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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Student Protesters Earn High Marks Serbs Impressed With Youths’ Pro-Democracy Movement

Associated Press

Fueled with caffeine, cigarettes and much of the nation’s admiration, students have become the engine driving Serbia’s pro-democracy movement.

Students have kept themselves outside the atmosphere of hatred and mistrust that pervades today’s Serbia - between President Slobodan Milosevic and the political opposition, between haves and have-nots, between city slickers and rural residents.

They provide the good-humored choreography, costumes and props that have turned protest into political theater. Their marshals keep order on the streets. Their ideas give steam to the demonstrations, now in their sixth week. And, unlike opposition politicians, they enjoy unqualified public support.

“These young people are the only innocent people in this society,” said Sonja Biserko, the head of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia. “They’re not responsible for Milosevic being in power for 10 years.”

Many Serbs are angry at Milosevic for starting wars in Bosnia and Croatia, and for encouraging international isolation with his extreme nationalist views and policies. They are angry, too, at foreign governments for imposing economic sanctions that brought a brisk end to the comfortable life many people once enjoyed.

But no one seems to dislike the students.

People are impressed by their good humor, discipline, clear thinking, and by their faith in Serbia’s democratic future - faith that kept them from leaving the country, like some 200,000 young Serbs have over the past six years.

Zoran Mitic, a 30-year-old taxi driver, got out of his car recently to watch a stream of student protesters march past. He didn’t mind losing fares. The students, he said, are “the ones who want to live in this country, the people whom this country should rely on, the people who still think with their heads.”

When Milosevic decided to meet with opponents last month, it wasn’t with his political foes. He chose a group of students from Nis, who had walked 150 miles to talk to him.

On New Year’s Eve, student delegates went to his neighborhood in hopes of presenting a pro-democracy message, but police turned them back.

The students have been careful to distance themselves publicly from the political opposition, which Milosevic backers accuse of inciting civil war and which skeptics claim expresses the same aggressive nationalism that sparked wars in Croatia and Bosnia.

“Ours isn’t a partisan protest, but it is a political protest,” said student spokesman Vojislav Filipovic, a 19-year-old archeology major at Belgrade University.