Otpor! - Lasting Legacy

Lasting Legacy

In addition to greatly contributing to Slobodan Milošević's overthrow, Otpor has become the model for similar youth movements around Eastern Europe. MTV granted Otpor the Free Your Mind award in 2000. There were several award-winning documentaries made about the movement, most notably "Making of The Revolution" by Eric Van Den Broek and Katarina Rejger (launched at the Amnesty International Film Festival in 2001) and "Bringing Down A Dictator" by Steve York, which won a Peabody Award in 2002, narrated by Martin Sheen. It has reportedly been seen by over 23 million people around the world.

Otpor members were instrumental in inspiring and providing hands-on training to several other civic youth organizations in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, including Kmara in the Republic of Georgia (itself partly responsible for the downfall of Eduard Shevardnadze), Pora in Ukraine (which was part of the Orange Revolution), Zubr in Belarus (opposing the president Alexander Lukashenko), MJAFT! in Albania, Oborona in Russia (opposing the president Vladimir Putin), KelKel in Kyrgyzstan (active in the revolution that brought down the president Askar Akayev), Bolga in Uzbekistan (opposing Islam Karimov) and Nabad-al-Horriye in Lebanon. A similar group of students was present in Venezuela against Hugo Chávez. In 2008, an April 6 Youth Movement was founded Egypt, the group which has facilitated and joined the 2011 Egyptian protests, and took advice from Otpor in the process.

In 2002, some of former Otpor members, most notably Slobodan Djinovic and Srdja Popović, founded the Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS). This NGO disseminated the lessons learned from their successful nonviolent struggle through scores of trainings and workshops for pro-democracy activists and others around the world, including Egypt, Palestine, Western Sahara, West Papua, Eritrea, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Tonga, Burma and Zimbabwe as well as labor, anti-war, and immigration rights activists in the United States.

In their search for lessons learned from other activist movements, the April 6 Youth Movement in Egypt consulted with Otpor members and adopted some of their strategies in their rallying for the 2011 Egyptian revolution.

In interviews, the leaders and consultants of Otpor! have described their involvement in the planning, coordination and implementation of the 2011 "Arab spring" revolutions.