Topic: Zagreb Diary 
** Written 11:34 PM  Jul 19, 1992 by wam@zamir-zg.comlink.apc.org in gn:yugo.antiwar 
Zagreb Diary
18/19-07-1992

Dobar Dan,

For one or another reason I always end up somewhere during the night writing my diary. Or rather early in the morning with some coffee from Netherlands in front of me. So the first workcampers are arriving, the girl from Northern Ireland was not impressed by all the uniforms on the street, but others were.

I think the biggest worries are over now with the workcamps, at least this one. It looks like if we got the minimum funds for the camps organised. My only worry is that in Gasnici the situation is becoming so worst that there is hardly not food enough for the refugees, so the workcamp is 30 more empty stumics to fill. But it is possible that we organise a few hundred tons of food within the movement, isn't it ?

No, serious folks, the situation is that in some of the camps we really see problems with the food supplies. The refugees really is getting a huge "problem". Especially now Slovenia also to have close their border. Yesterday a train full, 2000 people, we stopped at the Slovenian-Croatian border and were standing there for hours. A most embarrassing picture, when refugees become beside their already desperate situation also victims of political battles.

And then you hear that West European left-wingers are discussing types of boycotts towards Croatia to punish the country for her nationalism and input in the BiH war. Like all the reporters which are passing by sometimes are only interested to hear how fascistic Croatian in fact is. I am nearly feeling guilty for expressing that view also by writing about it.

If you noticed in talks with by-passer time after time that they press more and more on that point, you get a little hopeless that we are going to get a type of self for filling wishes. By boycotting you higher up nationalistic tensions and that gives extra grounds for new boycotts.

Rudies (from Berlin) experiences in Beograd were also that he noticed that the boycotts only hurt the normal people not the leaders or the rich ones. You drive them as it were in the hands of extreme right (if that is permitted to say). 

All the visitors and I think soon we are going to open a special busline for activists between Beograd and Zagreb have more or less one thing in common, there complain about the leak of interest for the problems here from their homecountries. Sometimes I have the feeling that we have to pump them up, they come to tank new gas for their battle at home, rather then the other ways round. The universities are closed and they start to come, as promised by me, and at ARK the people are tired. I am full of energy, the virus which bordered me for some weeks is gone, I think. Since this flow of foreigners started I am back in my element.  

I can study my German, Dutch and other languages again and get informations from the outside world. What is happening there, how do you discus about the situation here. And what do the people think, have I become a Croat after 3 1/2 months or am I still on the edge of the needle. The interviewers are coming asking me to have an interview with them, they have heard of me. That was not the ground of coming here. So a new rule is that they may interview if they only write "the fool from Limburg" or something like that. 

Those who knows what that line means more and more find out that I am here, and I got letter after letter stating that they were not surprised to find out that I was in Zagreb, they more or less counted on it. The rumours about me in Europe are, I know it, numerous. It seems that everybody who is in the peace or environmental movement on international level in this continent ones at least gets confrontated with me or have heard about me. That scares me off like hell, I am just a fool, never be able to choice really what I would like to do the rest of my life.

Absolute un important that I am here, it could have been anybody else, the heroes for that matter are the members of the different peace groups around former Yugoslavia, don't forget it is their country, not mine. I am just a fool passing by.

Sorry, I just had to say it before I become a short of movement figure head, trust the people from the Peace groups, don't trust me. Trust is the most important weapon in this "battle" for peace in former Yugoslavia. Trust in each other, trust in the future, trust in strangers, and each time that that trust gets hurt it is another reason to go down in the spiral of nationalism and isolation.

That happens on top political level, but for the same reason on normal person to person level. If people promise things to ARK or the Center or anybody else for that matter, we have the hope that people know what they do. Mistrust is not doing the relation any good. 

I gamble on the edge of the needle to organise this workcamps, when I started I really didn't know from where to get the money, and honestly at this moment I still have only promises, but I trust in them, and am sure that the solidarity out there is big enough to pull it off. But those who know me a little better know that I like to gamble with such things. I can tell them in Sittard and Freiburg that the gambles are here a lot harder, since there is more on the table. When it goes wrong you will find out that there is no safety net. 

Zagreb because more and more colourful the elections are screaming from every wall. Those with the best posters are obvious the ones with the best foreign support, since I wonder who else can pay for it. At least the printing industry has got a good injection. I wonder if all the parties, I guess over 30, will join the wall papering,  besides the 5 big ones which are now doing it. Then really those open publications places get really 3 meters more in diameters. If you understand what I mean. If I pass by in the morning one party is just busy to overglue another party and by lunch time the next one is just finishing his art work. And by dinnertime the next party has found a nice place for their posters, just over the others. And so on.

So Now I got to the Center to see how many volunteers came. I will tell you later.

With Love from Za-mir-greb,

Wam:-)




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