From: wam@zamir-zg.comlink.de (Wam Kat)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia
Followup-To: soc.culture.yugoslavia
Subject: Zagreb Diary
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 92 12:26:00 MET
Organization: ComLink-Network Germany - For Peace Zagreb
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X-Gateway: US SHLINK [shgate V1.91]


Zagreb Diary
02-09-1992

Dobar Dan,

It started today with a fax from Marc-Jan from Amsterdam, who 
had a talk to evening before with the delegation of the Dutch 
ministry, who was in Croatia last week. Nobody of the 
delegation knew the name of the camp, neither the people in 
"charge" they talked to. The only person, from who they think 
he knows it, was on another foreign trip. Who said it was a 
chaos in Croatia. 

On ten o'clock in the morning Astrid, a Dutch nurse who is 
staying as volunteer, phoned me in panic, the papers which 
should been laying ready for her at the Dutch consulate 
weren't there and nobody knew where she was talking about. I 
told her to try to explain the obvious not much Dutch talking 
secretary of the consul couldn't understand that Astrid just 
wanted a normal standard form to help somebody to get a visa 
for the Netherlands. An hour later Astrid phones again, 
somebody from the Dutch embassy in Budapest passed by the 
consulate to have a chat with the consul and he not only 
talked Dutch, but also produced the right papers in a second. 

She has to go with that papers to Gasinci in Eastern Slavonia 
in order to get the information of some refugees, whom the 
Dutch film team, who filmed there last week, wants to help to 
come to the Netherlands. Some of them are boys which are what 
we call "overage", which means they are above 18 and survived 
two razzias, when Croatian Military police comes to take out 
all boys and men between 18 and 60 to be send back to BiH to 
fight.

You maybe think that it is a little unsafe to right this at 
this moment, since who knows will read it and maybe somebody 
goes to look for these boys. But at the moment that I am 
writing this they just have arrived in the Netherlands, only 
some minutes ago.  When we were busy in Zagreb to organise 
the official paper in Gasinci at Monday evening a messages 
was going over the loudspeakers that everybody who was 
interested of going to the Netherlands should registrated his 
or her name at the camp office. In no-time, Bicky, who was 
there, told me, all 2500 people run out there tents and got 
registrated. The rumour was that there would be place for 
about 1250 people and since most of them made contact with 
one or more Dutch people during our workcamp in Gasinci they 
all hoped to by one of them.

When the buses came it was clear that it wouldn't be 1250, 
but 250 people, which was of course a big disappointment for 
everybody. Croatian television later today reported it were 
500 people, but Bicky only saw 4 busses leaving, which never 
can take more then about 225. Also for Bicky, who really 
hoped, she convinced me, that all should be on the busses. 
Never the less nearly all the people we were trying to get 
visa for were lucky and could get on the bus. At the last 
moment, Bicky told me, they were a bit nervous, Netherlands 
is a long way from Bosnia and how could they found out about 

there relatives when they we so far away.

Since Bicky on her way to Zagreb and Astrid on her way to 
Gasinci crossed each other without knowing Astrid will be 
rather surprised when she arrives in the refugee camp and 
find only one person left over from the 4 families she had 
forms for. But I am sure that she is so happy that all the 
others got out of the camp before the winter that she would 
feel that she made a near to useless trip. Anyway when we 
phoned to the Dutch film crew in Amsterdam to tell them the 
story they were enthusiastic, even in his as always 
undercooled reactions, Jan Dries sounded emotional.

Who also was very emotional was one of the Austria 
journalists, whit whom I talk yesterday, he went today to a 
hospital to interview some wounded children from BiH and he 
ended up staring at a girl from 17, who looked maybe 12 and 
from whom was told that she was keep in a concentration camp 
in North-East Bosnia for 2 months and been raped at least 30 
times in that period, she was pregnant, but couldn't get an 
abortion since the embryo was passed the 3 months. Some 
Croatian doctor helped them to interview her, something they 
don't really wanted, but he said it was possible. But the 
girl could only say "uh", "no" , "I don't know why" (In 
Bosnian). The story the doctor told was that she was with a 
whole group of women in that camp which were raped nearly 
every day, the youngest was just 12 years, and that somehow 
some Muslim relative could get them out, he dressed himself 
up in a Chetnik uniform and walked them out of the camp.

The fights around Goradze changed a lot, it seems that the 
siege is over or broken, In any case it is clear that the 
order which Karadzic, leader of Bosnian Serbs, as he calls 
himself, has given after the London conference had not much 
to do with it, since the local Serbian warlords criticised 
him heavily. Also blamed was UN, they brought weapons into 
the town, said the Serbian leaders around Goradze. But such 
stories are told before the other way round, according to 
"reports" from Sarajevo UN aeroplanes drop weapons for the 
Serbian troops. Personally I don't believe those stories at 
all. But due to this rumours a medical and food convoy of the 
UN to Goradze was cancelled today, since Serbian roadblocks 
didn't want to cooperate.    

In the middle of the night I got a phone call from Nina, who 
drove with Jason from the UK to Gospic, passing a region in 
the night were people say to you that they don't know if the 
road is safe, but that you can at least drive as far as the 
next roadblock, which is 5 kilometre down the road. Nina 
sounded very depressed, she normally went to this area in the 
summer to walk, since it has beautiful mountains. But now she 
ended up in a half destroyed town were the bars were fulled 
up with drinking people, civilians, HV and UNPROFOR, the 
nightlife of Lika region. Since they were afraid of driving 
back through the night they went from pub to pub in order to 
find some blankets, lucky them they ended up in somebodies 
private house.
 
With Love from ZA-mir-GREB,


Wam:-)