Media critics may trash the Internet for breeding misinformation, but it's often a tool to spread truth in the face of oppression. On Sunday and Monday, government dissidents in Serbia turned the Pierre Salinger paradigm on its head - reminding everyone that the Internet is not just for pornographers and pinheads.
The steady stream of reports coming out of Serbia in the past few days have been largely digitized - sent out to Western desktops by a small band of Net-savvy dissidents in the troubled nation.
"Details of last night's police crackdown in Belgrade continue to stream in, both via email and through the live broadcasts of Radio B92 news in Serbian, available over the Internet," publishers of the beograd@brazil.tcimet.net email list run by Belgrade's independent radio station B92 wrote Monday morning.
"After firing on Belgrade citizens with water cannons in sub-zero temperatures, assaulting and injuring hundreds of demonstrators, and beating Civic Alliance leader Vesna Pesic with batons, riot squad police went on a spree through the central city early on Monday morning," began another email sent Monday afternoon local time.
At least 100 people - including foreign journalists and photographers - were injured Sunday night in the continued protests of the Serbian government and its leader, Slobodan Milosevic, after he called off democratic elections in November. On Monday morning, Serbian security police halted about 80,000 protesters in downtown Belgrade and tensions remain high, Reuters said.
Email accounts from Belgrade underscore the brutality of the crackdown. "We began to retreat and run away, but the police started running after the people, beating brutally everyone whom they could catch - older women, children, everyone without difference," wrote Novica Milic, who relayed his account of Sunday night's crackdown on an email list. "Please, help us by informing everyone on the Net about this terrible night in Belgrade."
