Election Campaign of Otpor

Eliot Ness in the Service of OTPOR

AIM Belgrade, December 4, 2000

Radivoje Stojmenovic, chief of police in Vladicin Han and policemen Goran Markovic and Goran Trajkovic were relieved of duty. On September 8, they arrested and then brutally beat up seven members of Otpor (Resistance) just because they were putting up posters of the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) and Otpor. To this day no court decision has been reached on criminal charges brought against these policemen by Otpor. The Humanitarian Law Fund also brought charges against these policemen, and the hearing was scheduled for December 6. The case of Vladicin Han is just one in a long series on which members of Otpor have collected documentation with the intention to take to court all responsible persons on criminal charges. Activists of Otpor have spent the total of 42 thousand hours in prison in the course of last year.

Members of Otpor have not forgotten Rade Markovic, head of the State Secuity Service who is still at this post. The demand that he be discharged was signed by 60 thousand people and it will be submitted to the authorities in charge. One should not be surprised if activists of this organisation will be the first to raise criminal charges against him, too. In this way members of Otpor wish to test readiness of the new authorities to deal with persons who have committed serious crimes during the regime of Slobodan Milosevic.

Failure of the new authorities to act in this sphere is in fact the main complaint of members of Otpor. Robertino Knjur, activist of Otpor, declared recently to Hungarian Magyar Nemzet daily that the citizens of Serbia and Otpor reproach the new regime mostly for not having called to account the people from the former state leadership and other individuals close to it who are “responsible for the destruction of the country”. Knjur threatened with a new campaign of Otpor if heads of the army and the police were not replaced after December parliamentary elections in Serbia.

In the end of October members of Otpor decided to take things into their own hands and established a Service for Enforcing the Truth which gathers 36 eminent judges and lawyers. “There are two directions of operation. One is individual and every activist of Otpor can raise criminal charges or charges for the offence against people who mis-treated them. The aim of the organisation is to find the persons who bear the biggest responsibility, who gave the orders that repression be applied against activists of Otpor and to collect as much documentation, information and evidence as possible on them, and then raise criminal charges against these persons. “We are not interested in perpetrators only. We are much more interested in persons who have developed such a strategy, who wished at one moment to destroy the youth of Serbia and the future of Serbia, however pathetic that may sound. These are the persons that are the first on our list”, says Vukasin Petrovic, activist of Otpor from Belgrade.

Petrovic claims that Otpor has got hold of a large number of information about those who had given orders and now they are collecting evidence against them. He does not wish to mention their names at this moment, but confirms that they belong to the hardcore of the regime controlled by the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) and Yugoslav United Left (JUL). The documentation from whole of Serbia is being collected in one place: evidence on persons beaten up, arrests, mistreatment. Statements and documents are gathered together about the treatment, procedure, the chain of command, who gave the orders to whom, who were the perpetrators, whether some persons refused to obey orders. “We are trying to discern that chain of command, to recognise all those responsible in that chain. That means not just persons who issued orders that repressive action be taken, but also persons who participated in corruption, who were the main levers and centres of corruption. In the course of next month during the election campaign we will inform the public about one such case every week”, stresses this activist.

“We have a complete indictment against Marko Milosevic, not just for the attempted murder and what happened in May, but for many other things he did on the side which were not connected to this specific case. Our goal is to collect such documentation, so that when we bring criminal charges against them, all those responsible can be sentenced to 500-600 years in prison”, says Petrovic.

Every day the lawyers in Otpor's Service for Enforcing the Truth talk to the citizens who were victims of various forms of repression. Between 50 and 100 people come daily to their Belgrade office. They seek legal assistance or bring specific evidence on repression, thefts, embezzlement, abuse of office. “The key element is the investigation in which the documents are analytically studied, additional documents are sought, certain people are interviewed. This is an informal, terribly big investigation. Everybody wishes to be Eliot Ness. We indeed wanted to make them the Untouchables – a specialised team which will do nothing but that. That is exactly what we will do in the new year, as soon as the elections are over”, explains Petrovic.

Members of Otpor in Voivodina brought charges against five persons for abuse of office, fraud and other criminal acts. Branimir Nikolic, coordinator of the campaign of Otpor for determination of crimes of representatives of the former regime declared that the citizens had put at the disposal of the team of experts who are engaged in this campaign evidence on embezzlement and criminal acts of some of the directors. Charges were brought against the director and financial director of Metal enterprise from Senta, Marjan Djurovic and Bosko Tevdjevic. According to Nikolic's words, due to racketeering of other directors in Subotica in the name of Zepter Bank charges were brought against Milan Jerinkic, president of the committee of Yugoslav Left for Northern Backa district. On November 24, Otpor filed an appeal with the District Public Prosecutor's Office against director of Subotica Pionir factory Miroljub Aleksic and director of Belgrade Alco Bank Biljana Aleksic for violation of the law in the process of privatisation of Pionir. Otpor also demanded re-examination of the privatisation process of this factory. According to Nikolic's words criminal charges are also being prepared against several persons who held highly responsible posts in the administration, industries, banks and parties.

Otpor, which nowadays gathers 85 thousand activists, has set two goals for the forthcoming Republican elections. The first is, like in September, to stimulate the largest possible number of people to vote in the elections. “Come to the Polls and Vote” is the first campaign. “Our goal is to repeat the turnout of the voters from the previous elections, because it is necessary to give the largest possible legitimacy to the new democratic authorities who will without doubt be elected in December. The other goal is to prevent, if possible, the parties of the former regime from winning even a single seat in the assembly. The second campaign is against the parties of the former regime and against the newly founded parties by persons who also were part of the former regime. Our goal is to throw them out altogether from political and social life”, our interlocutor says.

According to his words, “the former” cannot win the elections, but they must not even be the opposition. “For us they are a threat – that in a month, two, three, a year or two, a group of people will gather around them again who will want to throw Serbia back into the middle ages. Some kind of a constructive opposition is needed, and such opposition should be created now. The opposition to the authorities, but which will push Serbia forward, which will compete with the administration, which will contribute more to the development of the country. DOS as a group may disappear, but they will continue to work together on the same job and cooperate. We will try to form the opposition made up of the people who are not members of any party. I think that the decisive role now is that of the so-called third sector: associations, non-governmental organisations, independent media, trade unions. They are the ones that should form a firm non-partisan opposition; the opposition which will work and not just criticise the regime: participate in reconstruction of the university, health services, promotion of culture and arts, which will make efforts to prevent the regime from making mistakes”, stresses Petrovic.

Otpor sees December elections as the third act of very important elections – the choice between life and death. The first act was September 24, the second was October 5. In the first act the regime was beaten in the elections, in the second the victory was defended, or rather the regime was beaten in the street. “This will be a confirmation of what we did in September and October. This is as when you occupy a city and then you have to cleanse it of the remainders of the enemy's army. In preparing the campaign we succeeded in one thing – to identify all those against whom we will launch the campaign. Therefore, it will not be the SPS as a political party, but the individuals from the SPS. For example, Bane Ivkovic, Gorica Gajevic, Milomir Minic – for what they have done. Against every one of them we are launching the campaign. That is why Bane Ivkovic will see his posters in Vracar showing everything he has done: sent tough guys to beat up children, stole such and such amounts of money, so will you vote for him? That is what every one of them will have to cope with”, this member of Otpor explains.

The beginning of the campaign was the counter-convention at Usce at the time when the convention of the SPS was taking place. The idea was to show to the people that nothing had changed among the so-called Leftists, that the whole absurdity continued. After Djordje Balasevic's concert, observation of the day of the struggle against AIDS and land mines, the “crystal night” will follow on December 9. Stimulation of the citizens to vote in the elections will be in the campaign “from door to door”, and arousing of the young generation will be done through 25 concerts organised together with the Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM). The campaign Rock 'n' Roll for Elections titled “There Can No Relaxing” and with the motto “Use It” has begun in Lazarevac, the town which is the symbol of the rebellion of miners against the last election theft. Members of Otpor are negotiating with certain rock groups from Slovenia and Croatia to come to Belgrade (KUD "Idijoti", Rundek from "Prljavo kazaliste", Lajbahom).

In his comment of the slogan “We are Just Watching You” and the excavator, Vukasin Petrovic says that the central machine of the October revolution should neither be identified with Velja Ilic nor with Otpor. The excavator is the instrument by means of which we have gained freedom, the symbol is the fist as this activist believes: “At this moment the excavator serves as a warning, let's say as a threat to everybody, not just the former regime, not just the new regime, but also to all political subjects and individuals”, says Petrovic.

Only after the Republican elections it will be possible to say that the first goal of Otpor was reached – overthrow of Milosevic and his regime. Then time will come for the second goal – the change of the system, as our interlocutor says. Petrovic announces that a big project has been prepared for recovery of Serbia, of institutions that the system is founded on. The first on the list is technical modernisation of the university and that of its curriculae. Various foundations from abroad have already sent their offers, for example, to establish a faculty for administration which would educate professionals for work in the administration. There is also the idea for a faculty for the media which would offer modern education in this field. According to Petrovic's words, members of Otpor intend to be a cultural and social and political movement in the new millenium: “There used to be just a struggle against Milosevic, and now its total rock 'n' roll. We will not become a political party. Next year we will devote ourselves more to culture, media, university, and in the political sphere we will continue controlling the regime and be a constructive opposition to it”.

Vesna Vujic

(AIM)