BDaD 3

There is little doubt of the result but no one knows, what will come next We knew that we will win and we knew that Milosevic will not accept and our advantage was we were prepared for second step that he will not accept our victory and he will try to manipulate after that At campaign headquarters after midnight they wait until the tabulations have been double checked Then they make the announcement which will make manipulation of the official results impossible Our data shows that a solid victory in the first round of presidential elections Only one question remains when or whether the winner will take office In the next days as Belgrade holds its breathe Milosevic's electoral commission says neither candidate polled over 50% And calls for a run-off election Now you face the most important task of your life You have to lead the protests You have been trained for this You have the support at universities It is your protest! Now everything depends on you! They have trained and organized for months Now they face decisive test of their non-violent movement Ten days they forced the regime to step down DOS and Kostunica declare a run-off is unnecessary and call upon the people to prepare for a general strike Three days before the strike is to begin coal miners at the Kolubar of mine,just south of Belgrade give Kostunica an unexpected boost a committee representing seventeen thousand workers votes to strike immediately they say they want their action to inspire the rest of the country to support the strike the mine which produces 70% of Serbia's electrical power is idle The miners have set an example Now, the rest of the country joins them, a nation-wide action to bring all normal life to standstill We knew that Milosevic can resist only with support from police and army and we knew if we can affect police and army around him and bring them to think should they support Milosevic or not, or the people that he cannot survive. And it was very important for us to find symbols of this very wide national resistance and to show the police and the army that it is not just opposition against government but it is people against Milosevic As police and army encircle the striking miners ordinary people respond to an urgent call to support and protect the strikers. Thousands come, a signal to the police and army that Milosevic is finished In largest cities taxi join in slow moving, rolling blockades Public transport drivers park their buses and street cars across major intersections The police try to maintain the order but every day the strike spreads Having lost the election and been taught in his attempts to steal it, Milosevic must now step down or use violence We had the nation trained not to attack the police not to use the violence because our message was "there is no war between police and us" that we, together, are the victims of the system and there is no reason to have war between victims and victims One victims are in blue uniforms other victims are in blue jeans but there is no reason for that blood DAS and its supporters are angry and persistent but they are also patient Determined to avoid bloodshed as they slowly escalate their actions It was crucial that we left enough time for this people in regime to understand what is going on It was not just one day revolution It was ten days, daily increasing this pressure in Serbia was a blockade By the end it was absolutely clear that majority is against Milosevic Ten days after the election almost no one in Belgrade realizes the turning point is at hand Since before daybreak Serbia has been on the move converging on the capital from every directions The operation has been pointly planned by DAS leaders across the country Convoy leaders have prepared for police resistance They even brought bulldozers to break through barricades if necessary At 9 a.m, one convoy lead by the major of the Čačak in his jogging suit finds the road completely blocked by police Tired of negotiating, the men of the Čačak convoy remove the blockade themselves These people who came from Čačak, Ružiće they were prepared to do anything they were not just an urban demonstrators as the most people of Belgrade you know, just go to the streets and shouts and then go home No! These people came here to do something and they will not go back home before that is finished Special units for anti-terrorist actions were expecting us see in Belgrade They have been cooperating with us closely We made radio contact within every ten minutes I would then give the information to my fellow citizens: We have the police. They are taking our side any minute now As the morning goes on it becomes clear that the police will build barricades but not defendant Convoys from the south enter Belgrade at about eleven in the morning They run their ruling point is the federal parliament building (the meeting point is the federal parliament building) Mayor Ilic stays in contact with convoys still on the road They plan to link up for a non-violent takeover of the parliament at 3 pm Through bad channel contacts with commanders DAS has them assured the security forces will step aside But no one takes it for granted We didn't know how police would react We knew that some part of police will not react against the people But we didn't know about all parts of police. and police were very confused The impatient Cacak contingent that dances before the other convoys arrive But they are easily repelled What the police don't know is that hundreds of thousands of Serbs are spilled on the road to Belgrade The farmers and workers that supported OTPOR and are determined to stop the theft of their votes Hours after the first convoys arrived in the capital the news reaches Belgrade citizens They come into the streets chanting Serbia has a reason. On this day there is only one place to be Brothers and sisters Do not provoke the police The police will move to the nation's side Do not create conflicting situations DOS leaders now monitoring police radio channels listen as orders are given to remove the crowds But nothing happens It didn't really mean to do anything They simply ignored the orders and they observed what is going on and when they realized that there are hundreds of thousands of people in the streets of Belgrade and there is more and more and more coming from the all parts of Serbia and you have a kind of uprising in this country of course, they knew that any kind of using force against these people will be a self-destruction and they realized would mean they are losers together with Milosevic they didn't want that to happen A reporter wrote, the police and army commanders never ordered their troops to fire Because they knew their own kids were in that crowd Inside the building they find thousands of presidential ballots pre-marked for Milosevic Well, braking few windows and parliament in flame sits just nothing In comparison to the former period here, to what Milosevic did here, to what other Balkan countries did here, to what US did here with its bombs that was like a children's game two lives were lost in the takeover two heart attacks suffered by elderly men in the crowd and a traffic accident Milosevic has not been seen in two days But there is no doubt he is finished The people have taken power What we needed the whole time was not the thread to use the force it was the thread to his won hold-on power and that was best gained through democratic forces within Serbia And you know a grand lesson in here is that Broad based coalition of popular non-violent protest can sweep away the dictatorship Much more quickly than all the covert action on Earth I think we succeeded because we simply loved, liked more than them Generally those guys were the preachers of the death Their hatred, their propaganda Their language smelled like that And we won because we loved life more We decided to love life and you can be the life. So this is what OTPOR did We were a group of fans of life and this is why we succeeded