BRUTAL BEATING UP OF CITIZENS

Violence in Belgrade Streets

Police Torture in Belgrade

After 35 days of peaceful protests of citizens of Belgrade due to stealing of votes in the local elections, Serbian authorities chose to brutally settle accounts with the citizens. First, walks around Belgrade of the students and the citizens were prohibited, and real repression and the first brutal beating up of citizens followed after the end of the peaceful protest of the Coalition Together at the Square of the Republic on 27 December. According to the official data on that day, 18 citizens asked for medical assistance at the Emergency Centre, although it is assumed that the number of injured persons is considerable larger because of massive beatings.

That afternoon, after the end of the protest, citizens were slowly dispersing on their way home, with difficulties because of the blockaded centre of the city, when in the main Belgrade street - Srpskih vladara (of Serb Rulers) - young men in civilian clothes, identically dressed and with wooden sticks in their hands, pounced upon the passers-by. They beat up whoever they found, while cordons of members of special police units peacefully observed. A similar scene, but with much graver consequences, was repreated in the vicinity of Hotel Moscow in Terazije Square: a few hundreds of citizens of Belgrade captured between two cordons of police, in a carneval resembling atmosphere, were crossing the street every time the traffic light turned green, and then returning to the pavements when it turned red, symbolically protesting against prohibition of protest walks, which was officially explained by the need to re-establish normal traffic in the city.

The entertainment lasted for about ten minutes and then tens of policemen pounced on citizens and again men in civilian clothes and with wooden sticks. People were literally stamped upon and beaten up, without difference: women, children, old men, journalists. Many of them remained lying in pools of blood in the streets. Personnel of the Hotel Moscow offered assistance to them, while many sought protection and medical assistance in the near-by premises of the Democratic Party.

Cameraman of Austrian Television (ORF) Djordje Nikolic, was beaten up in front of the mentioned Hotel Moscow, and his camera was damaged. He was beaten up by the police while he was on assignment. Rade Radovanovic journalist and activist of the Trade Union Nezavisnost (Independence), and Nikola Majdak cameraman of Radio B92 were also taken to hospital with injuries. Cameraman of Russian television (NTV) Oleg Cupin also suffered a concussion, and his colleague Aleksandar Lemkin was beaten up.

"I was standing with my wife in front of the Terazije fountain and watching what was happening and how the police were attacking peaceful citizens... They knocked me down on the ground and hit me with their batons and their feet. Had not my wife lied down on top of me, I believe they would have killed me", Momcilo Cebalovic, journalist of Politika describes the events, who got injuries of the back and stiches on his head in this attack of the police: "While they were beating me up, an elderly man was standing in front of the fountain and hysterically shouting 'Kill him, kill him'. It was terrible."

A twelve year old girl D.T. was also beaten up, who had gone out with her mother to see what was happening and to buy something for supper. She told the journalists that she was standing on a flower-stand and that a policeman told her to come down from it: "I said I wouldn't because it was my flower-stand and that they should arrest Sloba. Then they hit mother across the back, and me on my head and my legs. We ran away into a doorway, and I was sick and could not breathe because of fear". By men in civilian clothes with wooden sticks, who are said to be men belonging to Zeljko Raznjatovic Arkan or members of party police, Slobodan Homer and Nebojsa Jeftic, members of the leadership of the '96 Students' Protest, were also beaten up.

Embittered by violence which was not provoked in any way, citizens of Belgrade contacted the media to say what was happening in the streets. The opposition parties announced they would lodge appeals against the police.

Violence and killing in the Streets of Belgrade started after the counter-demonstrations organized by the ruling party on 24 December. The first victim fell on that day, too. For the time being, under unclarified circumstances, a demonstrant from Belgrade, Predrag Starcevic, was killed, while Ivica Lazovic, member of the Serb Revival Movement (SPO), is fighting for his life in the Belgrade Clinical Centre. In the centre of the city at the time of the counter-demonstrations, he was shot at by a supporter and party official of the Socialist Party of Serrbia (SPS) from Begac in Voivodina, Zivko Sandic, employed in Novi Sad. Torture continues around Belgrade, people are arrested in the streets, at night and after the end of demonstrations. Protest gatherings, despite everything, are continuing in Belgrade and other cities of Serbia. Every day, the police blockades the city around noon, as well as to a somewhat lesser extent the rebellious cities around Serbia, where the citizens are also exposed to police repression, arrests and beatings. At the moment, it is impossible to forecast further developments. All things considered, the citizens are more patient and peaceful than the nervous authorities. Nevertheless, wrath is increasing on both sides.

(AIM) Branka Kaljevic