Milosevic Keeps Police Pressure on Opposition

Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic’s regime cracked down on opponents Saturday with several more arrests of opposition activists ahead of this month’s national elections.

Three members of the popular anti-Milosevic student group Otpor, or Resistance, were arrested in Belgrade, the Yugoslav and Serbian capital, for putting up posters urging people to vote against the president in the Sept. 24 election.

Two other Otpor activists were arrested but later released in the northern town of Subotica near the border with Hungary, the group’s central office said.

A leading human rights group in Serbia, the Humanitarian Law Fund, said police had beaten two Otpor members Friday for distributing leaflets calling for resistance to Milosevic’s regime.

Meanwhile, the president’s main challenger, Vojislav Kostunica, said that “all that is happening now proves that the elections are already unfair,” the private Beta news agency reported.

Kostunica has been campaigning across the country as the candidate proposed by 18 allied opposition parties united by a common goal: ousting the autocratic president.

“What we are struggling for is not a revolution but democracy. Most of all, we need a normal life in a normal country,” Kostunica said.

On Friday, 22 opposition activists were arrested in various towns. Police raided at least two offices of nongovernmental groups, seizing computers and releasing the detainees only after hours-long questioning.