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Subject: MIRacles No. 6 from Croatia
Date: 31 Jul 92 02:25:00 GMT
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/* Written  4:00 pm  Jul 28, 1992 by gn:jsax in cdp:gen.quaker */
/* ---------- "MIRacles No. 6" ---------- */
===================================================================
MIRacles  No.  6
      Joel GAzis-SAx
Zagreb, 24 Srpanj 1992
 Copyright 1992
===================================================================
"We don't believe in the United Nations," the medical student tells me.
"We don't believe in the European Community.  We don't believe -- and I
beg your pardon -- in the Americans."

"I know that and I understand," I tell her.  "But what worries me is
this: You don't believe in yourselves, either."

"Yes," she says.  "You are right.  We don't believe in ourselves."

Osijek is my great teacher.  Everytime I travel in Slavonia, I find that
I understand Croatia better.  When I was last here [see MIRacles Nos. 2
and 3], I saw piles of rubble and heard angry voices.  The streets were
nearly empty.  This time, the rubble has been cleaned up.  The people
are coming back.  This time, they speak of their despair.  They see
themselves as small men and women.

They come from Zagreb, from the homes of family and friends living
elsewhere, and from refugee camps in Hungary.  Osijek, they say, has
changed.  The change is not the bullet holes or the bomb craters or the
ruined houses of this still beautiful city:

"I miss them," the medical student tells me.  She speaks of "two or
three" Serbian friends.  They have gone over the other side.  "I feel
angry.  But I cannot hate them.  I miss them.  They are my friends."

Her friend, another medical student, does not share her feelings.  Her
brother is somewhere on the front and, if there is anyone she misses, it
is him.  The Serbs who left "killed my people.  They destroyed Vukovar."
Both women have lost Croatian friends as well.  A sizeable portion of
the community of love which sustained them has disappeared.  They are
returning to Zagreb to continue their studies.

"Well," says the faculty wife.  "That's one less Serb in Osijek."  Her
husband, a professor of State and Law from the University of Zagreb, is
in Osijek to replace a colleague, a Serb, who "disappeared" when the war
began last fall. The professor declares that he cannot understand why
this "friend" -- if he had nothing to hide -- fled the country.  He
launches into an explication, verging on racism, why the Serbian people
will never change.

This man becomes a pest.  Whenever he and his wife see me or my
companion, Irish volunteer Brendan Keaveney, they sit down with us and
start to tell us why the Serbs are as they are.  Just as we cannot avoid
seeing the holes in every wall and on every sidewalk, so, too, we cannot
avoid the blindly anti-Serbian views when we walk the streets of Osijek.

Some Croats, too, see the jingoism.  I have met Serbs, loyal to Croatia,
who lost their citizenship and their public benefits, even though they
have lived in Slavonia for more than forty years.  The single reference
to Beograd on a birth certificate makes one man I know of a foreigner in
the city where he has lived, worked, and served others for decades.
Legally, he should have no problem becoming a Croatian citizen, but he
has struggled with the bureaucracy for months to set things straight.

A professor who fled the shelling lost her job.  When she applied for
another position, she was told that she was pre-eminently the best
qualified candidate.  She could not be hired, however, on moral grounds:
she had abandoned her post in the face of the enemy.  When academics
become as soldiers, I think the people are in a very bad way indeed.

You feel the rising tension on all counts.  I talk to many
representatives of relief organizations and to some UNPROFOR soldiers.
They all tell me that there is a false rumor that Baranja, the region to
the northeast of the city, will soon reopen.  The Serbs still occupy
Baranja.  The UN recently succeeded in arranging for English journalist
John Bloss to cross from Croatia into Baranja and this, they feel, is a
great step forward.  Previously, all visitors to Baranja have had to
come from the Serbian side.

Croatian President Franjo Tudjman crosses the footbridge at Osijek into
Baranja while we are there.  He wears a bullet-proof vest and is
surrounded by six body guards.  John Bloss wore no bullet proof vest,
carried no weapons, and went alone.  The small man has some advantages,
it seems, over the president, particularly when he is a foreigner.

Coping with the 600,000 Bosnian refugees and Croatian displaced persons
has strained the resources of the special officers, social workers, and
humanitarian workers and volunteers.  Stjepan Hamm, a Croat of German
descent and director of the Osijek office of the Croatian Red Cross,
tells me that the needs of the Bosnian refugees and Baranjan displaced
persons divert his attention from the equally important concerns of the
permanent residents of Osijek.  What these people need most, he says, is
glass.  Winter is coming and the sheets of plastic which cover the shot-
out window frames will not suffice.  Glass is hard to get and very
expensive.  Zeljko, my guide during my first visit to Osijek, introduced
me to a neighbor who spent $4000 to replace one two by three foot
section of her window.  As Bosnian refugees stream into Croatia and news
of Sarajevo appears on every channel, the world forgets that many people
of Baranja are homeless and that the people of Osijek need to rebuild.

Lidja, the director of the Osijek Caritas office, shows me how the habit
of cleaning out your closet to give to the needy can be destructive.
She guides me through her warehouse, showing me the donations.  There
are shelves upon shelves of high-heeled shoes and racks of shoes and
evening clothes. She holds up a pair of children's shoes.  The soles are
worn away.  "I can't hand these out!" she says.  "The child will ruin
her feet."  We pass other castoffs and, finally, she brings me to the
most critical section:  underwear. With one hand, she lifts the entire
stock for me to see:  a single bra and three pairs of girls' panties.

I do not meet a single soldier, social worker, or humanitarian worker
who is not tired and disheartened by the response of the West to the
war.  The two Belgian UNPROFOR soldiers I run into as our party surveys
the wrecked bridge of the main highway, are also disheartened.  They
have heard the nasty stories about them.  A local rumor has it that
UNPROFOR works only until 2 p.m.  Then you can find them in the cafes,
sipping their beer.  The Croats want to return to Baranja and they want
UNPROFOR to protect them when they go.  Or, they feel, that UNPROFOR
should escort the people who stayed behind to a place of safety.

"'If you all leave', we tell them, 'then there will be no more Croats
and it won't be part of Croatia anymore" the Belgian captain explains.
This is his first UNPROFOR posting and, while he acknowledges the
terrific pressures upon him and the other soldiers, he enjoys his job.
"It is not often," he says, "that as a soldier you get to help make
peace."

Other people in Osijek are looking ahead to that peace.  Josip
Kompanovic, deputy director of the office which looks after the
interests of the displaced people of Baranja, explains that the Croatian
government has plans in place to help them rebuild their flattened
villages.  They know what stores will reopen first, what local
infrastructure will be replaced, etc.  They are short on money.

He apologizes to me for carrying a gun.  I tell him that while I am
nonviolent, I look past his weapon to the human being.  I have no
trouble, therefore, promising him that when I return to America, I will
go to my members of Congress and lobby for humanitarian aid to Croatia.
The problems of the refugees and displaced people, we agree, are
terrific.  Croatia was not ready and is not ready for the problems which
this war has brought.

Ante Lauc, a sociologist with the University of Osijek, tells me that
Croats had difficulty understanding the terrible immediacy of the Iraqi
tanks rolling into Kuwait in August 1990.  "With this war in our city
and with this war in Bosnia that could come to our homes, we understand
better," he says.  In the night, I hear loud explosions and gunfire.
These remind me that even though the shelling has stopped, war remains a
constant companion to the people of this city.

Ante confesses to me that he has undergone spiritual transformation at
least twice.  The first time was when he traveled to America to work at
Cornell University and UC Berkeley.  "My fellow sociologists complained
that I was as a child, that I was too much the optimist.  It was true,
because I did not know what they knew.  I had not seen the data.  When I
had the knowledge they had, I lost my naivite and my optimism."  The
second time came when Osijek changed from the city so far from the
world's strifes into the most critical battleground in the war between
Croats and Serbs.  "After this war started," he continues, "I began to
pray and again I was as a little child.  Perhaps when I know as much
about religion as I do about sociology, I will become less optimistic."

I remind him that Christ felt that becoming as a little child was the
secret of Christian happiness.  He laughs with delight when I tell him
that Christ promised his followers three things if they would just
follow his way:  you will be absolutely happy, you will be entirely
fearless, and you will always be in trouble.

I have a taste of the trouble you can get in in this nervous, war-torn
country.  After working on the computer in the post office for awhile, I
realize that  I am late for my appointment at Caritas.  A soldier stops
me as I rush out and insists upon searching my belongings.  He wants to
know if I have been taking pictures of any important people.  The
controversy around my camera gets so intense and I am so desparate to
make my appointment that I open the camera myself and pull out the film.
He takesit from me and holds it up to the light.

This is not yet enough.  He rummages through my briefcase and pulls out
my battered notebook.  He opens it and demands to know what I have
written.  One of Ante's students, a young woman who has been trying to
explain to this man that I am here for humanitarian purposes, translates
for me:  "blankets, coats, food . . ."  The police officer who joins us
persuades

The next day, when I return with Ante, this soldier is still there.  I
am able to smile pleasantly and say "Dobro jutro" -- "Good morning".  He
returns my smile, with a little embarassment, and does not bother me at
all when I come out again an hour later.  Ante and I figure that perhaps
the soldier was more nervous than usual because Tudjman was in town.

"I don't understand it," the first medical student tells me.  "Everyone
here is angry with Tudjman because of the war.  They talk of supporting
Paraga which is no good because Paraga is an extemist.  Tudjman comes to
town and they all go down to the square, these same people, and they cry
'Franjo! Franjo!'"

The trouble is, she explains, that the Croats do not understand
democracy."They still expect the politicians will tell them what to do."
She feels powerless against this.  The people no longer come into the
streets and talk to one another freely all night as they once did.
Instead, they buy guns, go home, and wait for the Chetniks to come.  The
fear is what the people of Osijek understand best, she thinks.  "It is
always here."


I look at her and her friend and see hope, nonetheless.  "I look at you
two here and each of you has been very honest with me.  When we are able
to do this, to sit together, to have differences, and still be friends,
then I know that you know in your hearts what democracy is."  They look
at each other and acknowledge me with mutual smiles.  The Croats may not
ever be able to count on the forces they pray will help them, but I have
seen the one force that is always there within them raising its
optimistic head and laughing, like a child.

* * *
                NEEDS

1.  Once again, I urge Friends and others interested in seeking
political solutions to the problem to concentrate on promoting an
effective forum for dialogue between Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians.  You
should also call upon your elected officials and formulators of foreign
policy to place a high priority on aid for refugees and displaced
persons for Croatia, Bosnia, Slovenia, and Serbia.

2.  If you are interested in helping the Slavonian and Bosnian refugees,
you should call your local Catholic diocese and ask how you can
contribute to Cariatas.  Although a Catholic charity, Caritas provides
its services only on the basis of need.  It is as concerned about
Orthodox and Muslim refugees in Slavonia as it is about Catholics.  Help
to refugees in Serbia may be channeled through your local Serbian
Orthodox Church.  The International Red Cross/Red Crescent helps both
sides.

Caritas specifically asks for the following:  NEW underwear (children
and women's especially), NEW socks, new or nearly new shoes (especially
childrens' sport shoes), blankets, winter coats, soaps, shampoos,
shaving gear, toothpaste, detergent, and school supplies.  Do not send
books (unless they are blank or written in Croatian).  Balkan peoples
are proportioned like Americans.  Send clothes in appropriate sizes and
styles for adults.

3.  I wish to travel to Beograd to meet with and support peace activists
in that country.  The trip will cost me about $300 for one week.  I am
also raising money to buy toys for children in one of the refugee houses
in Osijek.  These children have been away from their homes for over a
year and have nearly nothing to stimulate them.  See below for
information about where to send your contribution(s).

* * *
ABOUT THE TITLE:  Brethren theogian Dale Brown once counted the ability
to believe in miracles as an essential component in the psychic
constituency of the peace activists.  "Mir" is the word for "peace" in
Croatian, Serbian, and most other Slavic languages.  The title,
therefore, reflects the writer's personal belief in persistant
peacemaking.

* * *
This publication is circulated over the Association for Progressive
Communications Networks by Joel GAzis-Sax.  Users may download this
article for their own use, but are asked to make a donation to help
support Joel's work in the Balkans.  Checks should be made in U.S.
dollars and made out to Palo Alto Friends Meeting and earmarked "Balkans
Peace Fund".  The address is:


                 Palo Alto Friends Meeting
                 957 Colorado Avenue
                 Palo Alto, California     94303
                 U.S.A.

You may reprint MIRacles for local use, but you may not make any charges
for it except to cover photocopying costs.
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