Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia,soc.culture.jewish
Subject: Re: Zagreb Diary
From: stojanov@husc10.harvard.edu (Milan Stojanovic)
Date: 13 Aug 92 09:18:54 EDT
Organization: Harvard University Science Center


Reposting this from S.C.Y.  

In article <1475300352@igc.org> pnmideast@igc.org writes:
>
>From: <pnmideast>
>Subject: Zagreb Diary
>
>/* Written 12:52 am  Aug 13, 1992 by wam@zamir-zg.comlink.apc.org in cdp:yugo.antiwar */
>/* ---------- "Zagreb Diary" ---------- */
>
>Zagreb Diary
>12-08-1992
>
>Dobar Dan,
>
>The talk of the town in the last day is of course who shot 
>first on last Sunday, MUP (Police) or HOS. In Krosevo, near 
>Mostar Blaz Kraijevic was killed by MUP bullets and still 
>nobody knows what really happens. The official messages is 
>that he was together with about 7 other HOS members in two 
>cars driving in high speed towards a road block from the MUP. 
>A few hundred meters before the road block they started to 
>shot at the MUP agents and killed one of them. The MUP 
>returned fire and killed all of them in the cars. HOS however 
>says that this story is absolute bullshit and that MUP 
>ambushed them.
>
>Anyway the situation between MUP and HOS in BiH is now very 
>tens and both sides are requested by their commanders to be 
>waiting for the results of the examination. Similar things 
>are happening near Sarajevo, where Muslims and Croats 
>fighters has started to fight whit each other. There the 
>story is that the Croats let Serbian fighter through their 
>roadblocks on their way to Sarajevo, they only had to pay a 
>few hundred Dmarks per person. The story from the Croats 
>there however is that they started to fight against the 
>"fundamentalists" (as they call Muslims down there) since 
>they force them to move and this was obvious Herceg-Bosna 
>(the self declared Croatian state in south-west BiH) and they 
>were suddenly attack by the Muslims, who wants to enlarged 
>their control in order to found a fundamentalistic state in 
>BiH. 
>
>It is true that some Muslims became much more nationalistic 
>aware from their being Muslim, but it is hard to believe in a 
>fundamentalistic state in BiH. Most Muslims I know, even 
>those which escaped from Sarajevo are drinking, smoking and 
>surely not the type of Muslims who scared the hell out the 
>world some years ago in Iran. But as always the true is 
>laying on the grave yard as we say in the Netherlands. 
>
>Just like to true of the dead and concentration camps. The 
>international press is now visiting some camps in order to 
>see with their own eyes that the story is not true, according 
>the spokesman of one of the POW (Prisoner of War) camps. But 
>the pictures we see is surely not a picture of relaxed well 
>feed men. They are skinny, have fear in their eyes and eat if 
>it is their first meal in many days. Of course I haven't see 
>pictures or films from POW camps in Croatian. I only saw a 
>couple of hundred POW at the station in Zagreb some weeks ago 
>and I must honestly admit that they weren't so relax looking 
>as well (but I can't say if they were skinny since it was 
>rather cold on that day and most wear long and warm JNA 
>coats, I couldn't get close anyway, since the military police 
>kept us nicely a few hundred meters away from the buses).
>
>An other story I really would like to tell you is the story 
>about the gypsies, but honestly I don't know much about them. 
>There seems to be all kind of rumours going around about 
>
>mistreatment, especially about Serbia, but I haven't got the 
>time, neither has the Center the human power to go deep into 
>those stories. The follow up all those rumours you need a 
>full equipped staff of researchers and we are only a small 
>group of activists. So I can tell you only what I see.
>
>In Zagreb their are obvious more gypsies on the street than 
>before, a large group (around 50 persons) is already sleeping 
>for weeks in the open air on a kind of wild grass land near 
>to the bus station (no caravans or any other type of shelter, 
>like to gypsies in France and Spain for example). You see a 
>lot of them begging on the streets, showing a kind of 
>identity card, which states that they are refugees from BiH. 
>They are also the ones which try to sell roses, lighters (a 
>product you can't find in many super markets, by the way) and 
>sunglasses. If you sit for an hour in front of a pub you will 
>have encounter at least two or three or more of them. And I 
>can tell you it hurts me time after time to say no, but if I 
>start buying I collect a small flower shop in no time.
>
>Furthermore the gypsies which are in the huge refugees camps 
>like Gasinci and Savudrija are more or less isolated from the 
>other refugees. This is not done by the camp coordinators, 
>but by the other refugees. They the gypsies are said to be 
>dirty and carriers of all kind of nasty diseases. 
>


>In Eastern Slavonia there are further more some villages 
>which are nearly full inhabited by gypsies, the population in 
>those village is increasing a lot in the last four months, 
>but nobody really knows, since most of the gypsies has no 
>official registration and travel freely through the country. 
>That's all I know, I can't help.
>
>Yesterday we further on had an interesting discussion, namely 
>if we should put a lot of effort into trying to get money and 
>material to help to build shelters for the winter in the big 
>refugees camps, where people live in tents. Why not you may 
>ask. The question is if the building of more permanent 
>shelters wouldn't help the ethnical division of BiH. As long 
>as people live in tents it is clear that they have to go 
>back, since that is not a livable situation for a long time. 
>But when prefab houses are build maybe the international 
>efforts of preparing a safe return of those people to their 
>home towns and villages will be a lot less. A little bit like 
>the theory from Marx, when you keep the situation horrible to 
>world will face it and maybe do something. The other argument 
>is that it is not human towards those people to let them 
>suffer for things they are not really responsible for.
>
>Anyway a lot of refugees who left former YU will never 
>return, especially those who have a high education. Most 
>people try to get through to Germany or Austria and from 
>there to South Africa and Australia. But it is not easy to 
>leave the countries, since most of the borders are closed and 
>only a few get permission to leave as part of the refugee 
>programmes from the Northern countries. For normal travels 
>abroad you need to have for more and more countries a visa. 
>One of the workcampers wanted to take a young women (who lost 
>all her family) and her child to the Netherlands with her, 
>
>but this women has no passport and the Dutch consulate has 
>said that getting a visum for the Netherlands is at least 2 
>weeks waiting time. When we told that to this women, who was 
>very happy to go, she lost a lot of here hope that she ever 
>will be able to go for a month or so to the Netherlands. No 
>the wall around the west get thicker and thicker.
>
>With Love from ZA-mir-GREB,
>
>Wam:-)
>
>
>
>


Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia