Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 08:30:00 CET
From: wam@zamir-zg.comlink.de
Reply-To: wam@zamir-zg.comlink.de
Distribution: world
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia
Subject: Zagreb Diary 18 November 1992
Organization: Zamir = for peace, Zagreb
Content-Length: 6734    
X-Gateway: UC xclhh [UZERCP V3.99]

Zagreb Diary
18 November 1992

Dobar Dan,

When we drove over the Sava yesterday evening late I was already surprised 
how high it was, but last night snow and rain came down on the mountains 
between Rijeka and Karlovac and the Kupa went out of it's borders. During
the television news reports of today the first overfloading were shown. But 
snow hasn't fall in Croatia along, also in the mountains in BiH the snow came 
down, it makes it harder and harder for the people to survive, but it makes it 
also harder for the relief transports to get through. Already in the simple mud 
of Savudrija a lot of the army trucks got stocked, that mud is nothing if you 
compare it with the roads in BiH.

Yesterday it was a year ago that Vukovar fall, or was liberated as still some 
people will say. Not only was their a very impressive requiem shown on HTV, 
in which Vukovar was brought together with Guernica, Warschau, Santiago 
del Chile and Phnom Phem. In each of those cases pictures shown the same 
destruction, the same show of unnecessary violence and the long lines of 
refugees. But somehow this pictures of Vukovar don't below in their. It is so 
strange to see a modern car totally burned out in front of a building shot into 
pieces, refugees on Adidas shoes, with modern backpack. That is somehow 
still in my mind not fitting into the pictures.

Just before the requiem was shown the was a large report, putted together 
from reports from Beograd and German television about the 17 November 
last year. Dead bodies on the street, in between the piles of what use to be 
houses. A group of soldiers, marching after a black flag with a skull on it 
around the corner of a street, singing that their will be meat on the table to 
night, since they have killed some Croats (Chetnik soldiers). A JNA 
Commander telling that he is proud being the commander of his unit and that 
they are prepared to help all the honest people in Yugoslavia. In this piles of 
rubbish he looks like a strange theatre player, who says the wrong text at the 
wrong time in the wrong place. 

The next shoot is the same commander discussing or rather shouting at a 
red cross worker who wants to pass a road block to get to the hospital in 
order to evacuate the people from there. With the cameras on him the 
commander stay more or less calm, but what he says is unbelievable in the 
situation. He says that the red cross worker has the wrong attitude and is one 
side, his soldiers were shoot at and need also help. He finish his speech with 
the words that the guy from the red cross have to understand that there is a 
war going on. The guy answer him that he knows, but still like to go to the 
hospital to help his colleagues.

The next shot are persons without uniform, only with a kind of workers helmet, 
who give their opinion, which seems to be so full dirty words that it is not 
much more than a series of censorship pips after each other. At the end the 
guy shouts that the people have to lay in the mud, otherwise they get shoot at 
the spot.  

An then the long lines of the people of Vukovar leaving the destroyed city, 
walking passed burned out tanks and digged in canons shooting at Vinkovci 
and Osijek. The people of Vukovar, the 50.000 who came to Croatia (app. 
38.000 stayed behind) are now scattered over the country and abroad. 
Nearly everywhere you can find small communities of them. 

Today a year later air alarm was sounding in the same area, shells were 
falling at Zupanja and the village around it. Nearly every hour the message 
appeared in the top of the screen, it looks if the long distances shooting at 
Zupanja is worst the last few days. Yesterday they were talking about the 
worst shellings on that village since the begin of the war.

But what is Vukovar if daily new Vukovars are created in BiH......

Today a report on HTV from Beograd television in which the liberators of 
Vukovar were honoured with medals on the main square of Vukovar, Seselj 
personally came to the still destroyed town to give his soldiers their medals. 
The television showed thousands of people in the rain, in still broken 
buildings and looking through the grenade holes in the buildings around the 
square. On a big podium in the colours of the Yugoslav flag, surrounded by 
Seselj Chetniks,  a small folk party took place, during which songs about the 
heroic activities from the Chetnik soldiers who liberated the town from the 
Utashi were sang. After that a service took place at the grave yard to honour 
the soldiers which were killed during the liberation.

Also today it is a year ago that the villages Skabrnja and Nadin, near Zadar, 
were attacked and nearly all the old people and defenders who stayed 
behind after most of the 2000 villagers escape before were killed in a very 
brutal way, JNA later brought the bodies cut in pieces in black plastic back to 
the Croatian front lines. It looks that from today we will have this type of 
rememberings every day.

In Slikom na Sliku also today a part of a cabaret called Spika na Spiku 
(speech on speech in Zagreb dialect) with a great parody on almost all the 
figureheads of the war between Croatia and Serbia. Paraga, Seselj, Panic, 
Tudjman, and even the ghost of Tito all in their own unique way of behaving. It 
is stupid that I still not can understand all of what they said, but I recognize all 
of them.

A joke in Slobodna Dalmacija from yesterday shows a  patient, which is 
rather tiny visiting his doctor, "What has happened to you" the doctor ask, 
"My doctor has forbidden me to smoke, drink, eat meat, go to the theatre, 
travel,..." "Who is your doctor" "Dr. Tudjman".

Bog I Love from Za-Mir-Greb,

							Wam
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Newsgroups: soc.culture.china