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Joe the Revolutionary Digger

• Mark Mardell
• 28 Jan 08, 08:15 AM

Joe the Digger stands in a builder鈥檚 yard just outside Belgrade showing me the rather dilapidated vehicle that made his name.

The front window of the now engineless orange earthmover is pocked with bullet holes.

Joe, as Lyubisav Djokic prefers to be known, was in the forefront of . Quite literally in the forefront.

As police tear gassed the crowds surrounding the parliament he drove his digger at the building. Pointing at the bullet holes in the windscreen he says: 鈥淵es those are the scars, but the most dangerous were the two in the back window.

"The policeman who climbed up the back said afterwards in an interview that the minister of the interior had ordered him to kill me.

"The type of machine saved me because the whole cab moves with the scooper and when I turned the wheel he fell off.鈥�

He tells how he smashed in the basement windows of the parliament and then people climbed on top of the scoop and he lifted them up so they could get in the building.

Joe鈥檚 rather watery eyes light up when he starts to remember that day on October 5 2000.

鈥淭hey were stuffed in the scoops, then they broke the window and then they swarmed in over my machine and set the first floor on fire. I wasn鈥檛 afraid. I thought I was in a movie. Still, I thought I would die.鈥�

But he feels betrayed by . He says until last year, when he got a job advising the local council, he couldn鈥檛 ever afford to buy bread. He says everyone in Serbia is much poorer.

'Nothing has changed'

鈥淚n my opinion, nothing important has changed. Maybe we鈥檙e not buying petrol out of a canister, now we can get it from a petrol station. But then I had money and now I don鈥檛. What good does it do me having petrol at the petrol stations if I can鈥檛 afford to buy it?鈥�

He says shortly after the revolution everyone was saying 鈥淜osovo is still ours鈥� so he decided to test this. He called on people to march behind his digger, saying if they were right, the Albanians would run away when they approached.

No one took him up. A few years ago he did make the journey and UN forces allowed him to cross the border. He says the Serbian media lied and said he鈥檇 defied the troops, rather than made the journey with their help.

鈥淜osovo is lost and there鈥檚 no doubt about that. Everybody likes having a big state but they tried keeping . Montenegro was important. Slovenia, Croatia, they were important Every part of Yugoslavia meant something to me.

"It鈥檚 too late to change anything now. The way we鈥檙e being led will lose other parts of Serbia to Hungarians. Everything will be taken from us. Anyway the Serbs who are in Kosovo will be better off than if they were in Serbia. They鈥檒l be with the west.鈥�

Joe definitely doesn鈥檛 like the idea that after the elections Serbia could move closer to Russia.

鈥淗ow can we turn towards Russia when we know that in 1948 it was hard for Tito to get rid of Russia? If they鈥檙e so good, how come the Czechs and Poles and Hungarians, Bulgarians and Romanians couldn鈥檛 wait to get rid of them? And I see the Germans are under America for the last sixty years and no one鈥檚 complaining. I want that too!鈥�

Tourist attraction

He hopes one day the digger will stand outside the parliament as a tourist attraction. He鈥檚 put it on sale for 90,000 euros. 鈥淲ell, ,鈥� he says.

As we go he has a final thought: 鈥淧ut in your piece that I need a second-hand engine. Not a new one, just second-hand,鈥� he jokes: 鈥淭hen I can bring down this government as well.鈥� At least I think he鈥檚 joking.

Anyone out there got a spare 1981 D2 402 IHC engine for a 530 A (series 2) rubber-tyred loader, and we鈥檒l see if he鈥檚 serious.

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