Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 19:50:00 CET
From: wam@zamir-zg.comlink.de
Reply-To: wam@zamir-zg.comlink.de
Distribution: world
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia
Subject: Zagreb Diary 15 November 1992
Organization: Zamir = for peace, Zagreb
Content-Length: 6492    
X-Gateway: UC xclhh [UZERCP V3.99]

Zagreb Diary
15 November 1992

Dobar Dan,

From Zagreb you have to travel via Slovenia to Istria, at least to the north part, 
our bus compagny said in big signs that it came from Koper, but had Croatian 
number plates (Koper lays in Slovenia) and was registrated in Pula or Porec 
in Istria. The border at the highway between Zagreb and Ljubljana becomes 
more and more real. On the Croatian side it are still a few containers, but on 
the Slovenian side they have build already such a real looking border station. I 
still surprise me how fast that all was established. 

Driving through Slovenia, with the bus to Umag in Istria, I remembered a 
flame letter I had got yesterday from somebody, a Slovene from Ljubljana. 
The guy was angry that he had to read my stuff every day and told me that he 
was interested in the birthday of my brothers. Problem is that I am interested 
in the life of my family outside former Yugoslavia and that my brothers are 
somehow close to me, I am happy that they are not in the middle of a fight so 
as so many brothers from so many people. He, this guy from Ljubljana, also 
advised me to learn Slovene, he wrote that if the Serbs won't get me the 
Slovenes surely come to get me and the rest. 

From the huge peace movement in Slovene is not much left, this anti Yugo 
army movement totally disappears, this coming week the last "Intruder", the 
English peace magazine from Slovene will out and that's it. From now on 
Slovenia has no real peace movement anymore, Marko seems to be the only 
representative of it and Goga Flacker who works with the refugees. For the 
rest the Peace Institute still exist, but more as peace research institute, I read 
the stories of Tonci every week in a bilingual magazine from Austria (the 
region where there is a Slovenian minority). 

The claim that Slovenia lays on a bay in Istria seems to cool down a bit, at 
least I haven't heard much about it on the news the last days. The only thing 
related to Slovenia, which is on the news nearly every day is a plan to 
evacuate all people from Slovenian nationality from BiH. They will travel via 
Sarajevo from there by aeroplane to Beograd and further on to Ljubljana. I 
joked to Vesna saying, why are the Slovenes not reacting like any other group 
in former Yugoslavia, send their army and "liberated" a villages somewhere in 
the north of BiH and declare it the "Slovenian free state in BiH" and start 
printing own bank notes and opening up a corridor to Slovenia from there. It is 
a joke born out of sarcasm, a sick joke probably. I don't know how many 
Slovenes lived in BiH, it can't be much since they where mentioned on the 
maps as "others" and that is less then 1% on my map.

Very late in the evening we arrived in Umag, we were luckily that one taxi 
driver had the crazy idea to check out the bus station and about 10 minutes 
later we were dropped off at the camp in Savudrija. With us arrived another 
taxi with some drunk French speaking guys in it (later it became clear that 
they were part of the Belgium army, which is building houses at Savudrija). 

Lot's of things changed in the few months that I wasn't here, at the moment 
there are about 1200 refugees in Savudrija, but soon the amount will be over 
2500, since the plan is to house all the refugee which are in private houses in 
Umag and it's surroundings in this camp as well. In the summer it all looked 
okay and the single roof tents, which than just arrived from Italia seemed to be 
enough for the time being.

In the dark the whole place looked like one huge mud pool, the rain turned it 
all into a giant slippery and wet maze in which you really have to know the way 
if you don't want to end up with you neck into the mud. The guard at the gate 
brought us to the ambulanta (the medical post) and complained about that 
bloody Belgium's destroying the whole camp with their trucks. But more than 
two white jeeps, with Belgian number plates and the letters "UNHCR" we 
couldn't see. At the Ambulanta we met two Belgium majors, who immediately 
know where to found Ogi and the others from Suncokret in this maze.

The were in the tent of John, who is now, among the two other Suncokret 
volunteers, living together with an orphan from Sarajevo he met on the camp. 
They had cleaned up their tent for us and never the less the rain and cold 
outside this new tents from the Civil Protection Office from Italia, which came 
about a month ago it was relative dry and warm inside. On the floor the 
blankets we got some months ago from a group from former DDR (the few 
thousand they send us are wildly used in this camp and Gasinci and without 
them it would have been much colder).

John is really doing well as father, even he is only a few years older than his 
"son". But the year fighting all over Croatia and Bosnia has learned him a lot. 
Cause it was too late to have real serious talks about the going of the camp 
and our activities there and since Vesna J. was real interested in what a 
English guy was doing in their army we spend the evening talking about him 
coming here about a year ago. He explained that he was running a sport 
school in London and than due to the bad economy he lost every thing. As 
soon as he heard from the war he hitch hiked down and went in Varazdin to 
the local police and told he would like to help the country as medical soldiers, 
but they had enough of them and so he ended up as one of the first 
internationals. 

According to his words there are a lot of them, but not anymore in Hrvatska 
Vojska, somewhere in September all the Internationals in HV got the 
messages that they we not needed any more and could go home. And the 
story that huge amounts of neo nazis are fighting in HV is a little overdone 
according to his knowledge, he haven't seen much of them and mostly they 
disappeared after the first fight. "They are having enough mass back home". 

Mir I Love from Za-Mir-Greb,

							Wam
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and Rik, so that they found out what there father have been doing all that time 
in Zagreb.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia