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[RRE]repression in Serbia
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[Serbia is still there, and the Serbs are still suffering under their
vile government as well as the effects of the embargo and bombing.
I suspect that the best thing that everyone can do for the Serbs is
simply to contact your opposite numbers there. I mean, if you're
an engineer then make contact with engineers. Even if you don't do
anything political or talk about human rights, you're still building
the sort of lateral contacts that are the best long-term hope for
us all. On another topic, since this list was basically in favor of
the war, I have a responsibility to bring you the URL for a Stratfor
report that real evidence of large-scale massacres in Kosovo has not
yet been found:
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Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1999 18:46:53 +0100
From: "Women's Center Belgrade"
POLICE RAID ON STUDENT PROTEST IN BELGRADE Report from the Ad Hoc Coalition for the Women's Political Rights
dear friends,
Yesterday it was 9 of November, somewhere known as the International Day Against Fascism and Antisemitism. The Serbian parliament had a session in which the opposition parties submitted a demand for new elections. Therefore for that day Belgrade students organisations, under the title "Protest" (about 8 organizations), announced the protest march at 1pm, while the oppositional political parties gathered in "Alliance for Changes" announced their protest at 3pm.
Feminists, from various NGO-s, organized around the Ad Hoc Coalition for Women's Political Rights. We chose this political occasion to print 6.000 leaflets, with basic demand for involvement in decision making processes, and distribute them on the streets of Belgrade.
Despite the constant rain and strong wind all day yesterday couple of thousand students gathered on the students' protest . We were also there - seven activists from the Ad Hoc Coalition - to give our support to students, to monitor the protest and distribute our leaflets. In their march the students walked by the faculty buildings in the center of the town: Technology, Engineering, Law... screaming "Get Out" - demanding symbolical liberation of the Belgrade University.
In one moment when we turned in rather narrow street, the police showed up from the front side and started to beat randomly... so everyone started to run. it turned into a crowd in panic. It was a fearful stampede with people pushing, screaming and falling. Only ten minutes later the new brutal and severe police attack started again. Just when the students and citizens somehow exceeded their panic fear and continued to walk, on the wide street in the front of the Yugoslav parliament, police forces started to push from the back. Again running, wounds, anger and panic production.
In the evening the feminists from the Ad Hoc Coalition met again. We noted:
- one thousand leaflets were distributed - three activists were hurt in stampede* - all of us felt at moments very bad, because of the Serbian
political situation, and because some students were shouting to the police "Go to Kosovo" and "You are Ustashes" (Ustashes were Croat soldiers supporting German nazis in the Second World War) and in this way reproducing hatred and the "enemy'.
* - hundreds of students were exposed to fear and panic - very
well known violation of human rights in fascist regimes: violation of human right to life without fear.
In the evening, in the independed media, it was reported that more than 50 students were wounded, some of them badly, but none of them went to the official hospital. On the regime media there was not a single word about the protest and beating, only 10 minutes of hate speech about "Protest students" how they are payed by NATO etc.
As well, citizens that gathered at 3 p.m. for the opposition march were blocked by the police and were not allowed to walk the streets as planned.
Also, more than 30 buses with citizens from different towns in Serbia were prevented from reaching Belgrade and joining the demonstrations. They were stopped by police with explanation that buses were not technicaly OK, and that "buses with protesters pollute the enviroment with exaust gas"!
Feminists from the Ad Hoc Coalition feel that at the moment on one side the regime is ready to do anything to protesters: so shoot to beat to imprison... since the police on the streets are those "specials" who practised torturing Albanian citizens in Kosovo in the last ten years, on the other hand the regime knows that international public is monitoring Belgrade, waiting to get "Him" for Den Haag Tribunal, and that also, many people are against the regime and that therefore the low intensity torturing is more efficient; stopping buses, "only" beating and not imprisoning, making obstacles in every way for independed media, for example making constructions on places where protesters meet... etc
Ad Hoc Coalition for Women's Political Rights Belgrade, 10 of November 1999 ```
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