Exactly 32 years ago, on 9th March 1991, the first major demonstrations against the then-country president Slobodan Milošević were held in Belgrade, during which police officer Nedeljko Kosović and student Branivoje Milinović were killed.
Although the reason of the protest, instigated by Vuk Drašković and his party Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO), was the demand for the resignation of TV Belgrade’s Director, Dušan Mitević, and of Interior Minister Radmilo Bogdanović, the protest later turned into an uprising against Milošević.
The demonstrations briefly undermined Milošević’s power who ordered several thousand police officers and tanks of the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) to be deployed in the streets of the capital, to curb the protest. Milošević called the demonstrators “forces of chaos and madness”.
After TV Belgrade broadcast a report stating that the SPO was cooperating with the populist regime in Croatia, on February 16, Drašković called for a demonstration to take place “on March 9, at noon in Republic Square” – with the protesters’ main demand being the sacking of the director of RTS, as well as four of the broadcaster’s editors.
The protest, also called “the rally against the five-pointed star,” was joined by the Democratic Party and several other opposition parties.
Many citizens marched to the square on March 9, shouting “Red bandits” and “Sloba, Saddam”. Milošević’s response was brutal. The clashes between the protesters, on the one hand, and the police and army, on the other, lasted for hours, with the police using batons, tear gas and water cannons.
The demonstrations were broadcast by Studio B TV, which programme was soon censored. Soon after, Studio B and another TV station, B92 (both considered “opposition” media) were shut down. The next day, masses of students joined the protest which was called “the velvet revolution”, just like the students’ protests in the then communist Czechoslovakia in 1989.
Following the protest, the Washington Post wrote on 13th March:” After four consecutive days of protests that constituted the biggest anti-communist street movement in Belgrade since World War II, the embattled regime of hard-line President Slobodan Milosevic made a series of sweeping concessions that included the firing of five senior editors at state-run television and enactment of a law aimed at making state media more objective. The demonstrations in Belgrade — the capital of both Yugoslavia and Serbia — came amid a worsening ethnic and political crisis in this patchwork Balkan country of six combative republics. Non-communist democratic governments in the northwestern republics of Croatia and Slovenia are demanding a fundamental loosening of the Yugoslav federation, without which they say they will secede. Serbia, the largest, most populous and most authoritarian republic, insists that the Yugoslav central government must remain strong.”
Only a few months following the Belgrade protests, on 27th June, the disintegration of Yugoslavia and a subsequent civil war started.
(N1, Telegraf, 09.03.2023)
https://n1info.rs/vesti/godisnjica-demonstracija-9-marta-da-li-se-i-sta-promenilo-za-32-godine/