Date: Sun, 08 Nov 1992 15:37:00 CET
From: wam@zamir-zg.comlink.de
Reply-To: wam@zamir-zg.comlink.de
Distribution: world
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia
Subject: Zagreb Diary 2 November 1992
Organization: Zamir = for peace, Zagreb
Content-Length: 7081    
X-Gateway: UC xclhh [UZERCP V3.99]


Zagreb Diary
02/11/1992

Dobar Dan,

Some people were able to visit their home cities in the UNPA 
area yesterday, two buses, under UNPROFOR protection, went to 
Drisana, full with people who had flowers with them in order to 
put them on the graves of their beloved ones. I haven't heard 
of any other trips to villages in UNPA territories yet.

Yesterday, on Sunday, the UNICEF week for the children started 
and that's one of the reasons that the whole week already this 
UNICEF commercials where shown. As I wrote weeks ago the idea 
was that the fightings would be less this week in order to 
provide the time for Humanitarian organisations to get food and 
other necessary stuff into the besieged cities. If you listen 
to the news of yesterday, tonight and today however not much of 
this nice plan was put into reality. 

In Bihac, Sarajevo, Tvarnik and other places the war continues 
and not much relief transports are getting through. Yesterday 
in Sarajevo a transport from UNICEF arrived with necessary 
clothes and shoes for children and was send back. You maybe 
surprised by this, but I am not. The transport came from 
Beograd and was packed with materials which UNICEF bought in 
Serbia. Since there is an international economical boycott 
against Serbia,  which is decided by the UN itself it is rather 
strange if the UN buys products in Serbia and send them to BiH. 
Of course I have not much problems with breaking any type of 
boycott in this sense, but particular in this situation I can 
understand the reaction. As the responsible minister from BiH 
said "We have lost about everything, but not our pride."

Besides the war in BiH also Croatia has military violence on 
it's territory, according to the news on Croatian Television 
shooting was reported in the area north of Zadar and Biograd. 

But the worst thing in the news were still the reports from 
Jajce and surroundings, the talked about a convoy (mostly by 
feet) of at least 20 Km of 10.000 people on there way from 
Jajce to Tvarnik, about 25 Km down the road, which takes people 
about 2 and a half day at this moment. This are the pictures we 
are used to when we think about people on the run, people 
walking down the road, with all their bellowing in a blanket on 
their back. The 25 Km road from Jajce to Tvarnik look like a 
human snake, at the moment. From different sources we, in 
Zagreb, heard that shooting on them took place today and 
yesterday. 

In the evening I visit our volunteers in Martinovka, a sporthal 
near the station, where refugees from BiH sleep. Three huge 
room where in each of them about 100 people sleep, mostly on 
the ground and some on field beds. If you are in such a place 
you noticed the inhumanity towards the refugees. What is human 
on living in such a room where you have absolute no privacy. 
You have to imagine that most of the people are there already 
for many months, if you only have to sleep that way for a few 
days or weeks, as our volunteers, it is maybe not such a 
problem. If you compare it with a prison cell you think at 
least in those places (in most countries of Europe) you are at 
least at night on your own. 

Just before I left, that was around 10.30 the light in the 
whole building were turned off, the children had to sleep. In 

the corridors the live goes on. Adults are sitting and talking, 
playing cards and drink. And sporthals are not particular build 
to isolate noise, so one small little group talking in the 
corridors produces enough noise to keep 100 or more children 
awake. In the summer this problems was not so huge, the adults 
were sitting outside, but now it is colder and raining outside.

Astrid came to me today and said that she really is overworked, 
after nearly 2 months busy the whole day with medicines she is 
no longer able to keep up with the pressure. Her eyes looked if 
she haven't slept for weeks. It really starts to become time 
that other people starts to realise that we need nurses and 
doctors to help her with her medicines supplies. But more over 
the problem is that aid organisations and other groups want to 
donated money for humanitarian aid projects, an want us to 
bring it directly to the people in refugee centres, but forget 
that we have to build up the whole infra structure and logistic 
system necessary for it. And that is not easy. 

Also you have to respect the rules and regulations in the 
different centres, you can't just drop in with a truck, open 
the doors and think people start to stand in lines, they all 
like to have to best things which are coming, and when such 
things happens you have a giant fight on your hands in no time. 
This is not special for people in refugee centres, if you put a 
truck on the main square in Amsterdam and starts to give out 
thing for free, people there would react the same way.

Plus the fact that the people in charge of the centres feel 
that we don't trust them, otherwise we would have deliver the 
aid to their warehouses in the camps.

A last problem with supplying aid in the refugee centres and to 
refugee in private houses is the psychology of war, if people 
lost everything they have and have absolute no trust that the 
situation in the near future will be better, they are not only 
taking what they need, they just take everything what they can 
get. They react a lot like those nice little animals we collect 
everything for the winter or walk around with nuts in their 
mouths. just the be sure that that in any case will be theirs, 
even when they don't need it.

Last but not least the stories about illegal import, white 
washing of money and so on are getting stronger and stronger. 
Most people don't realise that humanitarian materials get over 
the border without any control, if somebody wants to smuggle 
materials and so on the best way is of course to use a name of 
a humanitarian organisation for it. Especially a small one 
without a large controlling institution of the materials which 
are being transported. And whenever such a transport is 
excepted by an organisation in Croatia, this receiving 
organisation is responsible for what has come in. Of course it 
is not good to become paranoid of these things, but it is 
happening.

White washing of large amounts of money is also simple, you can 
bring illegal money in the country and dump it on a foreign 
currency bank account of a special humanitarian organisation 
(which maybe does something, but not much) and transfers it 
back out of the country. The control is minimum so who 
cares....

With Love from ZA-mir-GREB,

                            Wam :-)

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Zagreb Diary can be found on a lot of different computer
Networks. If you can port it to another, please do.
It has no copyright and may be used in all forms of
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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