# Slobodan Milošević **Slobodan Milošević** (20 August 1941 – 11 March 2006) ruled Serbia, and then what remained of Yugoslavia, from 1989 to 2000. His nationalist politics drove the wars that broke Yugoslavia apart in the 1990s, wars in which forces loyal to him carried out the [[Ethnic Cleansing]] of Croats, Bosniaks and Kosovo Albanians. He was the first sitting head of state indicted by an international war crimes tribunal. He was overthrown in October 2000 by a popular uprising with a student movement at its centre, handed to The Hague in 2001, and died in his cell in 2006 before a verdict. What came after him matters as much as what he did. His minister of information was [[Aleksandar Vučić]], who returned to power in 2012 and ruled Serbia until the [[Serbian Student Movement]] voted him out in 2026. ## Rise and wars A communist-era banker and party official, Milošević rose in the late 1980s by championing Serbs in Kosovo and remaking the League of Communists of Serbia as a nationalist vehicle. He then founded the **Socialist Party of Serbia** in 1990. As Yugoslavia broke up after [[Josip Broz Tito]]'s death, he backed Serb forces in the [[Yugoslav Wars]] in Croatia (1991–1995) and Bosnia (1992–1995; see [[Bosnian War]]), and directed the 1998–1999 campaign in [[Kosovo]] that ended with [[NATO]]'s 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. ## Indictment - **May 1999:** The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) indicts him for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Kosovo, while he is still in office. - **2001:** Further indictments cover Croatia and Bosnia, including **genocide**. - **2007:** The International Court of Justice rules that Serbia violated the Genocide Convention by failing to prevent the Srebrenica genocide and to punish those responsible. In a separate finding, it says the evidence does not show Belgrade itself committed genocide. ## The fall: October 2000 | Date | Event | |---|---| | **1998** | Students found **[[Otpor!]]** ("Resistance!"), a nonviolent movement aimed at removing Milošević | | **24 Sep 2000** | Federal election. The opposition says Vojislav Koštunica won outright; the regime-controlled electoral commission orders a runoff | | **5 Oct 2000** | Hundreds of thousands converge on Belgrade. The federal parliament is set on fire, and a wheel-loader driver rams the state television building, which gives the uprising its name, the **Bulldozer Revolution**. Milošević concedes | | **1 Apr 2001** | Arrested by Serbian police on corruption and abuse-of-power charges | | **28 Jun 2001** | Handed over to the ICTY in The Hague | | **11 Mar 2006** | Dies of a heart attack in his cell, with his trial nearly over and no verdict | Otpor's methods, with its leaderless structure, humour and discipline in nonviolence, drew on [[Gene Sharp]]'s work. They became a model for later movements, and a target for the conspiracy theory that every mass protest is a foreign-engineered [[Color Revolution]]. See [[Nonviolent Resistance Tradition]]. ## The Vučić connection [[Aleksandar Vučić]] was a rising figure in the ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party, Milošević's coalition partner, when he was appointed **minister of information in March 1998**. He served until the regime fell. His ministry enforced what was then called the most restrictive media law in Europe. A special misdemeanour court could fine critical outlets heavily and seize their property if the fines were not paid on the spot, and foreign broadcasters were banned. In July 1995, days after the [[Srebrenica Genocide]], Vučić had told the National Assembly: "kill one Serb and we will kill a hundred Muslims." He later said the remark had been taken out of context and that he was quoting his party leader, Vojislav Šešelj. > [!important] ⭐ The finding: the information minister came back, and so did the students > The regime Milošević ran depended on controlling state television, and the uprising that ended it is remembered for a wheel loader ramming that television building. Fourteen years later, Milošević's information minister was prime minister, building a softer version of the same media control through friendly broadcasters and a captured public one. He lost power in 2026 to another student movement. It used the same nonviolent methods, faced the same accusation of being a foreign plot, and ended with the same scene of crowds outside pro-government television stations. See [[Serbian Student Movement]] and [[Media Capture]]. ## See Also - [[Aleksandar Vučić]] · [[Serbia]] · [[Serbian Student Movement]] · [[Serbian Progressive Party]] · [[Nonviolent Resistance Tradition]] · [[Color Revolution]] · [[Ethnic Cleansing]] · [[Genocide]] · [[NATO]] · [[Dictators in World History Hub]]