March 9, 1991 protest

The 1991 protests in Belgrade happened on the streets of Belgrade, the capital of Serbia and Yugoslavia when a protest rally turned into a riot featuring vicious clashes between the protesters and police.

The initial mass rally that took place on March 9, 1991 was organized by Vuk Drašković's Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO), an opposition political party in Serbia, protesting the rule of Slobodan Milošević and his Socialist Party of Serbia, particularly their misuse of Radio Television Belgrade. Two people died in the ensuing violence, and the government then ordered the Yugoslav People's Army onto the city streets. The police detained several prominent SPO officials and banned two media outlets considered unfriendly to the government. The protests are referred to in Serbian as Devetomartovski protest, i.e. the March 9 protest, after this initial event.

The next day, in reaction to the events of the previous day, more protests drew large and diverse crowds, including leaders of the Democratic Party (DS), with some referring to it as a "Velvet Revolution". The next day still, the government supporters responded by organizing a counter-rally of their own. The protests ended on March 14 as the leaders of SPO were released from police custody. The government replaced the director of the state TV as well as the Minister of the Interior.

Beset by a multitude of political and economic issues, Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia still existed in March 1991, with Socialist Republic of Serbia as its biggest and most populous constituent part. Multi-party political system had been introduced less than a year earlier, in 1990, meaning that instead of the Communist League's (SKJ) Serbian branch (SKS) that exclusively ruled for 45 years, Serbia's political landscape was once again, for the first time since the early 1940s, dotted with many parties.

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