Topic: Zagreb Diary 
Response  52  of  67
 Written  2:58 AM  Jun 18, 1992 by wamkat in gn:yugo.antiwar 
Subject: Zagreb Diary

Zagreb Diary
16/17-06-1992

Dear Friends,

A little dizzy from too much work the last days, spend now nearly 15 hours in a row on a poster series "Adolescenti u ratu" (Adolescents in War) after an idea and together Jasenka Pregrad, she wrote the text and search the pictures together. Her idea is to get money from some institution to make a better lay-out and print it in a huge amount to hang it in all schools and places where young people come. It give a overview of the extra problems people between 12 and 17 year have and what kind of influences a war and experience of violence, staying in the shelters can have on them.

We all went through that ages and we all can more or less remember how "difficult" it was. Here this ages is really out of the world, they are not children from whom there is more and more special care, they are no soldiers  (some of the girl ofcourse have boyfriends at the front) or workers.

Those boys who got somehow involved in the battles in the first days, weeks of the war, but were and are now still under 17, the minimum ages to become a soldier in Croatian Army (not in HOS) are lost for schools, if they come back from the fighting and return to school, they will anyway leave after some days of weeks, since there reality is at the front and not in the classroom anymore. I will ask Jasenka to translate there poster one day in English, anyway it was such a day that you better could stay in bed since everything technical went wrong.

The photos were to dark the scan, or with Tito on and should be retouched otherwise they would be read, the character type I use had no ctj, stj or dj (those special signs), I ran out of white paper and the ribbon of my printer is out, so we decided to print anyway on some laser printer, but all I know in Zagreb are connected with Macintosh and I use DOS, so the only way we can exchange files is via postscript or so-called tiff file, my PageMaker file can't be read since they have other fonts,  and those special file were over 2 megabyte, so I could not get them on cassette and so I went on. In between I visit Vukovar Hotel, make a poster for some Ljubljana meditation centre and recieved many mail and telephone calls. Just such a day. But my computer is still complete so I didn't lost my nerves, but feel my back.

In Vukovar Hotel (so nick named because most of the first and last refugees from Vukovar life there or across the street in a school) we heard that the Vukovar refugees probably have to leave Zagreb soon. They like to rent the Hotel to UNPROFOR and the refugees have to back to Eastern Slavonia. And there I just heard 3 days that more refugees and displaced people would only increase the already chaotic situation (there is enough food and medicines, but tents, houses, sanitairian facilities, cooks, building material, experienced teachers, relief people are short).

That it is UNPROFOR, which is moving half there HQ from Beograd to Zagreb, which is half half co responsible for the moving of the Vukovar refugees give us some hilarities, to say at the latest. Most heard was the joke that UNPROFOR moves out of Beograd, since they learn from Sarajevo and want at least half of their HQ out before Beograd gets to hot. 

The people in Vukovar Hotel, however want to stay and most of them are ready to fight the police if that would be necessary. The date that this is going to happen will not before the end of the school year half way next month, since most 60% of them still have to go to school.

The 500 refugees which camped more or less on the station are not yet related with Zagreb and there fore they were send today to the refugees camp in Djakovo, which I visit and already is far beyond there capacity. But also those refugees protested and the police was still trying to get them in the buses is the last news I have heard, on this moment in the middle of the night they are probably on their way to Djakovo.

So on the one hand I am praying for rain so the shelling in Sarajevo and other parts of BiH and Croatia will not be so big and has less damaging power and for the other side I am praying that it is sunny for the tens of thousand sin the refugees camps. There is hardly not enough shelter against the rain. And a lot, at least in Eastern Slavonia are very near to the frontline.

It is a weird weird country. In Beograd things are also happening. I hope that Eric has no problems passing to border and find a place to stay for some months easily since the news can more hopeful. On HTV we had the announcement that the Serbian King, who is strongly against the war, will go to Beograd and will join the peace actions. Not that the Chetniks of today have still such an adoration for him as the Chetniks which they were called after in the second world war. Those earlier ones really love the king and let there beard and hair grow until he would come back (Chetniks in Croatians newspapers cartoons are still drawn as long haired, beardy older men).

If it wasn't true officially some weeks ago it is clear now there is a military cooperation or federation between Croatia and BiH. President Izetbegovic has declared that Croatian army is under they command of BiH government and on strict permission of the government in Sarajevo.

The young guy from Baja Luka who is here and was able go before the closing of Serbia by plane via Beograd and Vienna and from there per train to Zagreb, a 2 days, rather the the 5 hours per car, which was normal before the war, I have heard that it is still relative calm in Banja Luka. But since the telephone line broke last week he can't talk with his parents anymore (8 days now), they were anyway used for strange connections by telephone to Zagreb, during the winter they had to call a number in Split to get connections to Zagreb.

The cosmetic cleaning of Zagreb continues, very slowly you see part by part over the last 6 weeks that the monument for the victims on the main square is disappearing. First the flags from the EC and Germany and then the flag from Macedonia, then BiH and Croatia. Than the boards with texts and slogans (they reappear after the grenade attack which killed 20 people in Sarajevo for a few days), than most of the candles and now it really look tiny.

Also the little market stands (where you could by Croatian, BiH, football and UN flags and all kind of Croatian, army and Utachi souvenirs) next to the main square are removed from there, and only one is left over around the corner so he is out of the general pedestrian traffic and site.

Pedestrian traffic on and around the main square is more full then normal since they are working on the tram road at the main square, were all the major trams pass and all people have to walk from tramstops around the real centre of town. That they are now working on that tram road and not during the summer holidays is a little strange. It really looks like a part of the election campaing. In July there are maybe elections (Tudjman promised so some time ago), since everywhere there are now poster where to registrat yoursleves in able to vote.

The work on the tramline however makde a lot of teachers angry, who have to life from next to nothing and would an higher payment (many good researchers are leaving the country, abroad is a lot better paid) and are going on strike somewhere next week, just in the period of the general exames. Even some students are getting angry since they react from a standpoint that the government obvious thinks that other things are more important than their education. If those tensions raise we soon are going to get the same pictures here as in Beograd.

With Love and Peace from Zagreb,

Wam:-)

P.s. thanks by the way to all their in the states who are helping Joel with his trip to Zagreb and the help and support he will bring with him, I follow very promising Email conversations.

P.s. I had a real heavy discussion tonight about the thesis that neutralism leads more often to pro Serbian than to pro Croatia radiation. Most Western peace activists neutral in a way that it could be interpretated that besides the destruction of a lot of villages and cities in facto not really happens, some how it is just a tribal war, you know (with bow and arrows and some rusty kalecnichov). It is of we even in the side of the warzone hope that all of these is just a nightmare which hit this country and nobody is responsible. Notice that I am watching my words. In circles of Croatian intelectuals there was circling a plan last year to oropose an international commision of judges to arrest and punish a list of persons within the whole of former Yugoslavia, which should be arrested to avoid further killing. In their eyes that would have been enough. I feel often offended during such talks, trying to picture the situation from the west if you look throug western televison pictures to this war. Judge yourself.
 End of text from gn:yugo.antiwar **