From: wam@zamir-zg.comlink.de (Wam Kat)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia
Subject: Zagreb Diary
Date: 12 Aug 92 05:46:00 GMT
Followup-To: soc.culture.yugoslavia
Organization: ComLink-Network Germany - For Peace Zagreb
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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:-)



  
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