CITIZENS OF BELGRADE BEATEN UP

The Time of Long - Truncheons

A few days ago, without any reason, the police attacked citizens of Belgrade: the epilogue of beating people up with truncheons and kicking, according to official data from the Emergency Centre, is eighteen injured persons. Journalists, cameramen, old men, teenagers, women, men, were heartlessly beaten up, and even a twelve-year old girl was also beaten up. Two days prior to that, a demonstrant, Predrag Starcevic, was killed under for the time being unclarified circumstances

AIM Belgrade, 28 December, 1996

What is the police doing? With their minds directly plugged in to state-controlled TV, many worshippers of the deeds - nothing to say about the person - of Serbia's President Slobodan Milosevic, wondered before the Ministry of the interior of Serbia started using abundantly rubber truncheons. How is it possible that the police tolerates "hooligan and vandalistic demonstrations of a handful of passion-inflamed rightists and misguided students"? Is not there enough space in prisons for the mentioned when they are waving German and American flags, whistling at beloved Sloba for twenty minutes and disturbing the traffic in the city by everyday walks down main Belgrade streets? How come the chiefs

• " the proven traitors, foreign mercenaries and criminally suspected leaders" of coalition Together, Vuk Draskovic, Vesna Pesic and Zoran Djindjic - have not been arrested so any voter of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), the Yugoslav United Left (JUL) from Surduclica or Zagubica could sit in judgement over them on the spot?

What is the police doing - before they had felt rubber truncheons on their backs - a few hundred thousand citizens who are demanding recognition of results of local elections also wondered. After the experience of demonstrations on 9 March 1991 and 1 June 1993, many of them doubt that the Ministry of the interior of Serbia exists for any other purpose except to use truncheons against tax payers every time they rebel against repression and thefts of the regime. Indeed, what was the police doing for thirty five days before it began thrashing the citizens instead of protecting them?

Warming Up

As we learn, forthe sake of informing everyone, it did not stand idle and sitting on its hands. Hours upon hours of recorded telephone and other conversations of those "interesting from the aspect of security" were played, sleepless nights were spent over maps showing movements of the above mentioned, numerous meetings with permanent and occasional associates and informers were held... The police was then photographing demonstrants (by officers or by cameras hung up on lamp posts) and made selections of the material shot by cameramen of the state media: for the "data base", but also as evidence for arresting people who had thrown stones along with the eggs at the buildings of state TV and Politika. Some of these shots were then used by the mentioned companies for allegations about "handfuls of hooligans". And when speaking about media, let us also say that State Security Service started a disinformative weekly of its own called Fles

• political pornography yet unseen in this space.

The police intervened as soon as Milosevic's vanity came on the agenda: Dejan Bulatovic who had carried the puppet presenting President of Serbia in a convict's suit was arrested to set an example and brutally beaten up and convicted to 25 days in prison - allegedly for disturbing the traffic. A cordon of police twice prevented the couple Milosevic-Markovic from hearing students' whistles and chanting "Red Gang".

It seems that that was all that police analysts advised should be done. They counted on the traditional disharmony among opposition leaders, on propaganda and intimidation by state media, on fatigue and defeatism of the students and citizens due to the unyielding regime, on the cold, worn out shoes... Apart from that, the authorities received clear and unambiguous warnings from the international community, primarily the USA that they would be taken responsible for violence, and Milosevic was still trying to preserve the appearances of a serious partner and a man who abides by the rules set by himself.

Counter-demonstrations

However, the situation has developed into a crisis. Demonstrations have not died down, but on the contrary intensified; the colder it got, the more ardently citizens demanded respect of their will; inflexibility of the regime started to shake its own foundations, and leaders of the coalition Together have never had better chances, so they could not allow themselves any public conflicts. Something had to be done. The authorities decided that that something should be counter-demonstrations. Their first task was to express love "until death" to Slobodan Milosevic, in an organized manner and according to the rules of the service, and then, in a revolutionary manner and with assistance and logistic support of the police, disperse the "handful of rightists" who were gathering in more than forty towns of Serbia. Counter-demonstrations which started in the deepest and hidebound provinces, somehow passed. In Kragujevac and Valjevo, police cordons had a hard time saving the counter-demonstrants brought by buses from the revolt of five times more numerous local citizens. Not even the greatest experts of State Security Service could organize anything with several thousand bewildered pensioners and workers brought directly from factories.

Then it was decided to abandon the idea about counter-demonstrations in rebellious towns of Serbia. Although exceptionally numerous, the police did not have sufficient instruments to control the situation as desired. It was decided to shoot straight in the head - at Belgrade: the SPS set out into a logistic operation of bringing counter-demonstrants by buses and trains from the whole country, and police officials started elaboration of the operation. According to available sources, two possibilities were considered: first, organized worshippers of Milosevic's person and deeds, in a seizure of just rage, disperse and rout Belgrade demonstrants so that the whole world can see that the whole of Serbia supports its President. And second, major conflicts among the citizens occur, they last for some time, and then after police intervention, Milosevic as a symbol of unity of the nation, in order to prevent civil war, proclaims a state of emergency.

Both possibilities turned out to be futile. About sixty thousand counter-demonstrants, with paid daily allowances and distributed buns, were everything but a party army ready to fight. While they were passing through two rows of Belgraders, showered with eggs, crackers and sauerkraut, it became clear to them that reality in the capital greatly differs from the one presented on state TV. And then, leaders and person in charge of security in the coalition Together and the '96 Students' Protest made a great effort to separate the masses of over two hundred fifty thousand people from the counter-demonstrants. Nevertheless, an hour prior to the beginning of the counter-demonstrations, a cordon of police was forced to pounce upon thousands of enraged citizens with their truncheons in order to enable the beginning of the rally. They acted comparatively professionally and applied a minimum of force.

Will for Power

Although representatives of the regime claim that more than 500,000 people were present at the counter-demonstrations, it is clear that even they are aware that it was a complete fiasco and a terrible disgrace. Questions could be heard whether State Security Service was telling Milosevic only what he wished to hear. In any case, these counter-demonstrations publicly revealed the regime. Milosevic, Markovic and their people were seized with rage of desperadoes. There was nothing to hide any more, nor to vindicate oneself - many of their supporters who are by definition with those who have power, started to waver.

A day after the counter-demonstrations, the police warned the demonstrants with a public statement that in the future walks would be prevented. Indeed, several thousand policemen in full gear for breaking up demonstrations and with long automatic weapons blocked the traffic downtown Belgrade, although alleged direct cause for their intervention was jammed traffic. The students were allowed to walk, but not the citizens who gathered at the call of leaders of coalition Together at the Republic Square. Two things could be noticed immediately. After the end of the demonstrations, cordons in main and minor streets provoked the citizens preventing them to return home, and second: when a certain number of gathered citizens tried to pass across Terazije as soon as police began to withdraw, truncheons were immediately employed. Nevertheless, it seemed that everything would remain within normal limits.

And then, after the gathering two days after the counter-demonstrations, surrounded by police, the night of long truncheons occurred. After the end of the rally, citizens started dispersing with difficulties like the previous day... Then it began: in front of the City Assembly in the Street of Serbian Rulers, eight civilians with wooden batons dashed at the passers-by and started beating them up. They jumped out of two white cars and beat the citizens in front of policemen who calmly stood and watched. When they realized that the citizens would start towards them, they ran away. When a platoon of police finally approached, it seemed as their rear-guard, and not as somebody who would oppose them.

A similar thing, with much graver consequences took place near Hotel Moscow in Terazije Square. On 27 December, a few hundred Belgraders imprisoned between two cordons in a carneval-resembling atmosphere, whenever the traffic light turned green crossed the street, and when it turned red again, they returned to the pavement and chanted: "Give us back the green". After the end of the second rally, in the midst of the police, the same began all over again. It lasted just a few minutes, and then tens policemen and a group of civilians (who also turned out to be policemen) assaulted the demonstrants and the passers-by. They beat the citizens heartlessly and cruelly: journalists, cameramen, old men, teenagers, men, women, and even a twelve-year old girl was beaten up. It is known that at least eighteen persons had to ask for doctor's help at the Emergency Centre.

Dispersing of demonstrants resembled an expensive horror film. While the citizens in columns in the snow passed between the policemen standing in a line by the pavement (two on each metre), police vans and jeeps were slowly passing by.

Development

The Ministry of Internal Affairs of Serbia has more than eighty thousand members, it is exceptionally well equipped and in past several years it was transformed into a party army of mercenaries. The idea of beating up of citizens with rubber truncheons in Belgrade was in fact conceived to forcibly break up the demonstrations. For that purpose, about ten thousand policemen, mostly from the interior of the country, are freezing in the streets for three days already. Nobody bothers them, they are poorly paid, and when they are withdrawn, they are given a can of food each in the buses. Although they come out into the streets furious, partly because their fellow-citizens from the provinces at the counter-demonstrations fared as thy did, after some time spent in contact with the citizens, especially with the students (when they were prevented from going for a walk and when they were squeezed into Knez Mijalova street, they walked in front of the cordon with their hands on their heads like prisoners), they relax, they communicate, laugh at jokes of the demonstrants. In this context, all the force they personify becomes nonsensical and ridiculous, they increasingly fit into the developments as a decor which hardly anyone is interested in and not at all scared of.

In order to prevent that, the beating up in Terazije was ordered. There was absolutely no cause for it: apart from intimidation, it was ordered in order to create and intensify tension between the two camps - the citizens and the police.

Similar is the case with the brutes in civilian clothes. Apart from the mentioned, their aim was probably to cause completely confusion: nobody in the crowd of demonstrants knows who they were and when they might attack. Briefly they were used in the same manner as para-military units in the war - to cause incidents and dirtiest of crimes. No wonder they were rumoured to be men of Zeljko Raznatovic Arkan.

And there is yet another thing: violence of police was not limited only to places where the demonstrations were. Near Slavija Square, for instance, on the day when there was no protest gathering because of the funeral of demonstrant Predrag Starcevic killed under unclarified circumstances on 24 December, two young men were brutally pulled into a police van because they blew their whistles a few times.

It is very difficult to forecast further developments. Seriously disturbed, but not intimidated, the citizens have manifested a great deal of wisdom, patience and persistence, although reacions to the brutes who beat them, especially in civilian clothes are - unpredictable. Bitterness because of police violence has spread even among those who were indifferent to protests. On the other side is Milosevic who is not famous for rationality, whose pyramid of power is wavering and the foundations of which are wearing out and who is already being abandoned by some of his followers. It is certain that the regime in such circumstances will not shrink from anything, but it is also certain that hardly anything will remain as it used to be in Serbia, even the police whose pretorian loyalty to the Serbian President was unquestinable until recently.

(AIM) Philip Schwarm