** Topic: Zagreb Diary **
Response  46  of  67
** Written  2:09 AM  Jun  7, 1992 by wamkat in gn:yugo.antiwar **
Subject: Zagreb Diary

Zagreb Diary
07-06-1992

Dear Friends,

Yes, I have to confess today was kind of a free day for me, remember that poster I made a week ago, today was the big (veljko) concert of the international day for children who died in war. Veljko is relative, but I think that over the day 1000 (in Vienna was a huge (hard) rock concert for Croatia and in the fair a concert for the refugees, at the same time) or more people sat down in front of the open air stage in Maksimir (the biggest park in Zagreb), it is anyway less populated nower day then a year ago, people say. The music went from children to churches choruses, from Hara Krishna to Franciscans (both in "uniform", from their religious or church, not military), from straight antiwar to half evangelic singers. 9 Hours music and poems (from which I ofcourse didn't understood anything).

The Franciscan band, 5 monks in their dark mantels (how do you call those things), with a list from Gregorian to something as close harmony soft rock (inclusive electric guitars) were absolute my favourite. I haven't seen anything like that before, or it must have been during carnival in Limburg (my home province), but than it were no real monks. This group seems to be very popular, they even had some concerts in night clubs. But when they start playing you can't get them of stages you know. Nevertheless fantastic.

All in all the wetter was in the beginning somehow cloudy, but during the Hara Krishna (around 3) the wetter became much more sunnier, so I spend my day mostly sitting in the sun, looking at the app. 100 till 200 people which were listing at the same time and thought about being here in Zagreb. And a lot about Sarajevo, since we are completely cut off I am missing Ibrahim calls for help and Nada's reports a lot. I am thinking if the medicines are on their way now or that everything goes too slow.

Wondering why it is possible that mankind can put people on the moon and robots on mars but not able to bring some food and medicines into Sarajevo, without immediately about brutal violence. Why not use remote controlled airplanes or tomahawk with medicines inside, if then can fly through the streets of Baghdad, why not through the street of Sarajevo. Or as Ogden said, why are they don't bombing 50.000 alive chickens over Sarajevo, they will fly to the ground (they can't fly so well anyway, and if a few get shot, that can't be the problem). You can fill pages with those ideas. Why not this.... why not that.... If women would have rule this country it would have been probably No War, but otherwise a more moderate one. 

And that brought us to a concrete problem for the future, what is the role of women after the war, they are in the majority, in the whole age group from 18 till 50 a large part of the male population will not return. Killed in war operations or killed by "war" operations (this last category can be consider as warcrimes, but for me a war is a crime in itself, and you can't blame human being for going over the line in a situation in which you will have lost your head yourself). As said I don't want to judge over all those "warcriminals" in the different countries, not now and not after the war. 

What kind of influence will that have on "Our Common Future", which has another ring here than in Rio, will women play a bigger role in politics, or will man become more stronger. What is clear is that this government tries to get the whole economy and all parts of social life under control. Just before the war some companies bought themselves from the state (the workers got shares in the companies) and now they like to turn that back, since that happened under Yugoslav laws, which are not in power anymore.   

Danas, the most progressive weekly also asked 8 months ago for such a deal with the state, buying there self as the journalists, but heard this week that it is not possible anymore, as protest Danas didn't came out this week. 

An other point what I think is strange, at least for my country is that the total registration of the population is registrated via the police. If you move somewhere else you have to inform the police and not f.i. the town administration. It give me an unheimische (a German word but I don't know any other which could describe it better) feeling. Knowing that they just had a huge people counting (how do you call it) last year (inclusive a lot of more personal question) and that all that data is registrated together, name and information. Since the early seventies we have no people counting anymore in the Netherlands, too much protest, especially against the combination between name and background data, the last part they only need for statistics anyway, name are not important. 

In the evening we discussed what we could do for a friend who totally lost his mind and goes now to BiH (he gets a uniform from HOS) and wants to go with a camera man to Sarajevo. If I get killed, I get killed, but I can't do any else, you know. I can't sit anymore and see them suffering, I want to be with my people. He is not HOS, but think that that uniform will give him a free passages at least to near Sarajevo. But it is not the first person I have seen leaving south and will never hear from again. I still don't know if that Dutch reporter, who passed by some weeks ago, has ever made it down there, at least he never send a message he didn't and Ibrahim never that he did. People disappear in BiH and nobody ever will found out what happened.

At our concert there was a group of Arabic UNPROFOR soldiers, only one had an uniform on, which brought somebody to tell me a story which stood in the papers some days ago. A bataljon UNPROFOR soldiers from Ghana or any other African country took over the security in a village for some weeks, which never even was in the warzone, or any of the UNPROFOR sections, they just were at the wrong place. And ofcourse it took a lot of burocraty to get them to their real planned positions.

The UNPROFOR soldiers seems to be allowed to talk with people. Different than those EC monitors, who seems to be not allowed to talk with any normal person. Vesna and Milena have tried during their stay on Vis to get in contact with them but they refused to talk to anybody. They are just monitoring. I think nobody will ever understand this situation if he or she not also talks with the "normal" people.  

I also tried to get in contact with the Dutch person of Doctors without Borders, at least his car is Dutch, but it didn't work so far. He hasn't reacted my phone call so far and my messages on his landrover (under the windowcleaner). But they are also busy. In the coming weeks we have no concert, but we would like to organise something again soon, maybe some nice western band like to come and play. So if you like to come to play, foreign bands are very popular, most foreign bands who play them I never heard of, even when they are from, the Netherlands. 

With Love and Peace from Zagreb,

Wam:-)



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