Belgrade on Tuesday marked the 10th anniversary of the fall of the Slobodan Milosevic regime, brought about by demonstrations staged on October 5, 2000.
Various events - public debates and expert meetings - were held in Belgrade on Tuesday to mark the anniversary.
An estimated half a million people from across Serbia took to the streets on October 5, 2000 to protest, led by an 18-party opposition coalition dubbed DOS (the Democratic Opposition of Serbia), in a bid to force Milosevic to concede his defeat in the presidential elections held on September 24, 2000.
DOS candidate Vojislav Kostunica had won that election already in the first round. After the Federal Election Commission, pressured by Milosevic, at the time the Yugoslav president, said that Kostunica had won less than 50 percent of the vote and announced a runoff, DOS decided to organise daily protests and road blocks, to protest against the attempted rigging of election results, and force Milosevic to concede defeat and step down.
Milosevic was arrested in April 2001 and extradited to the Hague Tribunal two months later. He died in an ICTY detention cell in March 2006, before his war crimes trial was completed.
Goran Svilanovic, one of the then DOS leaders and the Yugoslav foreign minister after the fall of Milosevic's regime, said October 5 was the beginning of great changes in Serbia, adding that ten years later Serbian citizens had a reason to be dissatisfied.
Serbia's biggest problems then was denial, which remains a problem even today, Svilanovic said.
