20 years of European journalism & history

From Milošević to
freedom
– and back again
the year
2000
Europe's new century began with the peaceful overthrow of an old monster,
Slobodan Milošević – but Serbia is less free today than it was before the
revolution, Vesna Pešić said.
By Andrew Rettman
Europe's new century began with the peaceful
overthrow of an old monster: the late Serbian
dictator Slobodan Milošević.
people entered the parliament building," she said.
"I felt very proud," she added.
It was called the 'Bulldozer Revolution', after a man
drove a bulldozer into Milošević's propaganda HQ, the
radio and TV building in Belgrade, on 5 October 2000.
"I was scared the military would react, but it didn't.
Somebody did a good job. Thank you, whoever it might
be," Pešić said.
And Serbia's student-led uprising inspired similar ones
in Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine, and even as far afield as
Kyrgyzstan, in the next few years to come.
But in 2020, Milošević's former propaganda chief,
Aleksandar Vučić, is now sitting in Serbia's presidential
throne.
The revolution's leader, Serbia's late prime minister,
Zoran Đinđić, has been murdered, and most of his
former allies live in silence and fear.
And even though Vučić gets red-carpet treatment
in EU capitals, "internally, he looks more like the
Lukashenko of Serbia," for Vesna Pešić, a former
Bulldozer Revolution activist, referring to Belarusian
dictator Alexander Lukashenko.
"We had more freedom under Milošević than we do
now," Pešić said.
The 80-year old academic started fighting for human
rights in Serbia back when it was still Yugoslavia in the
1970s.
And on 5 October 2000, she found herself in a crowd of
half-a-million people in front of the parliament, with no
army or police in sight.
"The whole night was like an anarchic dream,
everybody was free to do whatever they wanted ...
One of the people Serbs ought to thank, she said, was
Đinđić.
"He made a deal with the most dangerous elite police
formation [the Red Berets] not to shoot people," Pešić
said.
Another one was the then Russian foreign minister,
Igor Ivanov.
"He [Ivanov] flew to Belgrade on 6 October, went to
Milošević, and told him to recognise that he'd lost
elections. The same day, Milošević went on TV and
said he'd lost," Pešić recalled.
And behind Đinđić and Ivanov, stood the then US
president Bill Clinton, the then-15 EU leaders, and
Russian president Vladimir Putin.
"People were tired of Milošević, especially after the
traumatic [Nato] bombardment of Serbia, years of
sanctions, poverty, exclusion," she said, referring to
Western reaction to Milošević's bloody 1990s wars.
"All the international forces joined together to help the
Serbian opposition," she said.
Milošević's fall left intact the forces that had kept him in
office, however.
And at 12.23PM, Brussels time, on 12 March 2003,
03 — EUOBSERVER ANNIVERSARY 2020