Serbian-Americans Protest
Against NATO Bombings

By Tabassum Zakaria, April 25, 1999

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More than a
thousand demonstrators wearing target
signs that symbolize Serbian protest of
NATO air strikes and chanting "stop the
bombing" rallied noisily across from the
White House Saturday.

The demonstrators, many of them
Serbian-Americans, came from around
the country to express anger at the
month-long NATO air campaign on
Yugoslavia, hoping to catch the attention
of the alliance during its 50th anniversary
commemoration this weekend.

"What our country is doing to our mother
country is shocking to us," said
Aleksandra Tomich of Shaker Heights,
Ohio. She carried a sign made by her
7-year-old son that read, "Hey NATO
Don't Kill My Cousins."

Tomich said her relatives in Belgrade live
in the same neighborhood in which
Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's
house was bombed and her cousin told
her in an e-mail that "when the bomb
hits, it lifts our bodies out of our beds."

The 19-country alliance of the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization reaffirmed
its commitment to continue air strikes
until Milosevic agrees to allow ethnic
Albanian refugees to return to the
southern Yugoslav province of Kosovo
under protection of a NATO
peacekeeping force.

Hundreds of thousands of ethnic
Albanians have fled Kosovo into
neighboring countries saying they were
driven from their homes by Serb forces.

A smaller rally by Albanian Americans in
the same park across from the White
House a day earlier called for NATO to
use more force on Yugoslavia by sending
in ground troops and arming ethnic
Albanians to fight the Serbs.

At the Saturday protest, however,
Serbian-American anger against NATO
and the United States was visible
everywhere.

Signs sniped at President Clinton as a
draft dodger of questionable moral values
given his affair with Monica Lewinsky
and likened him to a Hitler for the 1990s.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright
was not spared with signs depicting her
as a dictator and responsible for the
military action. "Adolf Clinton, Eva
Albright," one said, referring to Hitler
and his mistress Eva Braun.

Protesters blew whistles, yelled through
bullhorns, and shouted "stop the
bombing, stop the war" until it was
almost deafening even in the open air.

Many wore targets on their clothes in a
fashion similar to residents of Belgrade
who lined the bridges of Yugoslavia
wearing similar targets in defiance of
NATO bombers.

Some demonstrators carried posters that
said "stop NATO aggression" above a
large single red flower called a bozur.
Several protesters said according to
legend, the flower sprang up and covered
a field in Kosovo after a war between the
Serbs and Turks in the late 1300s from
the blood of the soldiers, and it will not
grow anywhere else.

"I was born in Novi Sad, my parents are
living around Belgrade," said Dimitrije
Ristic, 31, of Buffalo, New York, who
carried one of the flower posters.

"They're OK as long as it's not night.
Overnight there are air raids," Ristic said
of his parents who he speaks with almost
every night.

Demonstrators also suggested new
definitions for the acronym NATO with
signs like "North America Terrorist
Organization," and "New Albanian
Terrorist Organization."

Teen-agers led a procession singing
Serbian songs and black balloons were
released into the bright blue sky.

Iva Horvatic, 21, from Belgrade who is
studying at a college in New Hampshire
said she worries about her parents who
are in Belgrade. "I basically never know
when they are going to die under a
bomb," she said.