** Topic: Zagreb Diary **
Response  34  of  67
** Written 10:28 AM  May 28, 1992 by wamkat in gn:yugo.antiwar **
Subject: Zagreb Diary

Zagreb Diary
27-05-1992
Dear Friends,

I don't know how many of you have seen this day the news on television of Sarajevo, but I have seen it today about 7 times. After 3 days of bread around 200 people were waiting outside a bakery when 3 grenades came down and snippers started to shoot in the crowd. The amount of wounded and dead is unknown, but the picture speaks for themselves. Never before I saw so many bloodshed on television. The street red of blood and the bodies laying all over the place. The whole day I have been in a short of trance. How can this be stopped without killing more people. Day after day I am loosing hope that it will be possible to solve this problem without more violence. 

Some people asked me if I wasn't happy that the Americans and other allied forces moved into western Europe in the second world war, ofcourse I glad they did it, otherwise I probably never ever have been born. And maybe conflicts like this can only be solved by armed interventions. But I still have the hope that it is not necessary that the world ones again goes in with their heavy machinery. The orgasm of violence is already going on, why  go on with it?

Reason for asking me was the fact that I try to stay neutral as I can be, which is hard after seeing those picture from Sarajevo over and over again. How in the world can that be happening?

Looking at the evening news it became clear to me that the whole world has seen this pictures, but I don't know if you also have seen the reactions of the Serbian spokesman. He said it were not JNA or Serbian extremists how did this attack, but it were the defenders of Sarajevo who shot their own people, to be enable to blame this massacre on the Serbs. Ofcourse that is possible, also the Croatian government more or less sacrificed Vukovar last year to get international attention, but this is sounds at of space. The whole world already knows about what is going on in Sarajevo, so why increasing the tension. 

It reminds me on what Dejan from Beograd wrote some days ago as reaction on the list about the destroyed churches and mosques I putted on the net. The major reaction was that is was propaganda and that he knew that the orthodox churches in Zagreb were bombed by the Croats. My reaction was that in the nearly 7 weeks that I have been in Zagreb, I pass about all the orthodox churches and buildings every day and that they are still intact. And that I was willing to visit with him BiH to see if it was true or not. Since I also like to know what really happens. I don't know if Dejan has recieved my message, since Joel who ports my message to the orthodox mailing list on UUCP is expelled from that list for his "anti-serbian" propaganda.

More and more this thing is hurting me, how is it possible that facts can be explained in two total different ways. For Dejan it seems to be a fact that the churches in Zagreb has been destroyed, for me it is a fact that they aren't. 

We have talk about intervention by the world community, I think that the first thing which has to be done is jamming all communication of the different armies in BiH. It must be able to disorganise the different fighting forces, just by simply jamming their radio contacts. Second there should be a lot more effort put in the the idea of EPPO (European Peace Press Organisation), an idea what came up already last year in Ljubljana. An undepended news agency, which broadcast all over former Yugoslavia and gives the facts, rather then the propaganda. 

It is so hard to believe that facts can be turned around 180% and that intellectuals believe in those propaganda. Why does Dejan not want to listen if I can tell him honestly that nothing happens with the churches in Zagreb. Why does he believe his governmental propaganda. 

What is the goal of the Serbian government, they must be aware that part of their propaganda is not true and that denying the facts isolated them more and more from the rest of the world community. If things go on like this their country gets under attack by all the world and that can't be what they have in mind. They can't think that they are able to survive, why not just give up. Or is what they tell the true. 

In what kind of game are we becoming puppets in. What is a human life for this politicians.

In Zagreb it is really peaceful if you are coming back from Osijek. If you come out of the railway station it is just like coming into a "normal" city. The HOS HQ is still there, but most of the soldiers are not any longer armed, or in uniform. I think they agreed one or another dial with the police. Only now and then you see armed soldiers going in or out. The black and the great Croatia flag is hanging half pool however, maybe one of their major fighters died.

Now I have to work on a poster for a concert we are going to have at the 6 of June, to remember the International day of children who deid in wars.

With Love and Peace from Zagreb,

Wam:-)

p.s. I have got some reactions on something I wrote last week, namely the idea that UNPROFOR should go to the republics which are not yet in war, some people reacted with a question if I meant Slavonia, rather then Slovenia, but I really meant Slovenia. Not that there is any threat at this moment, but because of the fact that the army is being build up there at the moment. I don't see the reason for that, rather would I love to see that every part of former Yugoslavia get disarmed and with UNPROFOR protection the Slovenian government has maybe the change to dismantle their new army.

I also hope that some of you want to help me to search for this information for the university of Osijek about a holoistic approach of solving the problems in these countries. How to build up an ecological economy, and especially interest there is in Permaculture.

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