Belgrade Protest Tries to Drown Out TV

In a cacophony of drums, cymbals, spoons and whistles, Belgrade students carried their protest to state television Wednesday night, symbolically drowning out the evening news broadcast.

For the first time in days, police allowed the protesters to march through the capital. After a police ban was imposed last week, the protests had been confined to a pedestrian zone. On Wednesday night, only a few plainclothes police monitored the crowd.

As news spread that the police were not blocking the march, more students and opposition supporters joined the crowd, which grew to at least 8,000.

For the past six weeks, students and the political opposition have been protesting the government’s annulment of Nov. 17 local elections that the opposition won.

The students called on fellow Serbs to join their noisy protest against state television, which they accused of spouting propaganda in favor of Serbia’s authoritarian president, Slobodan Milosevic.

“We want to save people from listening to state news,” said Rastko Seic, a Belgrade University student. “This is the final rehearsal for the biggest drum performance, which we are planning for one of these days.”

At 7:30 p.m., when state television’s main newscast started, Belgrade residents opened their windows and blew whistles, banged on walls and threw fire crackers. The marchers gathered at the television building, shouting, “Thieves! Red bandits!” and throwing firecrackers and snowballs.

Last week, international mediators announced findings that the opposition had won elections in 14 communities, including Belgrade and Nis, Serbia’s largest cities.

Diplomats say Milosevic has created a dilemma for himself. If he concedes the opposition victories, he will lose face. If he holds his position, he risks isolating himself and his country just one year after Yugoslavia began its reentry into the international community.

Either way, they say, his grip on power has been weakened.

Svetozar Marovic, the speaker of the parliament of Montenegro, Serbia’s junior partner in the Yugoslav federation, said Wednesday that Milosevic should choose the path “of political dialogue and compromise.”

“We expect those who invited the [mediators], . . . those who met them and talked to them, to respect the commission’s findings. That is the first step, the important step, in resolving the crisis in Belgrade and in Serbia,” Marovic said in a New Year’s message carried by the independent Fonet news agency.