Vienna’s Serbian community marched against NATO on the 20th anniversary of the Yugoslavian bombing campaign this Sunday.
Demonstrators carried banners, chanted slogans critical of NATO and held aloft black balloons, a symbol for the bombs dropped on Yugoslavia by the military alliance.
Some of those present were survivors, like Aleksandra Rakita and Jojovic Zeljko, who recalled the events of 1999.
“It was unbelievable,” said Rakita. “I thought we were all to die on the next day.”
Zeljko remembered the destruction. “Everything was bombed: hospitals, barracks, bridges, factories, railroads.”
NATO bombed Serbia and its then Yugoslav sister republic Montenegro for 78 days from March 24, 1999, over the response to the Albanian insurgency in Kosovo.
The late Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic was forced to withdraw troops bringing an end to the conflict.
It was the first time NATO had used military force without the approval of the UN Security Council.