The overthrow of Slobodan Milošević began in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia after the general election on 24 September 2000 and culminated in the downfall of Slobodan Milošević's government on 5 October 2000. As such, it is commonly referred to as the 5 October Revolution () or colloquially the Bulldozer Revolution (), after one of the most memorable episodes from the day-long protest in which a heavy equipment operator charged the Radio Television of Serbia building, considered to be symbolic of the Milošević regime's propaganda.

Prelude
Milošević's rule has been described by observers as authoritarian or autocratic, as well as kleptocratic, with numerous accusations of electoral frauds, political assassinations, suppression of media freedom and police brutality. He became the first sitting head of state to be charged with war crimes. His role in the Yugoslav Wars led to international sanctions against Yugoslavia, which had a devastating impact on the Yugoslav economy and society, while NATO bombing significantly damaged the country's infrastructure. While the overthrow of Milošević was reported as a spontaneous revolution, there had been a year-long battle involving thousands of Serbs in a strategy to strip the leader of his legitimacy, turn his security forces against him, and force him to call for elections, the result of which he would not acknowledge.

In 1998, a dozen students met to form Otpor! (Serbian for "resistance"). Analysing the mistakes of the 1996–97 protests, they realised they needed more effective organisation, strategy, planning, recruiting, and everything necessary for a sustained fight. Galvanised by outrage over new laws that imposed political control of their universities and harassment of independent media, the Otpor students called for the removal of Milošević and the establishment of democracy and the rule of law.

Prior to this, Milošević was cracking down on opposition, non-government organisations and independent media. From 1991 onwards there were campaigns of civil resistance against his administration that were to culminate in the largely non-violent revolution of October 2000. As the end of his first term in office of the president of Yugoslavia approached (previously, he had been elected president of Serbia, in two terms, from 1989 to 1997), on 6 July 2000, the rules of the election of the president were changed. Whilst the president of Yugoslavia had previously been chosen for one term only by the legislature, in the Yugoslav parliament, it was now to be directly elected via the two-round voting system of presidential elections with a maximum of two terms. Many onlookers believed that Milošević's intentions for supporting such reforms had more to do with holding power than with improving democracy. On 27 July 2000, the authorities announced that the early elections were to be held 24 September 2000, although Milošević's term wouldn't expire until 23 July 2001. The elections for the upper house of the federal parliament, Council of Citizens (Veće građana), as well as the local elections were also scheduled to be held on the same date.

On 25 August 2000, Ivan Stambolić, a former mentor and political ally of Milošević, was mysteriously kidnapped and detained from his home and was summarily executed in Fruška Gora. The hit was believed to have been initiated by Milošević so he could prevent Stambolić from being a potential electoral opponent. His decomposed body was found three years later in March 2003. The four officers who had kidnapped him were sentenced. Milošević was charged for initiating the assassination.

Soon after the announcement, the anti-government youth movement Otpor! led the campaign to topple the administration and introduce a transparent democracy. To unify opposition, eighteen parties in Serbia formed the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) coalition, with Vojislav Koštunica as the candidate to confront Milošević. Apart from this, two major opposition parties, Serbian Radical Party and Serbian Renewal Movement also had candidates (Tomislav Nikolić and Vojislav Mihailović, respectively), but the main battle of the elections was the one between Milošević and Koštunica. The election campaign lasted for about two months and was extremely tense, with numerous incidents, accusations of treason, independent media shutdowns and even murders.

For a year leading up to the elections, the United States-funded consultants played a crucial role in the anti-Milošević campaign. The key symbol of the campaign was the slogan Gotov je! (, meaning "He is finished!"), created by Otpor!. Part of the U.S. funding of the opposition (a reported $41 million) included 2.5 million stickers with the slogan and 5,000 spray cans for anti-Milošević graffiti. Material was channeled by the U.S. Department of State through QUANGOs. In the months leading up to the election, the National Endowment for Democracy provided funding to opposition parties and media, unions and student groups, with Otpor! being the largest beneficiary.

Elections

The vote took place on 24 September 2000. The DOS coalition reported that Vojislav Koštunica won over half of the votes, enough to defeat Milošević in a single round. The government-controlled Federal Electoral Committee claimed that no candidate won over 50% of the votes and that a second round between Koštunica and Milošević would take place. The vote was largely boycotted in Montenegro and by Kosovo Albanians (not under Yugoslavian control). Yet, Milošević officially won by a large margin in these parts of the country. These unexpected results provoked stronger accusations of election fraud and led DOS to call for peaceful protests to topple the government.

Some obvious irregularities could be found in the Federal Electoral Committee official results. For example, the sum of the numbers of valid and invalid votes was not equal to the number of voters; the sum of the numbers of the voters voting at the polling stations and the voters voting at home exceeded the total number of voters; the sum of the numbers of the used and the unused ballot papers was short by 117,244 in comparison to the number of eligible voters, the number of eligible voters was different from the one announced before the elections and has differed in the presidential, federal and local elections results.

All of these discrepancies provoked massive outrage. The results were declared false immediately after Milošević was removed, and revised official results were released shortly afterwards. The new results were practically the same, except for the number of total votes and the votes for Milošević, both of which were lower by 125,000–130,000 votes, thus giving Koštunica an absolute, if narrow, first-round victory; Koštunica finished with just a few thousand votes over the threshold to avoid a runoff.

Protests and overthrow
The protests initially started with strikers at the Kolubara mines on 29 September, which produced most of Serbia's electricity. The protest reached its height on 5 October 2000. Several hundred thousand protesters from all over Serbia arrived in Belgrade to protest, chanting "He's finished! He's finished!" Unlike previous protests, there was no large scale police crackdown. The parliament was partially burned during the protests.

Ljubisav Đokić, turned on his wheel loader and filled a public broadcaster building in Belgrade with it. The loader served as a kind of elevator and bullet protection. The building's tenant, Serbian state television RTS, had for a decade been a symbol and bastion of Milošević's rule. When their studios were taken over, the station was quickly renamed Novi RTS ("New RTS") as a sign that the regime had lost power.

Although the protest was mostly peaceful, without a larger escalation of violence, 65 people were injured in the riots and two people died:
 Jasmina Jovanović fell under a wheel loader or, according to other sources, a truck.
 Momčilo Stakić succumbed to a fatal heart attack.

In the time between elections and the protest, Milošević said that he would gladly resign but only when his term expired in June 2001. Due to pressure caused by the protests, Milošević resigned on 5 October 2000.

Aftermath
A DOS victory was guaranteed in parliamentary elections in December, where they achieved a two-thirds majority. On 1 April 2001, Milošević was detained by Serbian police and later transferred to The Hague to be prosecuted by the ICTY. He died in his cell on 11 March 2006, a few months before the conclusion of his four-year trial.

See also
Nonviolent revolution
Anti-bureaucratic revolution
March 1991 protests in Belgrade
1996–1997 protests in Serbia

Annotations

References

Further reading

Books
 
 
 

Journals

External links

 

 
2000 in Serbia
2000 protests
2000 riots
2000s in Belgrade
20th-century revolutions
Colour revolutions
Events in Belgrade
October 2000 events in Europe
Protests against results of elections
Protests in Serbia
Riots and civil disorder in Serbia
Student protests in Serbia
불도저 혁명()은 2000년 10월 5일 유고슬라비아 연방 공화국의 수도 베오그라드에서 일어난 민중 봉기이다. 이 시민혁명으로 유고슬라비아 연방 공화국 슬로보단 밀로셰비치 제3대 대통령이 쫓겨났다.

역사 
분노한 시위대가 중장비 차량인 트랙터 셔블을 앞세워 국영방송사로 습격하여 불도저 혁명이라는 아늠이 붙었다.

영국 케임브리지 대학교 이론물리학 학사 출신인 1975년생 부크 예레미치가 불도저 혁명을 이끌었다. 이후에 세르비아 외무장관이 되었으며, 2016년 유엔 사무총장 후보로 올랐다.

2000년 9월 19일, 빌 클린턴 미국 대통령은 유고연방 대통령 선거와 관련, 슬로보단 밀로셰비치 대통령이 부정선거를 통해 당선된다면 세계는 그의 지위를 무효화시키고 쿠데타 배후 세력을 지원해야 한다고 주장했다.

2000년 9월 24일, 대통령 선거를 치렀다. 13년간 장기집권한 밀로셰비치 대통령이 패배하고, 야당후보 보이슬라브 코슈투니차가 당선될 것이 예측되었다. 과반수를 득표하는 후보가 없을 경우 10월 8일에 결선투표가 치러진다.

2000년 9월 26일, 선관위는 국영 TV를 통해 대선 1차 투표에서 코스투니차 후보가 48.2%를 얻어 40.2%를 얻는데 그친 밀로셰비치 대통령에 앞섰지만 "조만간 2차 투표를 실시할 것"이라고 밝혔다. 그러나 야당 DOS는 자체 집계를 토대로 코스투니차 후보가 54.6%를 얻어 35%를 얻은 밀로셰비치 대통령을 여유있게 누르고 1차 투표에서 당선이 확정됐다고 선언한 상태다.

2000년 9월 26일, 미군, 크로아티아군, 영국군은 크로아티아 앞바다에서 '유고 압박용'으로 분석되는 대규모 상륙작전을 실시했다. 그러나 발칸 전쟁 당시 유고의 입장을 지지했던 러시아와 포르투갈은 이번에도 유고를 지지하고 있다.

2000년 10월 5일, 수십만명의 시위대가 국회의사당을 점령한데 이어 법원과 군부, 서방과 러시아 등 각계 각층의 지지의사를 표명했다.

2000년 10월 10일, 대선 공식 결과가 수정 발표되었다. 야당후보 보이슬라브 코슈투니차 50.24%로 과반득표를 하여 결선투표가 필요없다는 것이 밝혀졌다.

체노워스 법칙 
에리카 체노워스 미국 덴버 대학교 정치학과 교수가 2012년 시민 저항 운동이 통하는 이유(Why Civil Resistance Works)라는 저서에서, 불도저 혁명처럼, 전체 인구의 3.5%가 비폭력 시위에 나서면 정권이 버틸 수 없다고 주장했다.

불도저 혁명에 참여한 비폭력 저항 운동 단체 '오트포르!(otpor!)'의 리더였던 스르자 포포비치가 쓴 <독재자를 무너뜨리는 법>(박찬원 옮김, 문학동네 펴냄)에서는 유머와 재기발랄한 저항이 정부를 무너뜨리는 힘이라고 강조한다.

밀로셰비치 사망 
2001년 4월 1일, 밀로셰비치 자택에서 총기로 무장한 경호원들과 경찰간에 36시간 동안 대치한 끝에, 밀로셰비치가 직권남용과 부정부패 혐의로 경찰에 체포되었다.

미국 빌 클린턴 행정부는 거부하면 IMF와 세계은행의 금융지원이 없을 것이라면서, 밀로셰비치를 구유고슬라비아 국제형사재판소로 이송하라고 압박했다. 밀로셰비치는 코소보에서 인종 청소라는 미명하에 170만 명의 알바니아계 주민 중 85만 명을 살해하거나 몰아내 '발칸의 학살자'로 불린다.

2001년 6월 28일, 밀로셰비치가 유엔의 구유고슬라비아 국제형사재판소(ICTY)로 인도되었다.

2005년 8월 1일, 밀로셰비치가 네덜란드 헤이그의 유엔 구유고슬라비아 국제형사재판소(ICTY)에서 최소 20년 이상의 징역형을 선고받으면, 러시아에서 형집행을 하기로 미국, 영국, 프랑스가 합의했다. 현재 밀로셰비치의 부인, 친형, 아들이 러시아에 살고 있다. 유고 내전에서 밀로셰비치는 러시아군의 지원하에 미군과 싸웠다.

2006년 3월 11일, 20여만 명이 목숨을 잃은 보스니아 전쟁의 핵심 전범인 밀로셰비치 전 대통령(64)이 재판을 받다가 중풍으로 사망했다. 감옥의 침대에서 죽은 채로 발견되었다. 역시 인종청소를 주도한 혐의로 네덜란드 헤이그 유엔 감옥에 함께 수감 중이던 최측근 밀란 바비치가 지난 5일 자살한 이후 6일만이다. 밀로셰비치의 변호인들은 독살설을 주장했다. 밀로셰비치는 권오곤 재판관이 소속된 3인의 재판부에서 재판을 받아 왔다.

2006년 3월 12일, 네덜란드 공영방송 NOS는 구유고슬라비아 국제형사재판소(ICTY) 자문관 말을 인용해 "지난해 11월부터 올 1월 사이 채취된 밀로셰비치 혈액에서 한센병이나 결핵환자 치료에 사용되는 항생제 리파마이신이 발견됐다."고 보도했다. 리파마이신은 밀로셰비치가 복용하던 고혈압 치료제를 무력화시킨다.

2006년 3월 15일, 아버지가 살해되었다고 아들인 마르코 밀로셰비치가 말했다. 세르비아의 한 시민은 "재판소가 그를 3년간 투옥하면서 그를 동물처럼 다뤘고 의사의 진료도 받지 못하게 했다."며 분통을 터뜨렸다.

각주 

20세기 혁명
21세기 혁명
2000년 10월
2000년 세르비아
색깔 혁명
세르비아의 항의행동
2000년 시위
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