From: wam@zamir-zg.comlink.de (Wam Kat)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia
Followup-To: soc.culture.yugoslavia
Subject: Zagreb Diary
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 92 11:59:00 MET
Organization: ComLink-Network Germany - For Peace Zagreb
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X-Gateway: US SHLINK [shgate V1.91]


Zagreb Diary
01-09-1992

Dobar Dan,

Today it is the international ANTI WAR DAY, but the fights 
and shelling still continue in Sarajevo, Gorazde (where it 
seems that Muslim forces break through the lines of attackers 
of the city, from inside the city. A convoy of Serbian 
inhabitants left the city today and according to a foreign 
broadcasting report (shown on HTV) they were shoot at by 
Muslim forces when they left the city, which killed some 
children and women in one bus of the convoy), around Banja 
Luka, Slavonski Brod and a lot of other smaller cities and 
villages. That today started with rain may been seen as 
symbolic for this facts.

With Eric Bachman, who arrived yesterday evening late, with a 
car full of clothes, modems and other useful thing, I 
discussed early this morning plans about a free radio station 
for former Yugoslavia, an idea which a lot of people have, 
but is hard to realise. We are thinking in a way like "Radio 
Freedom", which was broadcasting over the are of South Africa 
the last 15 years. It shouldn't be a small amateur radio, but 
a real professional station.

A just arrived in time on the office to meet two 
representatives from the Swedish embassy, who heard from 
different side that they should have a talk with us, but 
didn't really knew about what. I explain them about our work 
and what we were planning to do the rest of the winter and 
they promised me that they would talk it over with the 
responsible people on the embassy. If all this promises which 
I received over the last three weeks will come through in the 
coming months we will have absolute no problems to run our 
organisation, but after 5 months I have learned to be 
realistic. At this moment we are broke and I even don't know 
who to finance the new workcamps which start at the end of 
this week. Somehow it takes ages before something moves.

Back on the office I was just in time to bring Gerdine and 
Margreet to the bus, they return back to the Netherlands, 
full with plans what they want to do to help us realising our 
plans. On the way to the bus station we saw a couple of buses 
full with red crosses from the CSFR. The obvious were in town 
to pick up some refugees. Everyday we see this busses and 
trains now, but still I believe that it is impossible to 
transport all the 700.000 refugees out of the country before 
the winter starts.

From the bus station I ran back for a meeting with some 
reporters of the Austrian radio, which were especially 
interesting to make a programme about the problems of the 
refugee children. In my best German I answered all there 
questions and felt rather bad, since it was my third long 
talk this day in which I had to beg for help. I can insure 
you that it is not always easy to beg, first of all I am not 
used to stand on the receiving side of the line and secondly 
I sounds so stupid that you have to beg for small things like 

some rolls of sticky tape and children paint. Especially when 
you have to explain that such small things can help to reduce 
traumas of children who seen people killing their whole 
family.

Returning on the office somebody came in telling that there 
was a way to get in contact with Sarajevo by amateur radio, 
he didn't know yet were we had to phone to, but he said that 
he was able to find out. Eric immediately became enthusiastic 
and started to tell about the possibility to hook that radio 
up with a modem in order to be able to hook people in 
Sarajevo up in the world wide network of computer users.

Later in the afternoon two journalist from Slobodan Dalmatia 
visit our office, since they heard about our E-mail system 
and wanted to see how it worked. They became more and more 
enthusiastic, especially when I show them the one day old 
articles from their own newspaper (even some articles they 
had written them self) and explain them that they travelled 
all around the world before they returned back in our 
computer in Zagreb. Even more impressed they were when they 
show that we had articles from Vreme (a weekly paper from 
Beograd) in our computer.

It was again such a chaotic day in which tens of people
are arriving or passing through our office. I am at the 
office it feels like having not a five minutes break, there 
is or a fax coming in, or a telephone call, or somebody like 
to ask me only "one" and that one becomes at least ten, etc. 
Until around 5 o'clock the electricity in the block broke 
down, this didn't happened in the last 5 months, and stay out 
for at least 4 hours. It were nice quiet hours, but it shows 
how demanding we are on electricity. If there will be black 
out, to save electricity in the winter our whole operation 
will be out of work.

We were sorting out medicines we have got via different 
channels and came to the conclusion that we could through 
away about 25% of the medicines since they were half used, 
only could be stored in cooling or even 2 years out of dates. 
We should stress everybody to look at this carefully, before 
they are transporting them down to here. We have to 
transporting back to the north again, since if we deliver 
them to drugstores here, they end up in the normal waste 
dumps and we are not in favour of chemicals ending up in the 
environment.

In the evening I have been waiting for the arriving of 
Claudia Roth, a German member of the European parliament , 
who had been to Beograd last week and came back with the 
message in Bonn that military intervention was the only 
solution for stopping this war. I hoped that I could convince 
here from a other vision, but unfortunately they didn't 
arrive back from Split. Hopefully they will arrive back in 
Zagreb in the early morning, since we organised a whole 
programme for them and it would be a pity if they miss the 
speech from Zoric (head of the refugee office).
 


With Love from ZA-mir-GREB,

Wam:-)