Belgrade Police Disperse Rally by Serb Refugees

Moving to contain unrest over the Serbs’ defeat in Kosovo, police broke up a demonstration here Monday by about 200 angry Serbian refugees from the southern province and arrested their leader.

The refugees said Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic’s government abandoned them by withdrawing its troops from Kosovo and is now trying to send them home without protection against ethnic Albanian guerrillas.

About 70,000 Serbs fled Kosovo during 11 weeks of bombing by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, followed by 52,000 since the bombing ended earlier this month. Under a NATO-policed peace accord, hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanian civilians purged from Kosovo this spring by the Yugoslav army and Serbian police have returned home or are preparing to do so.

More than 2,000 Serbian refugees also headed back to Kosovo in recent days in government-organized convoys aimed at reversing the Serbian exodus and testing NATO’s pledge to preserve a multiethnic Kosovo. Ethnic Albanians made up 90% of the prewar population of 2 million in the province, which remains formally a part of Serbia, the Yugoslav federation’s main republic.

Monday’s rally in downtown Belgrade was by Serbian refugees who fled Prizren after the Kosovo Liberation Army swept into the city alongside German peacekeeping troops last week. The refugees said they were infuriated by Monday’s accord between the KLA and NATO, under which the ethnic Albanian separatist group doesn’t have to surrender its heavy weapons immediately.

“Even if they tell me it’s safe, I won’t go as long as those wild men are armed,” said Mihail, a 26-year-old former police reservist from Prizren who wouldn’t give his last name. “Milosevic can go to Kosovo and see for himself what he has caused. He’s the biggest traitor in Serbian history.”

The Serbian refugees’ numbers and their outrage are a threat to Milosevic because they challenge his claim that Kosovo is not lost.

In response, Milosevic’s government has halted the Serbian refugee convoys leaving Kosovo, forced refugees to disperse in towns just north of the provincial line and refused to assist them unless they agree to return home. Police are trying to keep them as invisible and as far away from Belgrade, the Yugoslav and Serbian capital, as possible.

Slipping past police checkpoints, the refugees from Prizren reached Belgrade and held a rally Sunday without interference. They were led by Svetozar Fisic, a 34-year-old economist who heads Prizren’s chapter of the opposition Democratic Party.

But when they tried to march to the federal parliament building Monday, police blocked the way, forcing them to retreat to their starting point in Terazije Square. Dozens of police followed and led Fisic away as he lifted a megaphone to read a statement accusing the government of “hiding the truth” about the Serbian exodus.

For the police officers, many of whom had fought in Kosovo, the situation was awkward. They insisted gently, almost apologetically, that they were under orders to arrest the demonstrators if they didn’t disperse.

“Please arrest me,” a young man who identified himself only as Nenad said sarcastically. “I was wounded twice as a reserve policeman” in Kosovo.

Nenad’s mother screamed at the police: “You are going to arrest your comrade? Shame on you!”

Slowly, the crowd withered away.

Hours later, a judge sentenced Fisic and another demonstrator to 30 days in prison for assembling citizens during Yugoslavia’s state of war and failing to register their arrival in Belgrade.

The state of war, decreed as NATO began bombing March 24, remains in force. It also prohibits men between 18 and 60 from leaving the country, allows the army to take over state institutions and subjects the news media to censorship.

On Monday, the government said it no longer needed the state of war because there was no more “NATO aggression.” It asked parliament to end the restrictions but gave no date for lawmakers to convene.

An opposition coalition, the Alliance for Change, announced immediately that it will start organizing demonstrations across Serbia, calling for early elections.

“There will be no money, there are 3 million jobless people, there is a flow of Kosovo Serb refugees, there is internal discontent within the security forces over yet another lost war,” Milan Protic, a leader of the coalition, told reporters. “The ballot box is the only peaceful way out of all that.”

Vuk Draskovic, who was a deputy prime minister in the Yugoslav government until he was fired in April, has been addressing crowds over the past week, unhindered by the state of war. Serbian state television has aired his latest messages, apparently to give him an advantage over the opposition alliance in maneuvering for postwar advantage.

Draskovic and his Serbian Renewal Movement have not called for Milosevic to quit, but do favor reducing his powers. Draskovic is demanding that the government restore diplomatic relations with NATO countries, end press censorship and reduce the army and police forces to peacetime levels.