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Preparing for Peace The website of the Westmorland General Meeting 'Preparing for Peace' initiative
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WAYS TO PREVENT WAR- Otpor (Serb for Resistance)Card 4General instruction on each cardYou are a Serb living in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999. Your President is Slobodon Milosevic. He has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, but he is still running the country. You have heard that he has organised the killing of thousands of Kosovan Albanians. Your country has been bombed by NATO in a war over Kosovo. 44% of industrial production has been destroyed leaving your country the poorest in Europe. Professors in universities have been instructed to sign a loyalty oath or lose their jobs. He controls most of the media. People who stand up to him are sometimes murdered. People are not sure who they can trust. No one agrees about what can be done.
Your older sister is a student at the university. She is studying law and is a member of Otpor, a student group which grew from protests against the government’s sacking of university professors who did not sign loyalty pledges. Her knowledge of law has been useful to the students. She has confided to you that she has been invited to go with some other students on a course on non-violent resistance run by the International Republican Institute. She would have to travel to Budapest in Hungary. She would be trained in how to organise a strike, how to communicate with symbols, how to play hide and seek with the police, how to respond to interrogation, and how to infiltrate the regime’s pillars of support eg the police. She is trying to decide whether to go. Please write to her and tell her how you feel about it and what you think she should do. WAYS TO PREVENT WAR- Otpor (Serb for Resistance)- Activity Notes |