Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1992 13:38:00 CET
From: wam@zamir-zg.comlink.de
Reply-To: wam@zamir-zg.comlink.de
Distribution: world
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia
Subject: Zagreb Diary 10 November 1992
Organization: Zamir = for peace, Zagreb
Content-Length: 6576    
X-Gateway: UC xclhh [UZERCP V3.99]

Zagreb Diary
10 November, 1992

Dobar Dan,

Milena and Srdjan returned from Ohrid in Macedonia today, they went to a 
meeting of the Helsinki Citizens Assembly, now Vesna T. is in Latin America 
for a meeting of War Resisters other people can travel to such meetings in 
Europe. For both it was there first HCA meeting and their first reaction were 
that it was big, and that it was hard to find the rooms where the meetings 
were held and to know in which meeting you had to be. Lot's of discussions 
also took place during the meetings, one important resolution which was 
adopted was that HCA spoke out in fever of the recognition of Macedonia as 
an in depended state with that name. Remarkable since within HCA there 
are some Greece groups active, which were also on the meeting and mostly 
they are absolute against it.

One of the resolution which also was hanging in the air long before the 
meeting started was a plan from the Dutch peace movement to walk from 
Ohrid to Sarajevo, driving the UN soldiers in front of them to the besieged 
cities in BiH. The idea was if enough foreigners from international fame 
would start to walk they UNPROFOR leaders would not let them just go 
without any protection. The plan was presented on the demonstration on the 
third of October in Amsterdam, but was not brought forwards on the meeting 
in Ohrid. When I heard the tape from the meeting in Amsterdam then I was 
impressed by the sureness and powerfulness with what this proposal was 
presented on that meeting. It was clearly for the speaker the only workable 
solution for the problem and there was no dough that he wouldn't be the first 
one who started to walk from Ohrid to Sarajevo. Somehow in the line things 
has been decided different.

Milena's reaction on the HCA meeting was a little bit a reaction of being 
disappointed. It is so big, so many people and so official she said. What can 
we do there. To get to Ohrid, they had to travel first to Budapest and from 
there fly with a special plane to Skopje. Just 7 months ago when the meeting 
was planned (originally in Sarajevo) it wasn't so hard to come there.

Burkie spend the whole day at the import centre with some guy from the 
Islamic centre, they didn't had a stamp to put on the papers, which came with 
the container of the Finnish SCI group, which arrived on Friday and before 
they, from the Islamic centre, could take out the things it had to be officially be 
brought in the country and the papers had to be stamped. He told me that 
Faruk had said that it weren't the fastest two, but his remark was that if they 
go on with this speed the container has to stand on the station till at least the 
end of the week. We hope that the Finnish are not angry on us, in principle 
the container should have been back in Finland already.

Another birthday today, we found out when the sister from Mark-Jan send a 
fax with addresses of US American organisation which are busy with children 
in war and wrote under it "Happy Birthday Brother". So in all hurry we tried to 
organise something for him at least. It was clear that he was not so happy 
with it, the application and budget for Suncokret, on which we are working 
now for about 10 days had to be finished and that was much more important. 
After 10 minute of celebration, with cake and a glass of wine everybody ran 
back to his or hers workplace again to continue the job they were doing. It is 
often with people which come here just for a few weeks that they like to work 
and work and work and don't want to have any break. They want to have their 
job finished before they go home again.

We are so busy producing good back-ground materials from Suncokret, at 
last also some stories in Croatian, since the governmental office for 
displaced persons and refugees has had a big change in staff and the new 
person there wants to know every thing we have done so far and from where 
we get our money. Zoric, who was our contact person so far is shift to another 
department, so the whole long story of getting recognised again is starting.

Marc-Jan sister can be lucky that her brother is not on the real battle field, 
since so many of our Croatian volunteers still family there. If you have no 
brothers on the battle fields, you may have friends there and so have we, 
every time that there is news we listen carefully if we hear something said 
about Brcko, according to what we have figured out that is the town were 
Marcus (from England) has went to. Daniel, a Dutch-English-Danish boy went 
to Tvarnik yesterday, according to want he said just before he left. He lived 
for nearly 2 1/2 months in our house and we hoped that he would return to his 
home land rather than to the front lines. His friend John was sad about it, he 
knows what it is to be in the front lines. And especially to be in the front lines 
of a war, which is not really yours, in which you are just voluntari from abroad, 
not having any thing better to do.

Zagreb is wet and cold, slowly the town and the trees are getting the same 
shape as I found it 7 or 8 months back when I came here, brown and grey. 
But is that time one thing really has changed and that is the feeling of war, it, 
the war, disappeared more and more out of Zagreb and became more and 
more an item in the newspapers and on the television. You don't see the cars 
with camouflage painting and nets over it anymore. Only the special jeep 
from the Military police you will find every day at the corner of the main square 
and Tkalciciva, controlling the boys, which are passing by. 

The situation in Kosovo is getting more and more explosive, nearly every day 
you hear from smaller and bigger demostrations and it would take long 
before the first person will get killed (not the first person in Kosovo, since the 
"beginning" of this war, but the first one since the tentions went up some 
weeks ago). Let's sincerely hope that it wouldn't come to the same violence 
as now in BiH, let's hope it real !!!!!

Mir I Love from Za-Mir-Greb,

							Wam
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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 
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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,soc.culture.europe.soc.culture.greek.soc.culture.bulgar