BELGRADE: The events in the Middle East and most recently in New York have drawn significant public attention throughout the world and Serbia was not the exception. However, the messages inviting people to occupy streets of Belgrade on October 15 failed to attract widespread support although they had been advertised on several social networking websites. The Facebook group “Serbian revolution – Globalna revolucija 2011″ attracted barely over 1,000 members and even among them, many excused themselves by leaving a message on the group's wall. However, Facebook users reported increased police presence around the Nikola Pasic square and the Parliament building where the protest was supposed to begin on Sunday. The group's Facebook page invited people to come out to the streets and stand up united “against the alliance of politicians, bankers, oligarchs and corporations who work only to the benefit of a few, disregarding social, human and ecological consequences. By creating wars for profit and impoverishing entire nations our ruling elites deprive us of the basic human right to free and just society,” the statement said. They mentioned Tahrir Square in Cairo as the first occupied space in the world and referred to the Spanish movement Democracia Real Ya as the ideological inspiration of the invitations to demonstrations. The group invited creative people, video artists, music artists, writers, spammers, hackers, artists, bloggers, and journalists among other to promote the gathering and the events that are expected to follow. In order to emphasize peaceful character of the protests, the group called for actions such as conversations with neighbors, friends at school, university or work, establishing of local civil committees, sending e-mails, using social networks, writing on blogs, forums, news, crating videos, songs and other types of written and visual media, changing avatars on social networks to remind people of the protests, creating badges and others. It is expected that the organizers will continue to invite people to join them on the streets of Serbian cities despite the failure of the first attempt. BM
