From: wam@zamir-zg.comlink.de (Wam Kat)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia
Followup-To: soc.culture.yugoslavia
Subject: Zagreb Diary
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 92 01:25:00 MET
Organization: ComLink-Network Germany - For Peace Zagreb
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Zagreb Diary
07-09-1992

Dobar Dan,

Croatia has a new parliament, today the new members where 
sworn in. Of course it was broadcasted live on television. 
HDZ who has the absolute majority has the most dominated 
seats in the middle of the rather small parliament room. They 
also deliver the chairman, which is of course no surprise.

The workcamps started again yesterday and it means that I 
have not that much time to watch the television, but I can't 
stay without my nice evening programme. This evening they had 
a very nice reportage about a, I think about, 80 years old 
partisan in Herceg-Bosna, who was a volunteer in HVO (army 
from Herceg-Bosna). They, him and about 20 young soldiers, 
were sitting around a campfire and he was obvious telling 
about the good old days. He carried an old handmade gun, 
which probably wasn't used all those years, but now the old 
partisan blood was boiling again and he changed the red star 
on his cap into the Croatian weapon of arms and went back to 
the battle fields. Especially for the television he shot a 
few round into the forest and carried a 220 mm grenade to a 
canon. After that he went back to his campfire and went on 
telling his stories about the last war.

The UN have given Karadzic an ultimatum yesterday of 6 days 
in which he has to convince the different (Serbian) fighting 
groups to give over the control of the heavy artillery to the 
UN. Let's hope he has the power over the different groups as 
he said he has in London last week. It would change the 
situation dramatically and maybe the intervention from 
Islamic states, as seems to be discussed among them during 
the meeting of the N.A. countries in Djakarta is not 
necessary anymore (if is not necessary at all in my view any 
way). Strange by the way that Yugoslavia as one of the 
founders of the N.A. movement was now one of the major 
discussion points on the meeting (some African countries even 
complained about it). Tito will turn himself in his grave, if 
he is not yet doing that already the last years. Anyway the 
shelling of Sarajevo went on today, it is sad to see how 
houses are nearly totally destroyed and still get hit. This 
high houses are looking more and more like giant ant hill or 
dripping stones in a cave, through all the shelling the lost 
their straight skylines.

The airbridge with Sarajevo is stopped again after the attack 
on that Italian aeroplane last Thursday. According the 
specialist it was a stinger rockets or an Yugoslav re-make of 
a Russian type ground-air rocket which destroyed the 
aeroplane, they didn't know who did it. According to an 
American spokesman it were two rockets, they registrated it 
in a AWACCS, which is obvious controlling this area. There 
are now talks again to reopen the airbridge by the middle of 
the week. 
   
Adam Curle is back in town, this world wide travelling 
mediator his planning to protect the UNHCR convoys with non-

armed peace brigade and for that reason he wanted to speak 
with people from UNHCR her in Zagreb. But as always that 
takes ages. He also wanted to join one of the convoys this 
week to Banja Luka, but as I expected they were very clear in 
the answer, NO WAY. Adam will stay some more days here in the 
hope to talk with UNPROFOR later this week and then go to 
Osijek to prepare the Baranja project.

Around seven this evening I brought the dinner which I cooked 
for the 20 volunteer from abroad to the sporthal were they 
were sleeping. In the earlier workcamps we always worked in 
one of the refugee centers here in Zagreb and eat with them. 
With this new series however we decided to bring the time in 
Zagreb back to 3 days in which we give them some basic 
information about the problems and do some training. In the 
planning we somehow forgot about the food. So at the last 
moment I remembered that we had to organise some hot food for 
them as well. Cooking for 20 people if you only have one 
small burner is hard, even or especially when you are used to 
cook for at least 500 or more at one time. But it worked and 
they liked it and it gave me a relax afternoon, we only 
should buy some more spoons and forks tomorrow, since eating 
pasta with your hands, what I want to cook tomorrow is not 
that easy. During the preparation of the food (cutting the 
vegetables) I was talking with some by-passers, who otherwise 
eat all my time, but now I did something useful as well.

One of the volunteer from the Netherlands is 68 years old, we 
were a little afraid that the conditions would be too hard 
for her, but nothing of the kind. She came in with her 
backpack, carrying two heavy plastic bags with toys for the 
children and represent also her town. They like to adopt a 
building project somewhere in the country and tomorrow we 
will help her to come in contact with some possible camps in 
the Zagreb area, which really need some help. By the end of 
the week the 5th transport of at least 10 tons of food and 
clothes will come in three weeks time which is organised by 
grassroots groups from somewhere in Europe. It is a great 
feeling every time when we phone to the refugee office to 
tell them that another transport is coming and the question 
to whom it should go. It is great to see how much people can 
do.
 
Bad news today as well from the head of the Law university, 
he wouldn't allow us to use the School for Social Work, which 
is part of his university, even not after having letters from 
so many different officials. We hope that he change his mind 
in the coming days, since it makes the planning for the new 
camps not much simpler. Also the fact that we still have no 
secure funding for all the planned workcamps and that we 
can't organises as many as we would and should (foreign 
volunteers willing to come enough, only we have no money to 
pay the local volunteers) worries me a lot.

Bad news also from Dubrovnik, some UNPROFOR commanders were 
visiting the place in order to prepare the demilitarisation 
of the whole area and just on that moment some shells were 
shot again on the new parts of the town. Let's hope it was 
just today, since it was so quiet in that region.


With Love from ZA-mir-GREB,

Wam:-)

  

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