Yugoslavs hold huge political rallies despite Party’s pleas

Press, 26 September 1988, Page 8

Yugoslavs hold huge political rallies despite Party’s pleas

NZPA-Reuter Belgrade Tens of thousands of Yugoslavs have defied Communist Party leaders by staging the country’s biggest political demonstration and plan new ones today despite pleas to stop them.

An estimated 150,000 rallied yesterday in the south Serbian town of Nis. Over 20,000 gathered in Vrsac and Bela Crkva, in. Serbia’s northern autonomous province of Vojvodina. The protests were the latest in a wave of unrest among Serbs over their alleged persecution by ethnic Albanians in the autonomous Kosovo province, bordering Albania. Leaders in Vojvodina and the southern republic

of Montenegro yesterday condemned the protest rallies, saying they were being manipulated by nationalists. Serb activists from Kosovo planned further protests today in Vojvodina’s capital, Novi Sad, and in the Montenegro town of Andrijevica. "The Vojvodina leadership has never been against the right of citizens to assemble, particularly not against solidarity meetings over the justified discontent of Serbs

and Montenegrins from Kosovo,” a statement by the Vojvodina leadership said. “But it most sharply condemns political manipulations and pressures related to constitutional changes in the Socialist Republic of Serbia.” The protesters are supporting a constitutional reform drive by the Serbian Communist Party leader, Slobodan Milosevic, to reduce Kosovo’s autonomy and bring it under the direct control

of Serbia, the biggest of Yugoslavia’s six republics. Protesters in Nis demanded the imposition of a state of emergency in Kosovo, the dismissal of all its officials and the freezing of all its institutions. Communist Party leaders in Montenegro, where two big rallies were held recently, said there should be no more protests there without the approval of the republic’s leaders.