** Topic: Zagreb Diary **
Response  24  of  67
** Written 10:40 AM  May 14, 1992 by wamkat in gn:yugo.antiwar **
Subject: Zagreb Diary

Zagreb Diary
12/13 May 1992

Sun is shinning and bombs are falling, it is starting to be a real summer now. The whetter is great and I have been watching an English promotion film on Croatian television about the island of Vis, starting today 3 times a week a special tourist airplane route is established between Zagreb and Vis. So the idea to start eco-touristic activities on Vis is under attack by the mass-tourism industry. For the time being however this promotion film said: "When the Yugoslav Army will have left the Island it will became a heaven of Peace". So somewhere we agreed, unfortunately the army is still there and just like Yugoslav army also Croatian army has changed their admirals and generals last week, the new, younger once are known as real iron-eaters.

Tuesday evening Ben and some other came by for a visit, before we go to Vis (if we go) it would be good to see each other once more. Now he is demobilized I am not so afraid anymore of not seeing him back again (I have got other friends on the front though, to be worried about) and I was sure that one day we would met again. I was great to see him, he was in many ways a lot more quiet as the first time. Happy that his demobilization appeal was excepted and glad that he could work on his institute again (institute for social research, he is doing research on youth subcultures and how they "survived" in the war).

He brought a tape with him with war rock songs (in Croatian and some in Cro-English) which was made in the first months of the war (today I have been going through the town to find it, but is not anymore there), it is a big different with the type of rocksongs made now. Some how the first once have something in it as protest against the bloodshed, the the last generation of songs is more "We are going to win and kill all the Serbs, tatatatatata". Except from one "nice" song about a soldier who writes a letter to his friend in Beograd. Telling him that he is full of worries that one day there both will be at the front on the Sava and his friend will shoot two times on him, but that the singer in the end will kill his friend from Beograd. Why can't we just drink beer together ?

It is by the way, very obvious that 75% of the people in and around ARK are former students and professors of philosophy and sociologic, most even from the same year of period. The core group from ARK is between 27 and 30 years old and most of them know each other for years. Around it mostly some older people (36 like me and older), who are working as teachers, professors, scientific researchers and journalists. A real elite bunch with other words.

Most of the younger people, 17-25, in Zagreb and Croatia are not so critical and against the war in seems. They are the major suppliers for the army and anti war activities at universities and other higher education institutions are hardly not visit. The brainwash machine from the state has done his job. And what have happened outside the universities you can guess. The first picture from Zagreb last year were football hooligans from the Bad Blue Boys fighting in the streets with football fans from Beograd.. They are still fighting, only with weapons this time.

Ben told me that this fights between Croatian football team also continue on the front between the fanclubs of the different football teams. They not only try to be better than each other, but also harder and more known at the front as good fighters. One of the groups of the Bad Blue Boys (fanclub from former Dynamo Zagreb) had their own tank (with the gravity "Terminal Nuclear Warriors" on it). 

After Ben and the others left, a few hours after the official closing time of the pubs, it was quiet in the town, only far away you could hear sometimes some riffle shoots and I even heard some automatic guns going off, I think about 2 kilometers away. But I was waiting for the morning, waiting for the expected concerto of guns in front of the railway station. But as expected nothing real happened. A few hundred supporters of HOS blocked the entrance of the building, in the windows soldiers were hanging with their guns and about 50 policecops were standing there not knowing what to do, so they give HOS 8 days more to leave the building. We will see.

Today I have been mostly busy with installing telephone and other lines at the new office. I talk with people in Osijek, which went through the hardest night of this year, the attacks of JNA on Osijek were stronger than in the former months. They are now shooting again from both sides, so mortier grenades are flying all over the town. The telephone line with Sarajevo are cut again, the last phonecall I had was with somebody in a building which was burning. As expected JNA also has changed their generals and it seems that the new ones will or destroy everything they can't get or take all areas before UNPROFOR takes over.

In the evening I talk with a doctor of one of the hospitals again, she told me that the number of abortions is now about 50% higher than normal. And the propaganda against abortions is also growing, under the motto "Don't kill a Croat" the catholic church is busy to get the freedom of abortion out of the laws. Already two major hospitals in Zagreb have stopped doing abortions. The anti-conception information is now totally stopped, more and more propaganda is made for having real Croats now.

She also told me about the talks she has with the soldiers who come back and are totally emotional broken. They keep themselfs up by saying there are people even worst than me. "I maybe took the eyes out of a Serb with my knife, but I know that Serbs have cut open pregnant women to feed the embryo to a dog". And that are the moderate stories. 

Also that the sanatorium, where normally chronical patients come to rest are now taken over by the army and that the normal patients haven't got any place in town anymore. The health care for not soldiers and not young ones is rapidly going down. Alcoholism (the official figures are forbidden, since it could be used by the "enemy") is growing like hell and a lot higher than the 15% of the adult population as it was before the war, she estimate it more in the direction of 40% at this moment. But program for not-soldiers who are alcoholics are stopped.

I respect her a lot that she can do her job, since she is half Serb/half Jewish (with a Jewish (German) familyname). I may be a foreigner in this country, but all people who are living in Croatian all their live and are not Croats are also becoming foreigners, they get check before they can work somewhere, they are lower than everybody else. Together with her I discussed the start of some talking groups for not Croats, to exchange their experiences and maybe give each other some help. She said that it is like living in a ghetto.

Love and Peace from Zagreb

Wam still :-)

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