State of Emergency Drill

On the morning of May 9th, when all were awaiting a significant number of people to start out from Novi Sad, heading towards Pozarevac to the previously agreed upon opposition rally, Otpor's city leader Vlada Pavlov was taken down to the police station for interrogation. According to his statement, the inquiry concerned this organisation's eventual preparations for the Pozarevac rally along with that journey's routes.

So, instead of a journey to Pozarevac, the city Otpor, in collaboration with the youth branches of several opposition parties, had prepared for that very day a "decontamination" action of the space surrounding the headquarters of the ruling coalition parties in Serbia -  i.e. surrounding the Serbian Radical Party (SRS), Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) and Yugoslav United Left (JUL) headquarters. That group made up of 25 young people, accompanied by journalists from Radio 021, Radio In, Radio Free Europe and Montenegrin TV cameramen - washed the sidewalks under the windows of the district board of the radicals first, they then proceeded to "clean" the area in front of the former headquarters of the Communist Party of Vojvodina now belonging to the SPS board from Vojvodina, and were finally piled into police vehicles in Vase Stajic St., in front of the city SPS organisation headquarters - and then taken to the police station together with the journalists. According to Marina Fratucan's statement, Radio Free Europe's journalist, the police interrogation had an unspecified goal and lasted around an hour for the journalists while the young Otpor members and opposition members were detained somewhat longer.

That very same morning, accompanied by his driver,  Nenad Canak, president of the League of Social-Democrats of Vojvodina (LSV) set off across the Danube River. He later stated that he had set off for the Pozarevac rally around 9:30 a.m. Seems as though he had chosen a somewhat worse and slower route for that journey - across the pontoon-bridge, via the "old route" to Belgrade, and not over the bridge near Beska and the somewhat quicker highway route. However, regardless of the unexpected route, a police vehicle awaited him at Petrovaradin, accompanied by three patrol cars which accompanied him to the police headquarters "traffic  offence" department, where he is most probably acquainted with a number of employees since he had been detained by this department on a number of previous occasions. In the otherwise humid day, Canak was held in "the shade" of the city police station, allegedly for the purpose of identification and check of the chassis number of the passenger vehicle he was using - apparently, up to the moment when it was ascertained that the Pozarevac rally was cancelled and until word arrived that, due to his arrest and the detention of the young opposition activist, Miodrag Isakov, president of the Reform-Democratic Party of Vojvodina (RDSV), was preparing a rally in Novi Sad under the working name of "Days of Pozarevac in Novi Sad".

Shortly after nine, two policemen visited him in his apartment, one of them entered the apartment and the other remained in front of the door. The official visitor announced that his duty was to check papers to do with personal weapons, and asked Isakov whether "he had any guns on him". As the president of Vojvodina's reformists had just come out of the bathroom dressed in a bathrobe, a certain misunderstanding ensued, since Isakov deemed that it was highly apparent to all that he didn't have any guns "on him". The policeman then kindly explained that he had asked him whether he had any guns which were "registered in his name". Since it then turned out that Miodrag Isakov is not personally armed, the police graciously took their leave.

Some time later, while waiting for the car which would take him to Belgrade and Pozarevac, Miodrag Isakov rang his partner from the Alliance of Democratic Parties Nenad Canak on his mobile phone, and heard from him personally that he was in custody. Due to that, instead of to Pozarevac, Isakov headed off to the city police station, informing his colleagues from Belgrade's opposition parties along the way what had befallen Canak. In the police building, he was informed that the conversation with Canak was "almost finished". In front of the exit he bumped into Pavlov who had just finished his interrogation session. He was later informed that the Otpor members were also arrested.  As he was in constant contact with the opposition leaders who had gathered and were conferring in the Social-Democracy headquarters in Belgrade, shortly after ten o' clock Isakov found out that they were contemplating postponing the rally in Pozarevac due to the blockade of all roads in Serbia. At one point someone mentioned the possibility of putting Pozarevac off and rallying in Novi Sad instead, due to the series of arrests.

Shortly after 2 p.m. the catharsis of the Novi Sad muddle in connection with Pozarevac had passed. The police gradually started releasing those they had arrested, Canak and Isakov held a joint press conference while someone from the city SPS headquarters produced a press announcement which especially stressed the "so-called independent journalists".

On the surface, nothing significant had happened in Novi Sad on May 9th - the police was civilised, Pavlov wasn't the leader of the Otpor field trip to Pozarevac, Canak's auto was checked in detail, it was ascertained that Isakov "doesn't have any guns on him", politically active kids had their first taste of police arrests, nothing was taken away from the journalists. A tepid state of emergency drill which might come in a stronger dosage next time.