Democracy's Faint Heartbeat

Juneau's Annabel Lund is in Bosnia volunteering with Conflict Resolution Catalysts, which works with children and others in the war-torn nation. She filed this report on the winter's anti-government demonstrations in Belgrade, which have largely subsided.

I have a hangover from the biggest party in Europe.

My friends say it was the biggest, longest running bash in the world, but Serbs have a tendency to exaggerate their own importance.

However, standing in the middle of 220,000 celebrants making a joyful noise, rock bands set up on makeshift scaffolding bonfires, illuminating hundreds of folkdancers snaking through the square, I will concede it was one of the most exciting gatherings I ever crashed. I know what I was here I will see for the rest of my life.

The daily anti-government demonstrations in Belgrade running since November, were enormous. They were distinguished by a brilliant and engaging sense of humor and a refreshing and heartening lack of violence. The hopeful find nourishment in marvels such as this. I can hear the faint heartbeat of democracy in this unprecedented solidarity between hundreds of thousands of people who have somehow arrived at this same juncture, wild with joy, after six years of grief and longing.

One February day, like every day for the past weeks and months, there were more than 100,000 Serbs clogging the streets, tooting whistles and kazoos, banging pots and pans, shouting and singing, tossing firecrackers and wailing on musical instruments. "Noise is In!" is the English translation of this strategy by organizers. One day protesters brought their dogs -- hundreds upon hundreds of them -- who barked and howled when riot police made a reluctant, desultory attempt to enforce a ban on street marches. The next day, protesters dressed up in uniforms to mock police.

On Christmas, tens of thousands of people brought their cars and trucks downtown and left them parked in the street, congealing traffic and paralyzing all movement in the Serbian capital. Opposition supporters another week blocked all government communication by plugging up the state telephone lines with calls to the state ordering pizza.

In the enormous Republic Square, braceleted by imposing stone government buildings, there were bonfires and bands, speeches by well-known "former" Yugoslavians, dancing and picnicking. Reminiscent of photos of popular protests during the Vietnam War, the barrels of police shotguns sprouted nosegays of flowers and grinning officers were seen accepting sandwiches and cigarettes provided by demonstrators.

Belgrade entrepreneurs were happy. One man imported 150,000 kazoos and sold them all from the tailgate of his station wagon in less than a week. More than 500,000 plastic whistles have been purchased by people without money for food.

I bought a postcard that said "Welcome to Beograd!" in a tacky vacation-type headline plastered over a picture of 150,000 protesters cramming the government square. The buttons pinned to striking university students' jackets said "I'm getting my education walking." My button said "Students Against the Machine." The protests were begun by the time-honored fomenters of the revolution: university students. They were enraged by the turning over of the Balkan elections in which the "Together" party -- which opposed Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic -- captured 15 out of 18 seats in the largest Serbian communities. Milosevic, whose picture appears beside the word "evil" in my dictionary, employed his puppet court to toss out victories, claiming "irregularities" in the voting process.

But cancellation of election results and the worsening of what is already a devastated economy has infuriated more than the young. The middle class, the clergy, the elderly swelled the ranks of demonstrators. Protests spread throughout the country. Even Milosevic's 80,000- strong police force publicly announced they would not use violence against the crowds, although some did. Villagers and those in the other Serb towns were enlisted. Starting at 7:30 p.m. each evening, when pro-Milosevic state-sponsored news was broadcast on TV, citizens all over the nation joined the "Noise Is In" protests.

People appeared on their balconies in Nis drumming spoons on metal plates; in Novi Sad, motorists leaned on their car horns while pedestrians cheered. Firecrackers and "friendly" automatic weapons fire tattooed the evening sky in Lapovo; radios, cranked up to ear-splitting decibels, blared out of Petrovac shop windows. In the past, the international community supported Milosevic, thinking his influence over the Republika Srpska, where I live, to be the only way to rein in the Bosnian Serbs and maintain the precarious cease-fire. But sensing weakness in the regime of one of the prime architects of the Bosnian war, the wolf packs from Western democracies smelled blood and began to nip at the Serb president's heels. Sanctions were threatened. When Milosevic shut down B-92, Belgrade's only independent radio, the Voice of America, began broadcasting it. Condemnation was universal.

Opposition leader Zoran Djindic said the issue at stake was "whether in Serbia it is possible to change a government by elections peacefully, without spilling of blood."

Like millions, I hope the answer is yes, but I have little faith. I cannot believe Milosevic permitted the demonstrations to go on as long as he did with little bloodshed. (On Christmas Eve, one student was beaten to death and several were injured by Milosevic's secret police.) The only thing that may have stopped him was that the whole world was watching, and I had to trust the West would intervene militarily if the Serb president began slaughtering protesters.

Still it would take only the smallest spark to set things off: the stench of potential violence permeated the air like the smell of ozone before a storm. Each time I marched through the Republic Square, I wondered if this would be the time and place the well of good fortune ran dry for me. The demonstrations were the only time I wore my Juneau Police Department-provided bulletproof vest.

While there has been some unity, nothing is simple in the Balkans. The opposition leaders, who usually claw at each other more viciously than they do Milosevic, were made strangely cozy bedfellows by the demonstrations. The three opposition leaders are themselves racist nationalists who criticize Milosevic not for starting the war, but for failing to win it. The students also are nationalists, many of whom support ethnic cleansing with the same unbridled enthusiasm as they support musicians Alanis Morrisette and the Fugees.

Bosnian Serb guilt, too sick and heavy for people to assume at this time and retain their sanity, finds Milosevic a handy scapegoat. It is understandable, but not healthy. Although it is true he -- and Croatian President Franjo Tudjman -- are surely the most responsible for five years of unprecedented carnage, I also believe in individual responsibility.

There may be explanations but there are no excuses and "just following orders" is not morally acceptable to me. Besides, disemboweling pregnant women and roasting small children in outdoor barbecue pits are not acts of warfare but of criminal savagery. Some day people must come to terms with what has happened here but it is not possible now.

The cartoon pasted on the wall of my favorite Belgrade bakery showed a puzzled Milosevic standing at a crossroads with one signpost pointing to "Europe" -- meaning democracy and inclusion in the international community -- and the other pointing to "Romania" -- a symbol of brutal, isolated dictatorship. There's no escaping the implication that Milosevic should heed what happened to Romania's dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, whose 1989 Christmas present from his own army left something to be desired in the holiday spirit category.

It was bitterly cold one night in Republic Square; the air scented by fresh snow. My breath plumed in front of me and my fingers tingled as I struck a match to light the candle I had brought from "home" in Banja Luka -- a candle sent from a generous kindhearted Juneau donor. All around me the night was magic with tiny flickering flames, thousands of them. We were facing the huge government building, petitioning silently this time, for justice and freedom and peace; everything that has been denied for so long.

The small twinkling fires burning in the blackness looked like earth-trapped stars drawing faces out of the dark.