** Topic: Zagreb Diary **
Response  26  of  67
** Written  2:33 AM  May 18, 1992 by wamkat in gn:yugo.antiwar **
Subject: Zagreb Diary

/* Written  2:31 am  May 18, 1992 by wamkat in gn:yugo.antiwar */
/* ---------- "Zagreb. Diary" ---------- */
Subject: Zagreb. Diary

Zagreb Diary
May 16/17 1992

Maybe it is good to put some things right again, I write this diary to explain what it is to live in a city under war, what kind of things you see and hear. I start with this explanation since I had some critical comments from different sides over the last weeks, saying that I was busy with Serbian, Croatian or Muslim propaganda. It is clear that I try to stay as neutral as I can and try to discribe as honest as I can be what during a day in zagreb or surroundings happens and what you hear in the pubs, in the papers, on the streets, on the television or whatever.

It are not always facts, at least the contence of the stories, which I hear and which I write down I am not always capable to verify them, it is ofcourse true that somebody told them to me. 

To clarify some of those things, I wrote f.e. about the possibilities of traveling in former Yugoslavia. On the the header Croatia I mentioned the "the SO-CALLED occupied territories", I also could have written, "the occupied territories", by using the word "SO-CALLED" I make clear that there are different opinions about the status of these territories. Since I don't know what really happened in those regions and how the people in those regions think about their status and if that opinion is real or just propaganda I have described them as "SO-CALLED". 

Same ofcourse for the "SERBIAN FREE REPUBLIC KRAJINA", these the "official" name given to this area, not by me, but by those who call themselves at this moment in time the official representatives of the people. I haven't been in the area and I haven't talk with the population there. What I know is that it is less free, than what my wordbook understand under freedom. By calling that part by it  "official" name and still mentioning it under the "so-called occupied territories" it is clear that I also tried here to stay as two-sided as I can be.

Last but not least, some days ago (12 May) I described a talk with a person who worked in one of the hospitals in Zagreb and that she told me about Croatian soldiers who behaved like animals at the front, to put it more clear. I wrote her story down and unfortunately not clear enough so that me readers got the impression that I wrote it down as facts. In Zagreb as anywhere else in former Yugoslavia it is hard to call a story a fact and even to call a fact a fact, since every story has her or his counter part. If I write that Serbs in Zagreb feel left out of the possibility to find work or think that they are just sacked because they are Serbs ,than at that moment I am writing down a feeling of a person. In is bloody well possible that the other candidate was just better in that special tasks. Facts and feelings are hard to keep apart. 

A fact is that I was present when somebody from ARK was insulted since he was a Serb, just because he said his last name. Within ARK we have about all possible nationalities and mixtures from former Yugoslavia united, but most of them rather like to call them citizens of this part of the Balkans or the World(because even the word or term Yugoslav has a the same political load as any of the other nationalities in these countries, the former state Yugoslavia was certainly not want they saw as their ideal country) than Croat, Serb, Moslim, Albanian or Slovenian. In principle it don't make so much different since most of them are brought up in Zagreb or are living there for a big part of their live and never before it made a point, which nationality the other had, so why should it make a different now.

Another example is f.e. the story which was posted and is a translation of an article of the weekly newspaper "Duga", which is published in Beograd and more or less described to me as being not too serious (if that is true, I don't know, but as said it has been described to me that way), the story they published about Kupres was horrifying, it is a lot similar with the story about Bijeljina, with which I was confronted with the third day of my stay here. During the last weeks however SDA (the mostly Islamic party in Bosnia and Herzegovina) wrote me also about Kupres and told about the same stories just the other way round. In fact when the both stories are true, there are not much people in Kupres who survived the both attacks (by Utachi and JNA) and they have all been slaughtered the most cruel way you can imagine. 

A remarkable fact however was that in this story in "Duga" everybody which wasn't of Serbian nationality was called either Muslim or Utachi ,and with Utachi the writer mend probebly all of "Croatian" nationality. Since Utachi are just like Chetniks a group named after fascistic organizations in the second war world, both fighting for the Nazis (together by the way) and therefore already by choosing that name they express a certain political view, a view which is certainly not shared by everybody which coincidentally born out of racial Croatian parents or lives in an area which belongs to the territory of the state Croatia (you see what I have to do to describe people without putting any type of political loaded label on them), as well as those people who live in area outside Croatia, which has a majority of racial Croats (or whatever you want to call it). With other words using the word Utachi to describe that group of persons is a political choice and is part of war and hate propaganda. In principal only those which belongs to the fighting force of HOS or are sympathic to their cause call themself Utachi, they are the promotors of the Great Croatia idea. This use of the word Utachi instead of Croatian started already a few years ago and can therefore be seen as part of the media war (this part of the story I could verify since as proof I found some papers published in Beograd (no I am not saying Serbian papers) from afew years back).

Even when I discussed this text a few minute ago with somebody it became a pity heavy discussion, every term, every word, every description you use is having an enormous political and emotional load. You can laugh about it, becoming angry or sad about it, but somehow you have to respect it. It is the reality, you have to walk on your tiptoes. Not easy if you are not use to it, especially if you are use to talk in a more fast and generalitic way, thinking that everybody understood what you mend, without using to many long sentences to explain something. Now you maybe can imagine how hard and difficult it is to discuses something, within no-time somebody is offended, without he or she has a reason for it. 

I honestly must confess that I never been in my life in a place where you have to be so enormous careful with your words and terms you use. And not only here a lot of people seems to be enormous fast offended, but more or less I have got the feeling tjhat everybody involved in this part of the world is very tensioned and fastly confinced that the other means something different than what the writer (m/v) mend. And please remember I am not English from mother tongue, I don't have the enormous vocabulary which an english speaking person has, it is somehow still a black and white languages for, without all the different colors of the rainbow which you need to describe everything tenderful. Neither have I any family relationship in or with these countries, I just try to do my best to write down what a stupid Dutch guy sees and feels. Please try to read between the lines next time before climbing in your computer and write me a critical messages, I am agree with you, believe me it is not my style to take sides.

All of this keep me from writing what I have experienced the last two days, the shooting in the street in front of the house I am sleeping, some drunken soldier tried to shoot out a lightpool. Saturday night, by the way, is always full with shooting, and this night it was also full moon (the news papers report daily from accidents with happens with weapons). The nice concert and roundtable we have had for and about CO's. The fightings in Sarajevo, which went on and became harder. The police agents who are posted more than drunk on the street inspecting cars for bombs (and skip every hour to take a drink in some pub). The prices on the green market, which have been highering up during the last days, the food shortness is slowly coming closer. Or that Ibrahim from the International Peacecenter in Sarajevo just ask us to write faxes (yes the telephone lines are working again, but it is like playing on a gamble machine, you never know) to his government and PTT to get him a new telephone line (just that feeling, in the middle of the fights we have to press his government to install a new telephone line in his shelter, can you feel it, Ibrahim is doing great work by the way, but sometimes... anyway we have sended the fax, since it is important that the center has an own telephone line), or that on the televison a demostration was shown from people from Serbian nationality in Sarajevo who protested against SDS and all attacks on their city and country by not so-called Serbian forces (maybe some Croats and Muslim also joint that manifestation). 

Or explain that I am NOT feeling despressed, even I feel a little useless and totaly misplaced once and a while, most of the time I feel that I am busy with something what somebody somewhere can help, but thanks anyway all thsoe people who send me positive messages over the last days. Excuses for those who are still waiting on answers for qeustions, I am trying to get them answered.

Love and Peace from Zagreb

Wam:-)** 

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