From The Times:
May 20 1999 BALKANS WAR
Anti-war mob lynches Serbian mayor
BY EVE-ANN PRENTICE IN BELGRADE
AND MICHAEL BINYON, DIPLOMATIC EDITOR
MUTINIES, desertions and the lynching of a pro-Milosevic official by a furious mob were interpreted yesterday as the first signs of collapse in the Serb regime.
The mayor of a Serbian town was hanged by anti-war protesters desperate to stop the return of troops to Kosovo, while in Kosovo up to 1,000 Serbian soldiers deserted their unit on hearing that riot police had broken up an anti-war demonstration in their home town.
The reports - put out by Nato and Whitehall yesterday although they had already been circulating in independent media in Yugoslavia - were seen as an example of falling morale. Many were gleaned from broadcasts by Montenegrin television, risking confrontation with Belgrade in reporting news heavily censored in Serbia.
The reported lynching occurred in Aleksandrovac where about 1,000 people turned on Zivota Cvetkovic, the pro-Milosevic chairman of the municipal council, who had refused to stop troops being bused back to Kosovo after a short spell of leave. The angry crowd, mostly women and children, also demanded that all troops from the region who had been mobilised should be allowed to return home.
Montenegrin television reported further demonstrations in Cacak and Krusevac in central Serbia, where protesters shouted "The dead do not need Kosovo". Milan Kandic, chairman of the Cacak executive council, told an assembly that the town wanted an end to the war and demanded that President Milosevic address the nation to present the facts on which he based his decisions.
In Krusevac windows were broken in the municipal assembly and in the local television station, which the crowd accused of spreading lies. Demonstrators said the station was suppressing the message of furious mothers and fathers. Police used water cannon to break up the protest, but further demonstrations were said to be planned there yesterday and in Valjevo and Cacak.
As the protests continued for a third day, the Yugoslav Army tried to quell the unrest. Several people were said to have been arrested in Krusevac and Alexandrovac and the army has accused the demonstrators of "treason and direct collaboration with the enemy". They would be tried in military courts and dealt with according to the laws in wartime, it said ominously.
In a statement carried by local television stations the army also tried to placate families in the area which is believed to have been hard-hit by war losses. Demonstrators were chanting "We want sons, not coffins". The army said it could not meet the protesters' demands for the return of their loved ones because "ceaseless bombing means we have had to modify our plans for a partial withdrawal in order to protect the lives of our soldiers".
Promising to keep soldiers' relatives informed about the situation in Kosovo, the army nonetheless gave a warning that it would not tolerate further unrest. Even those "spreading rumours" would be prosecuted.
State-controlled media in Belgrade have made no mention of the demonstrations, but the army statement was reported in the capital's independent daily newspaper, Glac, and by the independent VIP news agency.
Independent Serbian journalists who have eyewitness reports of the protests say they believe the unrest was caused by the return of increasing numbers of dead and injured from the front line.
Nato claimed yesterday that there was a mutiny among the Serb forces when about three battalions based at Istok, in western Kosovo, commandeered vehicles and left with their weapons, crashing through checkpoints and firing in the air.
The soldiers, from a brigade made up largely of conscripts, headed for Krusevac. One group headed from Pristina to Nis, shooting through a special police checkpoint, Nato said.
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