A group of students and professors who are from Serbia have been supporting Serbian students through letters and e-mail messages for several months.

Thousands of university students in Serbia have been protesting the socialist-dominated government of President Slobodan Milosevic for over 90 days. Their protest began on Nov. 21, 1996.

On Monday, ISU’s Graduate Student Senate passed a unanimous resolution to support the “peaceful and spirited protest by our fellow students at universities in Belgrade, Nis, Kragujevac, Novi Sad and other cities in Serbia, the former Republic of Yugoslavia,” the resolution states.

“Our colleagues in Serbia are right to demand that their government cease violating their academic freedom. The Serbian police must cease breaking in the university buildings and beating and torturing arrested students,” it states.

The student protests began when the Serbian government annulled the local November elections, in which the United Opposition Party won several races in Belgrade and some other major cities in Serbia. The students have endured rain, sleet and snow in their protests and some have received beatings from the police as well.

Milan Crnogorac, a graduate student in chemistry who received his bachelor’s degree at the University of Belgrade, said harsh economic conditions have fueled the protests. “The communists and socialists have been ruining the country for decades, morally, economically and spiritually,” he said.

Jelena Stevanovic, a freshman in psychology, said her friends in Belgrade were harassed by the police for protesting. “One of my friends got beaten and ended up in jail. The other one was beaten in the streets and ended up in the hospital,” she said.

Nenad Kostic, a professor of chemistry, said the hospitals in Serbia aren’t always a safe place for injured people.

“The police ambush the hospitals and arrest people for their protests. Some people stay away from the hospitals because they’re scared of being arrested, so this also makes it hard to estimate how many people have been beaten up,” he said.

Natasa Popovic, graduate student in chemistry, praised Tina Ahedo, GSS Senator and graduate student in political science, for sponsoring the resolution which supports the Serbian students.

“It was great that GSS passed the resolution. This is a matter of life and death. Our country is in bad shape and any support the students could get from outside Serbia would mean a lot,” she said.

In addition to Crnogorac, Stevanovic, Kostic and Popovic; ISU students Jovica Badjic, Predrag Popovic, Sasa Stankovic, Nebojsa Milovic, Tatjana Parac and Maja Samardzija have been active in supporting the Serbian students.

“Each one of us has been asked many times about events in Serbia. We are grateful for their interest, and we will always answer their questions, offer our views and our hopes,” Kostic said. “It would be great to have some international solidarity of students. There are students from over 120 countries in Ames. These students bring links to other parts of the world so representatives of various nations can learn what is going on in the world.”

Milovic, a graduate student in chemistry, said it’s important for the students in Serbia to get outside support from people in other countries because the government has instituted a media blockade in which independent newspapers and radio stations have been shut down.

Milovic visited Serbia in December and joined in on the protests. “There were many people in the street. Something big happened that I didn’t see, but I didn’t know about it until several days after it happened due to the media blockade,” he said.