** Topic: Zagreb Diary **
Response  32  of  67
** Written 12:08 AM  May 25, 1992 by wamkat in gn:yugo.antiwar **
Subject: Zagreb Diary

Zagreb (Osijek) Diary
23/24 May 1992

So it is somewhere in the middle of the night and I am sitting in a room from which all the windows are sealed with black plastic and everything breakable in the house is taped with sticky tape. In front of the television the owner have put the pillows of his bed, but for the rest it looks normal. For the first time since I am here I sleep really in a warzone, but nevertheless the heavy shelling over the last days, which had a highpoint last night, things are peaceful around here.

We had the change to look a little better around today in this city and it is strange to be here. The last time that I was here and was able to look around was at least 5 years ago. The war has changed the city a lot. There is not one house in the whole city from which nothing is broken. At least all the windows or let's say 90% of them is broken and repaired for the time being with some plastic sheets. You see granade and bullet holes practically all over the place and most official _zP]iLk{building have huge wood construction build around it to protect the building from direct hits.

But is nice warm wetter and since there is no airraid alarms children are playing outside and we had some nice walks through the park from the hospital. It is in many way schoking to visit hospitals here in former Yugoslavia, first of all since all of them are overcrowded and often full of granade holes. This one here in Osijek is been heavily damaged, with huge holes (app. 1 meter and more diameter) even just centimeters away away from the Red Cross symbol.

It is hard to see Osijek back after all those years, it just to be one of the nicest cities of former Yugoslavia and was more or less known to have good houses and good roads. Now most of the houses have no windows, the streets are full of hole (from the granades), the picture is sandbags and red stones protected the basements for further damages. Most arwful is the hospital which looks a bit like a swizs cheese, the army barracks just on the other side of the street turned to place into a bullet catcher for shooting practice, looks like.

More horrible are the stories about what happened during the period of 4 days that the hospital were in the fireline of the barracks of the upperside. Most of the wings got direct hits and some of the heavier ones went straight through the buildings. They moved all patients and operations to basements, were most still are, it is not so improvised as in those first days, but still it is no condition to work. After that days in September last year the hospital wasn't spared by the grenades, over and over again the place was hit. Last huge hit was some days ago when a grenade nearly destroyed the whole nucleair medical section.

At the moment that I am writing this I can hear the artillery outside, app. 400 meters away. In this case it is small canons from Croatian army and lucky us JNA is not repeating the shooting. Otherwise I wasn't sitting here at the 5th floor, but I would have been somewhere down in the basement of this building.

After this first lines I went to bed knowing that any moment this stupid alarms can go off, but again lucky me, not an alarm but the sun waked me up when it slowly started to raise in the East (above Serbia). I slept like a rock, another trick which I have learned over the years (especially thanks our traveling vegatarian kitchen (from the collective I was part off) and our jobs at (punk) concerts), sleep strong and short, never knowing what is going to happen. More than bXbC[w3vsome machinegun fighting I didn't hear, during the night and what waked me up was a whole salvo of it. This dry expolding sounds echoing between the high houses.

It is unbelievable but just a few hours later we are sitting with at least 100 people in a room of the Economic University from Osijek, the whole press of Osijek (newspaper and television) is following our little expedition and the room is filled with all kind of officials and other people who are interested in nonviolence conflict resolution. Just before the meeting started I went up with Luac to his room, he is professor on this university (somebody who is nearly fanatic interested in the possibilities of electronic mail), through the roof of his room a mortar came down and left the room in an absolute unworkable mass, but that is not the only thing which is destroed in this building.

Adam (our oldest expedition member, I geuss him around 70) is now introducting himself. He has dedicated his life to helping groups with solving their problems another way. Besides the smaller cases in the UK, he work as mediator in civil wars in Africa and in war situations like on Sri Lanka. Adam tries to explain mediation work and that it some times can take a long time, not particual a nice story to tell in a town which is under artillery fire for about 9 months.

(The television crew just left, but in the back of the room people are still standing since they runned out of chairs)

Judith, she is the only women in the team, a mother which has now old enough childs, so that she can go out in the world. She will do workshops on trauma and other emotional aspects.

Eric, the german american, which always introduce himself as world citizens, he is the guy which started with the placing of modems in the different capitals. His work in Germany on noviolence defense of countries, now he will do a workshop on nonviolence responces on personal violence.

Last but not least, Nick, he has just like Adam war experiences, but he especially is working with medical persons, doctors and so, f.i. he has been busy to bring doctors from Serbia and Croatia together.

Poor Aida, who has to translate this all and get confronted with all kind of specialist words, but she manage with some help of some friends.

Adam is quiet talking about the craul wars he has been to and how he mediated between fighting groups all over the world, people in our 4S{group get really exited by the idea to go with Adam to the so-called occupied areas and discuss the future of those areas together with the Serbian people who are now living (stil) there. It is like so many things here, let's do it, when possible this afternoon. They thing that I just send a messages in the net, Adam phones some friends at the UN and we drive of passed the lines.

It is a bit like Luac's hope that E-mail could be the soultion for the furture of teaching and economical mail in Croatia. There is hardly no book any more at the university, but they have learn the importance of telephones and faxes (they came through and kept on working even in the hardest situations). Luac think, and he is right in many way that if we build up a good relyable email net in Croatia (and the rest of former Yugoslavia) a lot of the materials which are now printed and often outdated could be putted on a host computer and we give all students a laptop and let's party.

24 Hours in Osijek and still no alarm, maybe UNPROFOR realy are doing there job well and are able to secure the relative peace, or we have been just damned lucky and with us the civilians of Osijek. In a town were since the beginning of September last year per day there is an average of 2 deads by waractivities, from which the half is civilians, such a day is a blessing and haven't take place since March.

Love and Peace from Osijek

Wam:-)

p.s. One little detail I would like to inform how this message was send to day, I type it on a laptop during the workshops and then connected my modem to two wires which were hanging somewhere free out of a huge hole in the wall, where some 128 mm granade went through, above my head a huge view on the bleu sky (that was obvious a bigger mortar, which went through there). This was an office of a proffessor of the economic faculty in Osijek, and now it ......

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