From: wam@zamir-zg.comlink.de (Wam Kat)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia
Followup-To: soc.culture.yugoslavia
Subject: Zagreb Diary
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 92 14:31:00 MET
Organization: ComLink-Network Germany - For Peace Zagreb
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X-Gateway: US SHLINK [shgate V1.91]


Zagreb Diary
28-08-1992

Dobar Dan,

Yesterday a lot of the guests and long-term volunteers left 
(the last have to organise some things back home before they 
come back), so at last we have some peace back at the office 
again and not 15 sleeping bags laying all over the place. 
Also a small group went to Eastern Slavonia today to travel 
around there for some days and talk with local authorities. 
An idea we launched some months ago to hook up cities and 
villages in the "West" with destroyed villages in Croatia and 
BiH seems to be fruitful. Up to now we have positive 
reactions from at least 10 cities who like to idea, but need 
more specific information. Due to the sudden explosion of 
visitors and volunteers we didn't had the time to do a lot on 
that idea. But now things are cooling down at least a little 
bit and we can send people out travelling again.

Also Zagreb itself is getting more peaceful now, the last 
weeks were warm and full of activities that it look if 
everybody couldn't get his act together. This morning town 
workers have started to clean up the thousands of left over 
posters of the elections, which give the town colours some 
weeks ago, but are now lost there own colours by the sun and 
became grey from the car gases. In a few weeks all the 
reminders of the elections will be gone. If you see those 
little piles of dirt laying you think was it worth it? All 
that money which is use to print all those posters, all that 
hope some people had to be elected or to change the 
government, against knowing better. 

Just a couple of meters from my home however still a huge 
poster of Tudjman is hanging, somebody wrote big letter 
"TITO" on it and somebody else putted a red star over 
Tudjman's face. It is strange and I know that I mostly meet 
with a curtain part of the Croatian population, but until now 
I haven't meet anybody who openly said that he or she voted 
for Tudjman or his HDZ party. I only meet people who consider 
themself or left or right from Tudjman. But I think I should 
visit the catholic church ones, since I think there the most 
of his support should be. 

Today he was on television, when he came back from London, 
telling about how good the peace conference was. He is agree 
with a lot what Panic had said and thought that it was 
remarkable that Panic openly protested against Milosevic in 
London. Izetbegovic was a lot less positive about the 
results, first of all he is not so happy with the openly 
advocating of the cantonisation of BiH by a lot of the 
participants. Furthermore he wonders what the real influence 
of the different leaders on the different fighting groups. 
From the announcement made by the Bosnian Serbian leaders to 
stop the fighting in Goradze he said that he was willing to 
believe that such announcement was meant honest, but he first 
see if Karadiz has the influence over the forces fighting 
their he claims that he has. We will see in the coming days.   


In the morning I had some coffee with Ognjen who will 
represent ARK on a peace meeting in Spain somewhere next week 
(Valencia), one of the many which are planned for the coming 
weeks. He just returned from the Island in the coast of Split 
and told me that people are already starting to eat sea food 
(crab and mussels), not because of luxes, since it isn't even 
the time for it, but because they can't offered any other 
food at this moment. People all over the country are stock 
pilling everything which is cheap for the winter. After such 
a warm summer, the winter will be probably also very hard. 
And what can you else than preparing your best for it.

In Zagreb there are now about 150.000 refugees, most of them 
live together with families. Besides an act of humanity, that 
is also a way to secure yourself for the hard winter. 
Registrated refugees and displaced people get food parcels 
from the red cross and sometimes even some money. The amount 
of people who have very low income or no income at all is 
also very big, but for them there are now food parcels, so by 
taking in refugees and displaced people you secure your 
family at least from some food coming in.

I wonder how the situation in Serbia and Montenegro will be 
in the coming winter, now it becomes more and more clear that 
UNPROFOR will take over the border controls to secure the 
embargo the people there will have even a more problematic 
winter in front of them. More than before it is important 
that peace and other organisations around the world starts to 
realise that millions of people in Serbia will live under 
unbelievable conditions, and that probably a lot of them will 
run into serious food problems if nobody breaks the embargo 
and brings food to the poor there.

With Ognjen I also discussed the many crazy idea to start our 
own refugee camp as peace organisations from around the world 
on one of the Island. An camp, where we could try to get 
things organised in a democratic way, without directors and 
controllers. A camp where people not have to sit around and 
waiting on something to happen. But where we could teach 
things, which maybe helpful for the people if they go back 
when the wars are over and the situation is safe to start a 
type of normal life again in the places from where they run 
away. There are enough empty villages on the Island and in 
Istria which could be made livable in a couple of weeks and 
which would solve maybe a part of the massive problems for 
the big camps in Eastern Slavonia.

It is just an idea and we can't realise it when nobody 
outside would take it up serious and for the time being we 
have to aim our priorities on the work in the refugee camps. 
Later today I spoke with Oggy, who is the assistant director 
of the Savudrija refugee camp. The situation in that camp is 
not bad, since they are close to the sea and close to Italy, 
but is very unsure, nobody will knows if the camp will still 
exists after the 15th of September. Oggy thinks however that 
the camp will go through the winter and wants to build up a 
type of educational system in his camp. They idea is to offer 
the children and adolescents in the camp a series of courses, 
which are easy to organise and at least give them the feeling 

that they are not totally spoiling there time. It is so hard 
to see that good educations get wasted, educations which are 
needed to rebuild these countries.

With Love from ZA-mir-GREB,

Wam:-)