** Topic: Zagreb Diary **
Response  17  of  67
** Written 12:52 AM  May  6, 1992 by ark in gn:yugo.antiwar **
Subject: Zagreb Diary


Zagreb Diary 
4 and 5 May 1992

I could have write this two days separate, but for me the  below to each other as twins. The 4th of May is the Dutch day  to remember the deads from the second world war, at 8 o'clock  in the evening we all keep 2 minutes silence (that is most of  us) in the country, this year I was at that moment looking at  the fax on Ark, on that moment some messages from the what can  be called the Eastern front came in (massive attacks all along  the line). At the 5th of May (that is today) we are  celebrating the liberation from the Nazis (or the occupation  by the USA, as some people like to call it). In 3 days from  now it is 47 years ago that the last official world war ended  in Europe, since that moment there has been always a war going  on somewhere. Maybe some people could remember that day that  there are still wars here going on.

No, the war in Croatia hasn't stop, there is a cease-fire but  somehow that means anything. The whole area in East Slavonia  is under heavy attack since a few days, in Slavonski Brod the  oil tanks are burning, the attacks were done by airplanes.  From Djakovo the mother from Vesna called yesterday morning,  during the talk the air-raid alarm went off, but people are  sick of it, they are not going in the shelters anymore. Most  of the time the airplanes just fly over to create panic and  disorganize the life. But on the other hand you never know,  they can always drop something. The wounded soldiers from the  southern front Sisak are coming back almost every morning you  hear the ambulances. 

Life in Zagreb however stood still during the weekend, most  people listen to the situation in Sarajevo, but now everything  is back to almost normal. The fights continue and Sarajevo  still exists. We accepted that the telephone lines to Croatia  from BiH are cut and that you only can reach that place from  outside Yugoslavia (probably by telephone lines which are  going over Beograd or something like that). 

In ARK we had the first discussions about the future of the  center (center for Peace, Nonviolence and Human rights, as we  are going to call it), somehow nobody had the time so far to  talk about it, the war was there and nobody thought about the  future. I iniated a starting meeting and from that meeting it  became clear that we have to do a lot in the sense of group  dynamics and political opinion building. I was surprised how  different the meanings among some of the members were and  there thoughts about what to do and how. You see a very clear  generation gap between people from 30 and younger and the  older ones (people from my ages, 35 and older). Most of the  older ones are trained under strong communist education and  are not that flexible in their thinking, the younger group is  more western orientated, but lacks experience and trusts in  them selfs. 

It is totally new for me to do groupdynamics in a group which I hardly can understand I which I have to "analyze" by looking  at the emotions of people when they say something, and the  translations given to me by somebody. In a culture which is  been aimed of the production of working robots for a long  time, talking, discussing, that's allowed, but putting it in  practice, doing something with those filosophies that's hard.

An other hard point is that the German peace groups have the  thought that they have done enough to help those peace  movements here, Zagreb have receive something like 45.000 dm  since the beginning of the war for their activities and that's  it. We have about 15.000 Dm left from that amount, which could  take us to August, without problems, but than it is over and  we have to find new resources. It made some people a little  angry when they realized that the north sees them as rich  peace organizations. Something which is absolute not true,  every bloody dinar is turned about a thousand times before  somebody dares to spend it on something. And the budgets of  most of the similar peacegroups in the north are much, much  higher. 

This island feeling is part of being here, feeling an  isolation from the world. Like the UN department for refugees  said on Friday, if I don't get enough money I will stop my  activities in former Yugoslavia, those remarks are echoing  through the streets. What does that mean, that Yugoslavia  should pay it themselfs.    It is not the people on the streets who ask for the war, who  are shooting the economy in pieces, who made a peace movement  necessary, it is the economical situation which made it happen  and for that the rest of the world is as guilty as the  governments from former Yugoslavia.

When I was walking back from ARK to my living and working  place at Vesna's house I thought "Shit, war is not (only) what  happens at the fronts, it is everywhere, it are the prices in  the shops, which get higher with the day, it is the whole  mentality, the brainwash that every thing which is not good  gets blamed by the war. If there was no war everything would  be better. And the war means the attacks of the Serbs, we have  to protect us against the enemy. So war becomes the ultimate  excuse for everything which is not functioning well and  indirectly the Serbs get the blame for it"

That is an spiral staircase downwards, people don't realize  anymore that f.i. in other former socialistic countries the  economy is also not so good, to put it mildly, in Poland the  inflation is skyhigh. Not the malfunction of the system gets  the blame, but a illness, which maybe is a result of the  malfunction, but not the only reason.

I like to shout, stop it, every bloody day people are getting  killed and for what, the world let us fight until the last  Muslim, Serb and Croat kills each other and than the problem  is solved. As said put a fence around this countries, throw food and weapon over the fence and wait until the problem  solves itselfs.

Love and Peace from zagreb

Wam :-] a little sad, but full of fire to work again today

p.s. I still have to go to the police to get a permission to  stay in this country, officially I am still illegal here.

** End of text from gn:yugo.antiwar **