CASE STUDY:
SERBIA, 1996–2000 JOSHUA PAULSON
EARLY DISSENT Serbian and Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic ruled for eleven years, from 1989 to 2000. His tenure was marked by the breakup of Yugoslavia, Serbia’s participation in four wars that resulted in more than 210,000 deaths, the creation of nearly three million refugees, and isolation from the international community. After fomenting genocidal “ethnic cleansing” in the former Yugoslav states of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, as well as in the province of Kosovo, Milosevic was indicted on war crimes charges by the International War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague. Demonstrations against Milosevic’s near-dictatorial rule occurred frequently during the 1990s and were often met with repression. Opposition leaders were arrested, tanks were sometimes called into the streets, and crowds were occasionally fired on by police or army units. Although large antigovernment demonstrations swept through the capital, Belgrade, in 1991, Milosevic and his Socialist Party of Serbia managed to hold on to power, largely by promoting popular nationalist policies and the expansionist dream of a “Greater Serbia.” By the second half of the decade, much of the population was dissatisfied with international isolation, the stigma of lost wars, thousands of dead, a ruined economy, average salaries under $70 per month, staggering inflation, and high unemployment. Many blamed Milosevic directly for their problems, but the “established” democratic opposition had difficulties uniting around an antiMilosevic platform. The divided opposition allowed Milosevic to maintain a stranglehold on local and state government even as he and his party lost popularity.
MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS AND STUDENT PROTESTS On November 17, 1996, municipal elections across Serbia proved to be a turning point. A loose opposition coalition of five small parties known as Zajedno (“Together”) won for the first time in forty cities, including Belgrade, Nis, and Cacak. Milosevic, however, had packed local election committees with members of his own party, and they refused to certify opposition victories in those forty cities. The Zajedno coalition called for marches and street protests to demand recognition of their electoral victories, and within two weeks the daily demonstrations in Belgrade grew from under two thousand participants to more than one hundred thousand. Workers were notably absent in the demonstrations, unlike the protests that swept the rest of Central and Eastern Europe seven years earlier. Serbian students, meanwhile, called for parallel protests of their own. They demanded recognition of the Zajedno victories, as well as the resignations of top University of Belgrade officials. The removal of Slobodan Milosevic did not yet figure among the student demands.