March to revolution

Up to half-a-million people marched on Belgrade

Correspondent reports in a special programme on the extraordinary events which brought the downfall of Slobodan Milosevic.

You can watch Correspondent Special here.

By Allan Little in Belgrade

Few believed that Slobodan Milosevic would cede power without defeat or that the end would come without bloodshed.

But when the Serbs finally rose up against his tyranny, they did it bloodlessly and in the name of democracy.

Zoran Lucic is a mining engineer at the Kolubara mine where the Serbian revolt began. He was one of those who led the rebellion, facing Milosevic's police sent to force the miners back to work.

"Of course we were afraid," he said. "But we decided that even at the price of death we would stay ... and defend our homes."

Fearing a police assault, the miners broadcast an appeal for help. It came in numbers no-one predicted - first on foot and then whole convoys, sweeping past the police barricades.

United cause

And Vojislav Kostunica, the Belgrade law professor who defeated Milosevic at the polls, went to the mine too.

Miners' leader Zoran Lucic: Of course we were afraid

"Do you know what that means to the miners," said Zoran Lucic.

"Tito never came here, Milosevic never came, President Kostunica has already been to this mine twice."

The miners gave Serbia's divided opposition a single cause to unite around. They invited the nation to go Belgrade and blockade the city for a day.

Student leader Jovan Ratkovic said: "We knew the people of Belgrade could not do it alone. The help of the people from other cities was really important."

'All or nothing'

The most important help came from the city of Cacak in central Serbia.

Velimir Ilic led the 20km-long convoy from Cacak

Their mayor, Velimir Ilic, called on his people to follow him to Belgrade and into the heart of the nation's crisis.

"I had decided to go for all or nothing. I was not interested in what was going to happen to me. All I knew was that I could not return if we lost."

The townspeople formed a convoy, part mechanised protest, part carnival. It included 50 buses, 1,000 cars and a bulldozer to remove police barricades.

At 10.30 on 5 October they were among the first to arrive in the heart of Belgrade, the red banner of the city of Cacak to the fore.

Battle for Belgrade

The opposition had given Milosevic an ultimatum - recognise the election result by 15.00 or face an indefinite popular blockade. Few expected Milosevic to cede power without a fight.

Police barricades were pushed off the road

Already nervous, the police took their positions around the parliament building. Perhaps half-a-million people had joined the protest - would the police really open fire on their fellow citizens?

Suddenly, the crowd tried to storm the building. When the police realised they could not stop them they shot tear gas, spreading confusion.

The mayor of Cacak wasn't confused. "We had formed assault groups which were led by professionals, paratroopers.

"And there was overwhelming support by the people, who were chanting: 'Cacak, Cacak, we are with you.' When a critical mass had formed, that is when we attacked."

Bloodless revolution

And then, the instant that wrote history. The attack on the federal parliament, the people, rising, as one, to storm the corrupt citadel, trampling tyranny underfoot. It looked like a text-book nineteenth century Revolution.

Later, the torching of the state television station seemed to seal the regime's fate.

At the forefront of the protesters - the banner reads "Cacak"

For those police swept up in the turmoil of events there was only one choice - an edgy and humiliating surrender to the will of the people.

The manner in which the Serbs, finally, overthrew their hated leader mattered as much as the fact itself.

The people who seized the parliament and then laid waste to the studios of state television did so not to seize power. They did it to uphold a democratic choice they'd taken at the ballot box.

Milosevic's ghost haunts Yugoslavia's new dispensation.

The single most significant and powerful image of the week was the sight of thousands of fake ballot papers tossed from the smoking windows of the federal parliament, hanging in the afternoon breeze - graphic proof of the treachery with which Milosevic had tried to steel the opposition's election victory.

For a nation soaked in blood and compromised beyond measure by the crimes committed in its name these last ten years, this is of breathtaking and momentous significance.

It has the makings of a genuine fresh start.

Fragmented coalition

But it is a demi-revolution for all that. Milosevic's ghost haunts Yugoslavia's new dispensation.

Tear gas filled the air outside parliament

His loyal deputies are still in control of the parliament of the Serbian republic. They are regrouping and planning their comeback as a political force.

The coalition that supports Kostunica is fragmented and riven with internal rivalries. It is also compromised. Many of those cheering his election supported Milosevic during the years of ethnic cleansing.

Kostunica himself is a nationalist who blames Milosevic not for starting and waging war against his neighbours - but for failing to wage those wars with sufficient vigour to win them outright.

But for all that he has an undisputed record as an upholder of multi-party democracy and the rule of law.

Everyone here inhabits a world in which Serbia is forever the victim

No-one here disputes that he is a man of principle. He is not corrupt. He does not have blood on his hands. And that, in Serbia, after ten years of Milosevic, is revolutionary in itself.

The Serbs remain obsessed to the point of madness with their own suffering. No-one here wants to know anything about the crimes Milosevic committed - in the name of the Serbian people - outside Serbia.

Facing up to the past

Belgrade is a disputatious and politicised place. But after ten years of isolation it has lost any capacity it may have had for internal self criticism.

Everyone here inhabits a world in which Serbia is forever the victim of other people's misdemeanours - never the perpetrator.

Kostunica is part of that mind set. His revolution is not yet one in which the Serbian nation will look itself squarely and honestly in the face and confront the crimes that have been committed in its name.

Until it does - for all that Kostunica represents and real and revolutionary break with the Milosevic tyranny - Serbia's neighbours will be right to look to Belgrade with a hope qualified by scepticism and suspicion.