Date: Sun, 22 Nov 1992 17:16:00 CET
From: wam@zamir-zg.comlink.de (Wam Kat)
Reply-To: wam@zamir-zg.comlink.de
Distribution: world
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia
Subject: /soc/culture/yugoslavia
Organization: Zamir = for peace, Zagreb
Content-Length: 7014    
X-Gateway: UC xclhh [UZERCP V3.99]


Zagreb Diary
21 November 1992

Dobar Dan,

27 November is the international day of women against rape, or something 
like that, anyway since a week the phone in Centar Za Mir (peace Centre) and 
on Suncokret is ringing all the time and it seems that all women groups from 
around the globe and women reporters want to know more about this stories 
of Serbian extremist and Chetnik groups raping women and organising 
special camps were women are raped until they are pregnant, this stories are 
not new, most of them are already from months back, they came in the same 
time as the stories about the death camps. We don't know if this stories are 
true, the number varied a lot from source to source, surely were there is 
smoke there will be fire. This reaction however is more about the sudden 
interest of women groups, we see every day on the news in the papers and 
from stories from people direct involved how thousands of women, men and 
children are threatened in the life, not only by violence of the war, but mainly 
by indirect causes, starvation and under cooling, we know that we can help 
some of them now and spend a great deal of our time on doing that. And 
suddenly people ask us if we can help to organise demonstrations in Zagreb 
against raping women in BiH, what would be your answer, we don't know yet.

The government of Croatia has decided that without a new coal power plant in 
Dalmatian this area, officially still referred to as South Croatia, will have 
serious energy problems in the future. During the war a lot of the big hydro 
energy plants, which are mainly situated in the northern part of BiH and the 
Knin stopped delivering energy to Croatia. And it don't look like it that this 
situation soon will change. Never the less the great opportunities for solar and 
wind power installation in Dalmatia and along the whole coast line and the 
island, Minister Franjo Kajfez has decided to build a 600 mega watt coal 
power plant.

Who has more problems with their energy are all the Croatian citizens who 
received their energy bill for the last two months. That it were not one or two 
persons who refused to pay their bill shows a two page big commercial in all 
the Croatian daily newspapers from Hrvatska Elektroprivreda (Croatian 
Electricity company) in which they try to explain how the bills are made up and 
where people have to pay for. I wonder if that will help a lot, the bills were not 
just a few percent higher, but like in Vesna J. case and most others as well, 
at least 10 times higher, the last bill was just over 700 HDR and now 
suddenly it went up to over 7000 HDR. Together with the article we count 
work out that 3000 HDR of that total were to pay the electricity bill, the other 
4000 HDR was partly for tax and all kind of other things we couldn't work out, 
only from 1500 HDR we could work out that it had to be paid since the 
electricity company made mistakes with the calculations over the last months, 
the KwH price was too low, and now all the users have to pay for it. 7000 
HDR is still not much if you remember that at this moment the DEM is in the 
bank already 350 HDR and on the black market over 400 HDR, on the other 
hand the minimum income is just over 15.000 HDR and the bill we are talking 
about was for a very small one person flat, in which there are not much 
electric machines. The major problem however is the sudden raise of nearly 
1000 %.

The new sociol minimum from 15.000 HDR is the result of the threat of the 
labour union to organise a major strike. For most people this is by far not 
enough, but the government and the board of the labour union reached this 
agreement as being the maximum  possible thing.

The money, Hrvatska Dinara, which we are using in Croatia is in principle not 
money. It is not based as money in "normal" state on the gold reserves in the 
national bank, it is based of some kind of trust.  The gold of former 
Yugoslavia, for as far it was still in Yugoslavia and not as guarantee in foreign 
banks, was basically under control of the government in Beograd. Croatia had 
hardly no gold or any capital from themselves, okay they took all the 
Yugoslavian state owned companies, but that was it, when they start they had 
a reserve of about 500.000.000 DEM, which sounds much (but remember 
feeding and hosting of the refugees cost per month 100.000.000 DEM as 
comparence). Not much capital to base new money on, so the HDR is in 
principle just coupons, not real money. The real money Hvratska Kruna is 
already printed, but it will take some time before it officially will be used, it 
should not be directly become victim of inflation, they say in the papers, so 
first new agreements with the IMF and international banks should have been 
made. 

Yesterday 40 tons of UN aid reached the town of Tuzla, the mountain road 
were hard to travel for the British brigade, the reporter said that in a few 
months it will be closed. But it is not the only aid with got to Tuzla, many more 
tons came by trucks which are not armed, those trucks made the convoy so 
hard, since the road are very small and full of those trucks in both directions, 
according the reporter. The major of the British convoy had to admit that not 
armed convoys are also getting proof, but more important than the amount of 
Humanitarian aid is the message he said. The message is that we, as world 
community, are not afraid to use violence to get our aid for the people in BiH 
through. On the way back the convoy had an accident with one of the many 
other trucks with are on their way to Tuzla. In the evening we heard that a type 
of gas is surrounding the area of Tuzla, the British soldiers need to use their 
gas masks to get through. What kind of gas and where in came from was not 
said.

The state announce the figures for next years budget, 35% of the state 
budget is direct or indirect for the time being reserve for the army.

Bog I Love from Za-Mir-Greb,

							Wam
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