Serbia". He poured a little more poison about the strong who want to make us weak and small into the heads of ordinary people, waved and left. he said someone is endangering Serbia’s sovereignty but didn’t say who. He didn’t say that the loss of sovereignty only means he has to recognize the will of the people at the elections.

The world quickly assessed that the organizers of the pro-regime demonstrations are to blame for the violence after 34 days of peaceful protests in Belgrade and sent messages of disagreement and concern and reminders of promises that force would not be used. Official propaganda blamed everything, even the shooting of the SPO member, on the regime’s political opponents. The democratic governments the regime intends to rely on advised it to recognize their opponent’s election victory, give them a slice of power, start a dialogue with the opposition, started democratizing the country and make the media available to all political parties on equal terms. He, his wife and his prime minister responded with a spectacular charge at the windmills of an international conspiracy in defense of "the sovereignty of Serbia" from the will of a majority of its population. Amid a scenography that is toppling, he launched the slogan that Serbia won’t be ruled by a foreign hand in an effort to show that only his hand can rule. Wherever he is forced to hand over the local authorities he takes the media under his control. He arranges political life around the rhetoric of a civil war with the "fifth column" and foreign agents and, as usual, he uses the people who are naive enough to love him most, who probably have nothing in life but that irrational love for the ruler.

The December 24 show that ended as a farce but could have turned into a tragedy, the ruling couple clearly showed they had no sense of reality and were consciously poisoning the situation in Serbia. The next day, Draskovic had every reason to accuse him of reaching for the tools of terrorism, Vesna Pesic said the regime would not heed the OSCE recommendations, Kostunica voiced suspicion that Milosevic could use repression and make his position even worse. Zoran Djindjic was the most specific of the opposition leaders when he said he has information that Milosevic is preparing special measures, including a ban on gatherings but added that the opposition will continue its peaceful protest. If that is right, then December 24 was the formal start of a coup d’etat.

A day later, a response in the spirit of Belgrade was formulated by the students. They disinfected the place on Terazije square where the ruling couple and their entourage stood on their stage.