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On Monday, posters began appearing around Belgrade of a Nazi soldier with his arm raised in a Hitler salute with the clenched fist that is Otpor's symbol of resistance. The poster reads "Madlen Jugend," referring to U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and the German word for Hitler Youth. The Milosevic regime has launched a campaign to systematically portray Otpor and Serbia's democratic opposition as domestic agents for the United States and NATO countries that bombed Serbia last year.

"The aggressor is placing his weapons in the hands of domestic servants in order for them to do their dirty work, to spread fear and chaos," said Gorica Gajevic, secretary general of Milosevic's Socialist Party of Serbia, this week in the state-run newspaper Politika. "They want to set Serbia on fire; they are attempting to topple the authorities with violence, to provoke street unrest, to incite a civil war." He went on to call Otpor "traitors and criminals," and threatened the regime would deal with Otpor "just as it has dealt with every other evil."

For days, the Milosevic regime has been signaling that a serious crackdown was imminent.

When Bosko Perosevic, an official from Milosevic's SPS Party, was gunned down Saturday at an agricultural fair in the northern Serbian city of Novi Sad, officials close to Milosevic's ruling coalition immediately accused Otpor of being responsible for the assassination.

Although this was one of the rare recent assassinations in Serbia for which the assassin was immediately identified and caught, the regime claimed that they found literature from both Otpor and the opposition political party of Vuk Draskovic, the Serbian Resistance Movement (SPO) in the gunman's apartment. Otpor and the SPO both deny that the gunman, Milivoje Gutovic, 50, was a member of their organizations. They say Serbian police have confiscated much of their material and probably planted it in the man's apartment.

A week before the assassination, bodyguards for Milosevic's 26-year-old playboy son, Marko, viciously beat up three Otpor members at a cafe in Milosevic's home town of Pozarevac. Two of the beaten students are being held in Serbian prisons, despite the fact that witnesses confirm their claim that Marko's bodyguards attacked them.

That came a few days after Marko reopened his Bambiland theme park for its second season of business. The $7 million Disney-style amusement park was built during the NATO bombing last year, when all the state's resources were supposed to be devoted to defending the homeland. Some in Serbia suggest that the animosity stems from Otpor's satirical attacks on the ruling family's nepotism, and the stealing and killing it has unleashed.

Serbian opposition leaders warn Serbian citizens that if they don't resist, Milosevic will usher in an era of open dictatorship.

"Support the opposition and Studio B," Studio B Television's director Jugoslav Pantelic urged demonstrators Wednesday night in front of city hall, urging them to stand up to Milosevic's "fascist-communist" government.

"The regime has taken the country into a state of emergency," opposition political parties wrote in a joint statement. "Let us stand against this violence with all our energy because the future of our country is at stake."

But without independent media left to broadcast their message, it is unclear how pro-democracy forces will now reach the Serbian public.
salon.com | May 18, 2000

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