Topic: Zagreb Diary 
** Written 12:30 AM  Aug  2, 1992 by wam@zamir-zg.comlink.apc.org in gn:yugo.antiwar **

Zagreb Diary
31-07-1992

Dobar Dan,

Of course I forgot to tell you the good news, novi DANAS is back on the streets of Zagreb, it is not allowed to be sold in the Vjesnik kiosk. which are the majority of the newspaper shops, but is now sold by student and others on the street. So you out there all the way in the states, don not worry novi DANAS is coming to you. And those in Germany who thought that Croatia already started with political censorship, by taking whole magazines out of market (new oil on the already flaming fascist rumours about Croatia), it is not true, what happen was as said very, very burocratic, but according the rules. novi DANAS was not registrated as newspaper and there for not allowed to be printed in state printinghouse.

And an other good thing happened two weeks ago, but totally passed me, since I was busy with our workcamps (worrying how to get them financed). But just 2 weeks before the elections the Croatian government (so Tudjman, since Croatia has a presidential system, a lot of power for the president (a waiter in a restaurant said the other day that when Tudjman don't win the election, he is probably the first one who will ask as member of parliament to take the power away from the president) that everybody who could vote last elections in Croatia, can vote again this time. So all my friends suddenly received a nice 5 by 2 cm piece of paper in their mailbox, with their name and address and ID number on it (photocopied) and they can go to vote on Sunday.

The election campaigns are in their last days now, you see now which stranka's (parties) still have some resources left and can continue putting their posters up and which parties spend their last Dinar. HSLS is next to bankruptcy and lost the war on the walls in the end HDZ had more posters so the top layer in most of the parts in town are HDZ posters. An other party who played it clever was SDP (Party for Democratic Changes, one of the left overs of the former Communist party), they started their poster offensive a little later and have ammunition left over. HNS from Savka suffers the same situation as HSLS. 

And HSP (with HOS = Hrvatske Obrambene Snage (Croatian Defence Force (nice that they put their English names on the poster)) occupied more or less the area around the station (were their HQ is) and the road from station into the center of town. The posters a told you yesterday about is published in this week novi DANAS (31/7) and described as nazi-art en subculture poster, "guns'n roses" or commercials for a "Gay Club". I forgot to tell you to most magnificent detail of this poster, two hand in the middle, which are holding each other with their thumbs in the air, showing an obvious "U". On the other side of the street of HOS building I saw another nice poster with a soldier on it, same pose, same weapon in his hand, and when I looked better, I thought I knew that guy on the poster, that's a Dutch guy. And indeed it was a poster for some film with Rutger Hauer.

HDZ went also into the air offensive and dropped leaflets out of an aeroplane into the town today. The children were happy and run over the main square in order to catch as many papers as possible, so obvious not many of them reached the voting population of the town. The smaller parties are mostly out of big possibilities, so after their one-time poster run they had to give up the battle of the biggies. One poster I would like to describe is not to be seen in Zagreb, but in Istria and comes from the Istrian Democratic Council (who wants a an undepended Istria), it is a nice comic-a-like drawing of a bock and a ox, the bock (symbol of Istria) says "Save the Oxes" and the Oxes thinks about hanging above a campfire. HDZ organised after the last elections big parties everywhere in the country, where the roasted oxes in public.

And when you may ask can I proudly present you the results of Sundays election, if I was at home I would say by Sunday evening 12 o'clock, but since the last election took a week and also since a lot of votes probably have to come from outside Croatia, it will not before the end of next week I think. So keep your inpatient, be cool and flexible and wait, in about a week from now we know more about the future of these country (A country without future as some people say it so bluntly).

When I look out of our window I see that HDZ again was active tonight, all the trees have now nice red-white and blue posters. 

I put Livio from Yugo-Fax on the train today, he promised to come back as soon as possible, he like to raise money in the UK to put up a kind of coordination center for relief aid in Croatia. Since more and more private relief organisation are moving in you notice that the coordination goes as everything, anarchy and chaos, one camp gets double deliveries and the other camp gets nothing. But I said to him clearly, get the money together to work for at least a half year without worrying about the next payment, otherwise it is murderers. This filling of financial holes with creating other holes is killing me, thinking about were to get the money from for the next workcamp.

Livio went with Feras and some others around the country and visit some camps, he was totally out of his believe when he came back from Gasinci and that area. Things may look a little under control there, but for how long. The toilets they made on the bottom of the hill side (on which the tents are standing) runs over and the shit comes out, the temperature is fairly above 30 degrees Celsius and the children play around it. Do you wonder that we are worrying about all kind of illnesses.

As finishing touch I wanted to write today some phrases out of brand new Croatian phrase book, but I lost the booklet somewhere in the line of today. Where in the world would you find a country were between FOOD and FOOTBALL you can find a chapter called army, in which they learn you words like: Hand grenade, land mines, fragmentation bomb, air raid alarm, shelter, etc...... 

With Love from ZA-mir-GREB,

Wam:-)



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