Balkans: June 30, 2000

Archives

: Radio Free Europe ran an interesting analysis that speculates the long-awaited "break-up" of Serbia's ruling coalition may finally be occurring. While it may be premature to reach that conclusion, the political disagreement is public and significant. Here's the situation: Serbian Deputy Prime Minister (and Serb Radical Party leader) Vojislav Seselj announced on 29 June that the Radicals would not support the Milosevic government's new anti-terror laws. (The laws are little more than a veil for cracking down on anti-Milosevic opponents.) The public disagreement caused Milosevic backers to cancel (at least temporarily) a vote on the "laws." One of the chief targets of the "anti-terror" legislation is the student-led Serbian "Otpor" (Resistance) movement. StrategyPage has covered Otpor in the past. The student leaders know how to attract TV cameras. The organization isn't much in ideological terms - at best quasi-capitalist, certainly pro-democracy. What holds it together is opposition to Milosevic. Milosevic supporters , however, describe Otpor as a terrorist and fascist movement. RFE pointed out that the proposed anti-terror laws are drawn so that Milosevic can assert that anyone who opposes him is a terrorist.

X

ad

Help keep us a float!

Your support helps us keep our ship a float. We appreciate anyway you chose to help out. Visit us daily, subscribe, donate, and tell your friends.

You can support us in the following ways:

  1. Subscribe to our daily newsletter. We’ll send the news to your email box, and you don’t have to come to the site unless you want to read columns or see photos.
  2. You can contribute to the health of StrategyPage.
  3. Make sure you spread the word about us. Two ways to do that are to like us on Facebook and follow us on X.
Subscribe   Contribute   Close