From: wam@zamir-zg.comlink.de
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia
Subject: Zagreb Diary
Date: 5 Oct 92 10:43:15 GMT
Distribution: soc


  

Zagreb Diary
28-09-1992

Dobar Dan,

On the late night news yesterday evening there was a story 
that some U.S. officials had proof that in a kind of 
detention camp in the neighbourhood of Brcko (in the north of 
BiH, just under the area in Croatia, which is now so-called 
UNPA land) run by or the Chetniks from Arkan (from whom 
nobody knows if he is still alive)  or by the ones under 
Sesselj command has taken place a mass murder of about 3.000 
Muslims in May and June. They American spokesman said that 
this calls for a similar investigation like after the Second 
World War in Nurnberg. 

According to the ethnic Map of Croatia and BiH (issued by the 
Croatian Ministry of Information) Brcko area has about 
100.000 inhabitants, from which are 44,4 % Muslim (and 6,4 % 
Yugoslav, mostly children from mixed marriages, but also 
often Muslims who are not real Islamic and choose to have the 
Yugoslav nationality, according the one who explained the 
nationalities to me some months ago). It lays in the border 
zone from a region in which most of the cities and village 
had a Muslim majority and not far away from Bijelina, where 
for me the war really started, nearly six months ago from 
that town the first fax came in with a description of a 
massacre of according to the fax 1.000 Muslim people. I still 
remember that moment clearly and what that fax has done to 
Edin, the days afterwards he was busy for more than 120 hours 
in a row sending that news into the world. Nobody believed 
him. 

Astrid went early in the morning to Resnik in Zagreb with 
some basic medicines and on top of the bill 5 thermometers 
(we had about 20 laying around), she was received as a saint 
from another planet. They couldn't imagine that there was any 
organisation who could respond so quickly and didn't needed 
loads of paper to be signed and stamped by officials.

Just before she returned from Resnik Jos from Medicines sans 
Frontiers phoned here and ask if we were very known in the 
Netherlands and I answered "relatively, depends in which 
circles, but why". Than the whole story came out, on Thursday 
last week a truckload of medical supplies arrived in Zagreb 
from the Netherlands, to be transported to a hospital in 
Bosnia, all kind of materials which are only usable in huge 
hospitals, not for medical boots in refugee centres. The 
truck driver was stopped by a Dutch guy who send him to a 
refugee camp near an oil refinery. There they unload the 
truck and the driver went back to the Netherlands.

Since the driver knew only that it was a familiar face from 
Dutch television he believed that he done the right thing. 
Jos however thought different, since he needed the supplies 
badly to be send to Bosnia. Somehow he thought that I maybe 
would have been me who was that familiar face and more or 
less hoped that I knew where I had brought his supplies. 


I unfortunately had to help him out of his dream, I am not 
that known in my country that people know my face from 
television, since the last 5 years I have been out of the 
press at all. And on top of all I didn't knew anything from 
his truck. I did know however a refugee center next to a 
refinery I said. 10 minutes later the Bull (one nice Toyota 
landrover stopped in front of our house) and Jos, with some 
Croatian helpers visited us in the hope that we could help 
him to get his stuff back.

Gregor, who went yesterday to Resnik was willing to go there 
with them and try to find the supplies back (about 50.000 Dm 
in value). A few hours later they returned, the truck never 
arrived to Resnik, they said there, but maybe to the 
warehouse of the BiH army, which is just a couple of 
kilometres down the road. The commander of the warehouse also 
said he never saw it, but he wasn't on duty on Thursday. More 
or less it became clear to Jos and us that he lost his 
supplies and had to order them again. Anyway the material 
will be used, not precisely on the place and in the way Jos 
had in mind, but still.
  
They were like a lot of others impressed by our small 
operation in the "mountains" of Zagreb, every week we get a 
few times a week new medical supplies and the kitchen 
downstairs looks more and more like a regular drugstore. 
Astrid has a full job in sorting all the different materials 
out and it was good that Gregor stayed for some days to help 
her.

When we were busy with our little things and problems in 
Sarajevo hell was loose again, just like some weeks ago 
during a funeral people were shot at. In this case at least 5 
people were killed and 20 were wounded at the graveyard 
called Boljakov Potok in the north-west part of the town. But 
that was only a small part of what happened today, only a 
couple of hundred kilometres away from us. The news was full 
of all kind of shellings and mortar fire in and around the 
city center of Sarajevo and the suburbs. The power of 
Karadzic (writing this means not that I know who shot on the 
people at the grave yard, their are so many stories in the 
air) , since I believe, or rather hope that he is really 
meaning what he is saying, seems to be a lot less than he 
thought, as I wrote already weeks ago during the London 
conference. 

He promised some days ago that water and electricity never 
would be a part of the arsenal of weapons used in the fights, 
but today the water supply of Sarajevo was cut and the 
electricity lines which still were functioning were already 
hit on Sunday by shells (coming from the hills a witness from 
UNPROFOR said), so most of the city is now again without 
water and electricity. Also the main road from the airport, 
known as snippers alley, is closed for days since the 
fighting is so heavy. Humanitarian aid is hardly getting 
through from the airport and the French UNPROFOR general 
asked Karadzic to stop the fighting. How long can it continue 
?     


With Love from ZA-mir-GREB,

                            Wam :-)
--------------------------------------------------------
Zagreb Diary can be found on a lot of different computer
Networks. If you can port it to another, please do.
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But please if you use something drop me a line.
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I dedicate Zagreb Diary to Tyche, Pjort and Rik
to know what their father was doing all that time