Founded and best known as an organisation employing nonviolent struggle as a course of action against the Milošević-controlled Serbian authorities, OTPOR! grew into a civic youth movement whose activity culminated on October 5th 2000.
Following the mass anti-government demonstrations that happened throughout Serbia, Slobodan Milošević finally acknowledged the defeat of his more than a decade long regime that dragged Serbia into a series of civil wars in the '90s. The wars in Croatia and Bosnia and the economic sanctions that the Security Council installed upon Serbia led to a great economic crisis, hyperinflation and overall social calamity. The armed conflict that broke out in Kosovo in the late '90s ended after 70 days of NATO Air strikes. Serbia greeted the new millennium with no economy, no infrastructure, with a significant portion of the younger generation already immigrated all over the world, and those who didn't move abroad gave up into the state of perpetual apathy and trying to survive and make the ends meet.
A non-partisan, but overtly anti-regime organisation with a loose and dynamic structure, OTPOR! managed to bring opposition parties together and mobilise the ruined society in Serbia against Milošević. OTPOR! stressed the importance of mobilizing the population to vote, but also promoted "individual resistance" (i.e. nonviolent methods of civic disobedience in order to counter possible electoral fraud). This strategy was slowly embraced by the opposition parties in the months to come.
Free Your Mind is an award being granted by MTV during its shows all over the world in order to sensitise spectators in touchy matters, the social meat and potatoes, human rights violations, of political and civil laws, promoting the environmental protection in the process non-governmental organisations as well as individuals which are dealing with the given subject matter. MTV granted OTPOR! the Free Your Mind award in the late year 2000 "for their role in the successful overthrow of Slobodan Milošević", a month after the 'Fifth of October Revolution'.
This video shows guys from Otpor! receiving the Award that happened during the MTV European Music Awards ceremony. The granted award is also involving the financial assistance and the media campaign promoting the winner on all aerials of MTV channels.
