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Otpor (Отпор!, Resistance!, stylized as Otpor!) was a political organization in Serbia (then part of FR Yugoslavia) from 1998 until 2004. In its initial period from 1998 to 2000, Otpor began as a civic protest group, eventually turning into a movement, which adopted the Narodni pokret (the People's Movement) title, against the policies of the Serbian authorities under the influence of Yugoslav president Slobodan Milošević. Following Milošević's overthrow in October 2000, Otpor became a political watchdog organization monitoring the activities of the post-Milošević period of the DOS coalition. Finally, during fall 2003, Otpor briefly became a political party which, due to its failure to pass the 5% threshold needed to get any seats in the Serbian parliament, soon merged with another party. Founded and best known as an organization 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 5 October 2000 with Milošević's overthrow. In the course of a two-year nonviolent struggle against Milošević, Otpor spread across Serbia, attracting in its heyday more than 70,000 supporters who were credited for their role in the 5 October overthrow. After the overthrow, Otpor launched campaigns to hold the new government accountable, pressing for democratic reforms and fighting corruption, as well as insisting on cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal (ICTY) at the Hague. Soon after the 2003 elections, Otpor merged into the Democratic Party (DS). Otpor was formed in Belgrade on 10 October 1998 in response to a controversial piece of legislation in Serbia – the university law – introduced earlier that year by the Serbian government under Prime Minister Mirko Marjanović. Also, days before Otpor got announced, the government introduced a decree (uredba) outlining special measures in the wake of the ongoing NATO bombing threat.

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Colour revolution (sometimes coloured revolution) is a term used since early 2000s primarily to describe a series of nonviolent protests and accompanying (attempted or successful) changes of government that took place in post-Soviet states (particularly Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan) and Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The aim of the colour revolutions was to establish Western-style liberal democracy in those countries and eliminate corruption. They were primarily triggered by the election results widely viewed as falsified.

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