** Topic: Zagreb Diary **
Response  47  of  67
** Written  5:39 PM  Jun  8, 1992 by wamkat in gn:yugo.antiwar **
Subject: Zagreb Diary

Zagreb Diary
7/8-06-1992

Dear Friends,

Bread and games, I told you that's what keep the people forgetting what is going on. Yesterday (Sunday evening) is was again price at the main square, the INA car rally festival or whatever was closed with a festival from what I thought nice folkloristic music. Forget it, it were well known Utachi songs, "Jure and Bubane have call up again to fight" and the whole audience knew the songs by heart. On such a moment, when the black flags from HOS are waved and the people sang en mass that they going to get those bloody Serbs you start to tremble over your whole body. What is wrong with this countries, what made them so fanatic.

In the DDR (when it still called DDR) I ones was encountering a local festival where the older people started to sing, when they were drunk, the songs of the "alte kameraden" (old comrades), fascist songs from the second world war. It looked harmless, this small people, with hardly no teeth in their mouth left. And then when the wall came down and the neo-nazis started to beat up my friends in Berlin it looked a little worst. But still it were not that many and never real in the open, with police and so singing along. But here it is damned real, this is official organised by a state company. Utachi (stand up) are their heroes, their freedom fighters, but never the less it are just neo-nazis, referring back to a group which fought the war for the Nazis from Germany some 45 years back. 

In Maksimir, the big park, in the Zoo there was also a big humanitarian concert on Sunday, not for Bosnia or for refugees, but for the animals in the Zoo. Those poor animals haven't had enough food anymore, since in this times of repression nobody can afford to go there and the state has no money, they say. It remind me a bit on that little bear what was shown on television the other day, the most famous refugee from Bosnia. Ofcourse animals must live, but if you type daily stories in a computer about people who a re starving in Mostar and Sarajevo, it is a little hard to except that more people are willing to pay for a concert for the animals than for a concert for help to BiH. 

Most of today I spend in the office of Medicines without borders, just across the street of our Centre. They had some "problems" with their computers (didn't know how to copy a programme from one computer to another) and it was fine to speak Dutch for a while. Furthermore we needed to talk anyway about the kidney patients in Sarajevo and the possibility we had to get material, via our friends in the states. Yesterday evening and this morning there was a short telephone connection with Sarajevo, but before we got the information about how and what they needed the connection was gone and no new was established.

The doctors have fortunately a mobile car telephone place in that hospital and that one is still working, there news was that most of the patient survived the last week, but never would be able to survive another week. They were also busy to get liquid and infusion solutions for them, the problem is however how to get it there. You need at least a truck to bring enough liquid for two weeks for all those patients. They have the problem that they more or less have to decided if they are going to risks peoples life to bring it there, knowing that the last transport all has been robbed on the way down.

The guy I talked with was on that huge UNHCR transport from 3 weeks ago what was held up south of Banja Luka for some days, before the drivers and trucks were taken away and returned empty back, nobody was killed, but none of the freight reached their destination. As far as he knows Sarajevo is the only town were there are still kidney patients in the other towns they were moved out in time, most of the patients in Sarajevo wanted to stay, since they were old and didn't believe that such a thing as now would happen. Besides trying to get medicines in they think it is better to get those patients out.

The airport however is still occupied and most of the runways seems to be destroyed. The treaty to leave the JNA out of the Tito barracks and in return to open the airport for humanitarian aid is signed last week by all involved parties, but as so much treaties nothing happened since then. So all the hope which the outside world has that this airport is going to be open soon is here and in Sarajevo taken with enormous amounts of salt. It was one of those dreams you know. If you are here you start to understand that those dreams are soon becoming nightmares.

The situation in Sarajevo is not much better than the days before, the shelling was again heavy during the night and most of the doctors and other hospital personal couldn't go to their work this morning. That's the reality. A reality we often can forget here in Zagreb. For me the shelters are only those blue triangles on orange stickers you see at the buildings with public shelters. In my whole two months I have been only for 2 hours in a shelling, in Slavonski Brod, nothing happened with me.

On Wednesday I will return to Osijek (if there are any questions or messages, please send them soon) again to organise the workcamp there some more, but I don't have to be thinking about so much as last time, it is still quiet in that area. On my way back to Zagreb I will pass by Vinkovci and Djakovo, and I hope to return back in the end of the week.

Vladimir returned back from Beograd today, I was happy to see him, he was tired from the trip, but said that he had no problem to leave Serbia, for which I was afraid all those days. The situation in Beograd is much worst than in Zagreb, the first signs from the blockade are already noticeable in the shops and the prices are raising rapidly. The opposition is rather small, but active, they keep on demonstrating in the streets. And Vladimir brought the latest material from the Centre for Anti War Activities with him, they keep on going. Now the last contacts via computers are also broke down the need that we re-establish fast a new line becomes more and more necessary. 

These morning I also spend again some hours on the policestation in the hope to get my official papers, but hopeless, the lines are still enormous, and people are still coming in.

With Love and Peace from Zagreb,

Wam:-)

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