Topic: Zagreb Diary 
** Written  5:29 PM  Jul 30, 1992 by wam@zamir-zg.comlink.apc.org in gn:yugo.antiwar 
Zagreb Diary
25/26-07-1992

Dobar Dan,

So the second weekend that the Center was full of volunteers from abroad who arrived for the second workcamp. For the first time there were a lot of Dutch people among them, who brought with them some newspapers for me, and honestly that is great to read your and talk your own languages after a while and for some time. Like being at home for a time. Not all the Dutch volunteers who applied came since there are rumours that people are shooting at the trains and the Dutch ministry for Foreign Affairs also gave negative advises for people travelling to this countries. 

But now I have read the Dutch newspapers I am not surprised. The first moment I had this feeling if I was reading about another war in another part of the world. I have that feeling often also from other foreigners (maybe I had the same thoughts when I arrived here months ago), that everybody in these countries are absolute crazy. One moment they are sitting drinking together and five minutes later they start to kill each other. Without any reason, without any signs, just like that. A place, like Zagreb, which is in peace, can turn within 5 minutes into hell.

The people who come are surprised how peaceful Zagreb really is, that you can sit out in the sun, drinking a beer or cola, talking about cruelties, which seems to be so far away from here. No sandbags, no celotape on the windows, no wounded soldiers on the street, just another folk festival on the market place, with happy singing people.

Where is that war, where can we work. Yes, the war in Croatia is another war than the war in the western newspapers. They talk about a postman bombing Goradze, they drink with him and look when he is firing the grenades on the city. Our war we see is the people in the giant mousetrap of Goradze, the nearly 50.000 refugees in the city, who has nearly no shelter and from whom daily people get killed, the 40.000 inhabitants from Goradze who are trapped in their city for 3 months now and run out of their last food resources a few days ago.

The WEST and helping, I don't know, maybe I became Croat after nearly 4 months, but I am starting a to build up similar cynism as people around here towards the outside world. Or a certain type of cynism towards every idea which would be putted up in order to help the war and bring relief to the victims.

After been in contact with the front line soldiers of what you can call the established relief organisation and governmental bodies  in Zagreb, seeking the stress and improvisation talent of them, how they try to make something out of nothing, fighting the same, some tines helpless battle. Thanks to our camps we have no regular contact with UNHCR (United Nations High commissioner for Refugees), they will probably adopted our projects under their wings, so we get more official status.

Never the less it is not changing much in the reality for the foreign volunteers, just getting the label UNHCR on our projects. It still will be grassroots low budged projects. You with us trying to do at least something.... what ever that may be.

Helping the refugees is also helping the Muslims, who seems to become the real victims of this war. They form the biggest group of refugees and even have the highest dead rates. They more and more get crushed between the wheels of high level politics, both in BiH as well as in the countries they found shelter.

Blame it on the refugees, blame it on the Muslims, if the Croatian economy breaks down one of the following months this refugees get the blame, they are the scapegoats. Already they lost everything, not yet their dignity, but for how long).

How long should the women in Hotel International (Vukovar Hotel) wait before any organisation will help them to find the only answer were they are waiting for will been answered, "Where are their sons and husbands". After Vukovar "fallen" nearly 10 months ago, their husbands and sons were taking away, the international red cross was not allowed to go into the city at that moment. Up till the day of today no national and/or international organisation has down anything to help them finding their answer. As soon as we make time free between the workcamps or find somebody will come to take that part on his or her shoulders, we will start to help those women finding out what happened. Not out of nationalistic grounds, but maybe because of the fact that the state let them down after they left Vukovar. One of things we e.g. want to know is what happens with the money which is collected by selling all those Vukovar souvenirs in that shop near the main square.

Vukovar is more than a city, which is destroyed, every city has so it own story, but Vukovar is the one every body knows of and nobody wants to tell you what really happens. Every story about Vukovar starts with a deep breath and ends with it after two half lines. It is the most untold told story. 

It is strange to know that we are still a bit afraid of starting this investigation. Not for the people from Vukovar, but for the people in Beograd and abroad, will they understand that this is not a nationalistic step. We don't want to misuse the people from Vukovar for Croatian propaganda. The town is already propaganda, but the people from Vukovar aren't asked what they think of it. The women are willing to for ever forget their hometown if they get their family back or at least know what happened with them.   In the refugees camps we will anyway collect questions for Red Cross and UNHCR, we will be there much longer than their observers and monitors. So we will hear the stories much sooner.

One more negative thing today, the stories that wrong food, overdue medicines are arriving in the different camps become more and more. In some camps the left over from the gulf war were dumped, with the sand from the desert still in the cartoons, but inside already rotting tin cans with, of course, pig meat, pork. And that for refugees. It is like Joel wrote in his Miracle 6 (see conference gen.quaker), shoes for children, without any seal left, or shoes with high heals (you would break you neck in Zagreb if you would walk on them).

The tragic of the refugees overshadows for me all the other news, the fact that troop are packing together in Osijek and people are afraid that Glavac or an other fool will open an attack on Baraja. And so many things more, this problem needs all attentions.

With Love from ZA-mir-GREB,

Wam:-)



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