Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1992 14:56:00 CET
From: wam@zamir-zg.comlink.de
Reply-To: wam@zamir-zg.comlink.de
Distribution: world
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia
Subject: Zagreb Diary 13 November 1992
Organization: Zamir = for peace, Zagreb
Content-Length: 6356    
X-Gateway: UC xclhh [UZERCP V3.99]

Zagreb Diary
13 November, 1992

Dobar Dan,

Friday November 13th in a house were a black cat sleeps in the basements, 
what do you want more. When I started my computer this morning I was afraid 
for any type of virus which could pop up is such a day, but nothing so far.

In the newspaper you slowly can recognise a new policy, not all Serbs are 
bad anymore, there are good and bad Serbs, and a lot of former bad Serbs 
become good ones, who are also under attack of the bad ones. Somehow 
the idea is gone that all Serbs are similar, it is clear that more and more 
people are seeking for new ways to come out of this war. The story which 
indicated this f.e. was a story about the situation in Topuskog, somewhere 
between Karlovac and Sisak, just a few ten kilometres south of Zagreb in 
UNPA land, part of sector west, and under control of the Knin republic.

The think what firstly stroke my mind and why I sat down with the dictionary to 
read the whole article was the word "villa Mirna" (which means or peaceful 
villa or just the female name Mirna, which still comes from Mir, peace). This 
villa "Mirna" was according to the report heavily damaged and it is for many 
Croats a big symbol. In this villa was during the second world war the place of 
the "Conference of the anti fascistic defence council of Croatia". People who 
told the story to the press were some persons who run away via Beograd and 
Hungary. The only way if you can't cross the Sisak or Karlovac border, like 
the UNPROFOR soldiers.

They told that no life is possible in the whole Topuskog area without 
UNPROFOR, also a lot of the original Serbian population are now threatened 
according to their stories, houses are robbed and storehouse of Serbian 
extremists are full of was machines and freezers (not only from houses in 
which Croats lived who are working in Germany), but also out of houses from 
"normal" Serbs, they said, people who like us, aiming at himself, are secretly 
listing to Sisak, Zagreb or Karlovac radio to get the real news. Lot's of Serbs 
from this region also want to run away he said.

The Serbian extremist who went with their robbed materials to Serbia, in 
order to sell it and make money, came back with stories that the people in 
Serbia don't like them and that they feel trapped in Krajina, no place to go, 
nobody likes them. All of this still are the words of displaced people from that 
region. In the shops there is hardly no food anymore, the black market totally 
took over, you only can buy your daily materials if you are rich.

The school is closed since they have no money to buy wood to heat up the 
building and they are not getting anything from the Knin government, which 
made the teachers very angry. Also they have no books or money to buy 
anything else. If they opening the school they have to teach with Serbian or 
Montenegrin books, which are a lot different from what they and the children 
are used to.  

Open letter from the Greek groups in HCA (helsinki Citizins Assembly). the 
resolution which was adopted on the meeting in Ohrid about Macedonia has 
not their support, they want to take distance from it and are against an in 
depended state with the name Macedonia. We were to early happy, we 
thought that at least within the groups of HCA there would be consensus, but 
it seems that even there the meaning are divided.

Some days ago the first person is killed in Kosovo, an Albanian, which 
according to the news (report on HTV was a copy from a news bulletin from 
Beograd) an Albanian attacked to JNA soldiers with a knife and somehow 
there was also shooting involved. The Albanian was killed by the soldiers and 
two JNA soldiers were wounded by shoot and knife wounds. They were 
laying in the hospital and been visit by the commanders, which obvious had 
more eyes for the camera and how they look on television than for the 
soldiers in the bed. It looked a bit like a cheap comedy, how do I get always 
in front of the camera, how do I have to move that they can see how important 
I am.

They show the dead body of the Albanian laying on a small stair in front of a 
JNA building, the knife, laying 5 meters from the victim, with a nice little 
marker with number, the bullet holes in the building all marked, the riffle and 
all like you see in crime films, which such little numbers marking them. 
Somehow it is strange if you think that just a few hundred kilometres west 
from there people are killed by the dozen and no investigation takes places, 
no pictures are taken, no little markers are placed. In some cases the bodies 
can lay for days on the streets and nobody is able to pick them up and put 
them in a grave.

In the evening I visit Vladimir, which lives in a street which used to be full of 
flats of pensioned JNA soldiers and had a name of nice communist hero, but 
is renamed and now no taxi driver know how to find it. He told me how happy 
he was with the fact that he could talk Dutch with me. After so many months it 
must have been something special for him. I asked him how it was in the last 
winter, when the air raid alarm went of every day, I have asked that question 
very often in the last months, but never asked it a relative foreigner. He said 
that he never ever went in the skloniste (shelter). He was resolute in his 
answer: "No, I felt that Zagreb wouldn't be attack and that there wouldn't be 
any danger". But it cost me weeks to convince my friends from it, the 
propaganda machine worked perfectly.

He cooked a real Dutch meal from me, from things he saved from the 
Netherlands, it is so strange to see somebody stucked between two cultures. 
He is not real Dutch, and feel a stranger there and not real Croat, when he 
talks he is mixing Yugoslavia and Croatia all the time.
 
Mir I Love from Za-Mir-Greb,

							Wam
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Zagreb Diary can be found on a lot of different electronic networks, it is 
copyright free and can be ported to any network or other means of 
communication you like, but please drop my a line, you can reach by sending 
a message to wam@zamir-zg.comlink.de or wam@zamir-
zg.comlink.apc.org. Zagreb Diary is dedicated to Tyche, Pjort and Rik, so 
that they found out what there father have been doing all that time in Zagreb.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia