Nachricht Nummer : 325 Übertragungszeit : 3 min 51 sec Nachricht von : WAM@ZAMIR-ZG.comlink.de (Wam) Betrifft : Zagreb Diary 5 December, 1993 Kopienempfänger : /APC/YUGO/ANTIWAR, /CL/EUROPA/BALKAN Erstellungsdatum : 08.12.1993 09:39:00 W+1 Realname: Wam Kat Zagreb Diary 5 December, 1993 Dobar dan, "Just another day in paradise" That song text jumped again through my head when I was watching the news on the broken television from Vesna and me, the picture is rolling all the time, but of course there is no money to buy a new one. Yes, paradise when you look outside the window and see the frozen trees and the snow on the branches and than the horrible pictures of the war going on just a few hundred kilometre south of our peaceful room. Although I such have gone to Pakrac I am still in Zagreb, waiting for Vesna to come back from her visit in Djakovo. I said good-bye to my friends of the Peace Circus, which left this morning to Varazdin for their last series of performances in the refugee centres their and than it is back north for than, I was able to gather enough money together during the night in order to pay their fuel back home to Sweden, but the result is that I run out of money again. Yes that is part of living and working here, the daily struggle to find ways to support the projects I am working on and to support myself. If you think that snow will cool down the fighting's, forget it, we are going into the second winter in BiH and the third winter of war in Croatia, in Sweden they may say that when it is cold in the beginning of December there will be no snow on Christmas, in the sake of all the people out there in the cold I am hoping that they are right, but I hardly can believe in it. Anyway it didn't cool down the fighting's, this morning at 6.00 already the Zadar-Biograd area was shelled. Until late in the afternoon several tens of shells fell on Kusic, Paljuv and Novigrad, in the evening the town Biograd and the direct surrounding got a few hits. "The batteries should be bombed and destroyed" was the reaction of somebody this Sunday about the artillery batteries of the Bosnian Serbs around Sarajevo. Now we have heard that from a lot of people and I wouldn't have write it down if this person was anybody else than Abbe Pierre, the founder of the Emmaus communities, who live from what the consuming society throws away and helps the homeless everywhere in the world. Who would believe that the 81 year old priest would ever say such a line, he normally preaches forgiveness and non-violent resistance. It is a pritty that I didn't got the whole speech he made this morning. He also asked all citizens of Europe to put a candle in their window on New Year's day, "Light a candle, not for peace," he said, "but for tolerance...." The last days, week, there is some, understatement, discussion between the Croat government and Sarajevo government about Neum, a natural harbour on the Adriatic and the only entrance which BiH had on the coast, now under control of HVO. The Sarajevo government demanded to get this harbour, the Croatian government by the spokesman of Tudjman reacted that the Muslims has no rights, what so ever, to claim this place and that Croatian Army will defend it by all means if it is necessary (remember Neum lays in Hercegovina, another state). Of course Neum has high strategically value for Croatia since it lays between Split and Dubrovnik, if you go over land you have to pass it. Izetbegovic reacted on this strong words that this position of the Croatian state will change, we will see. At the same time Izetbegovic has a lot of problems with what is now called the Muslim rebels in the Bihac pocket, in the last days an attack on the BiH armija forces around Cazin took place, after the "rebels of Abdic" had made a move over Serbian held territories and they took at least 3 kilometer of territory from BiH armija troops. We also got an article from Borba, a daily newspaper from Beograd, describe to me as relative independed from the government. They publish a report from the Belgrade Humanitarian Law Fund, in that report they stated that last year during June, July and August more than 10.000 Croats from Vojvodina "exchange" their property with Serbs from Croatia. They further claim that this whole operation was done after a well prepared campaign of intimidation done by members of Seselj's Radical Party. In the evening Vesna returned from Djakovo and Sanja came by to give the present Jojo and she bought for me for my birthday, when she was visiting him in Amsterdam, a diary of a Dutch soldier, who has been military observer in Sarajevo and Sector North last year. I am not the only one who write diary, most foreigners here are doing it for that matter. In the late evening I started to read this diary, I haven't finished it yet but I must say that I am not so surprised with what he is writing, the story is more or less a continuing critic on the way the UN military observer mission in BiH and Croatian is organised. He had to improvise almost the whole six months himself, chaos and counterditory commands and visions all over the place. Hope that in the next part of the book things will go better for him, but I recognise most of it from my own experiences. Bok I Mir from Zagreb, Wam P.S. a poem written by a young girl from Pakrac: SHOT IN CHILDHOOD Our house has a roof of moonlight And in my first night's sleep were broken. But there is still an echo of the first spoken word And the drawing on the wall 'Mama' tell me 'mama' What kind of men can put there eye to the sight And shoot at a little girl with a doll Tell him 'mama' There was sunlight, there was laughter, And fields of flowers, There was a sunrise and a mountain And our church had bells Tell him 'mama' That I have built a roof of dreams And that in my dream, I may even Forgive him ---------- Pakrac, 1993 ------------------------------------------------------ Zagreb Diary can be found on a lot of different electronic networks, it is copyright free and can be ported to any network or other means of communication you like, but please drop my a line, you can reach by sending a message to wam@zamir-zg.comlink.de or wam@zamir-zg.comlink.apc.org. Zagreb Diary is dedicated to Tyche, Pjort and Rik, so that they found out what there father have been doing all that time in Zagreb. Financial support for Grassroot relief work in Croatia or BiH can be send to Kollektief Rampenplan (atn. Lylette, Postbox 780, 6130 AN Sittard, Netherlands, tel:. +31-46-524803 and fax: +31-46-516460 or to Zagrebacka Banka, Zagreb, accountnr.: 2440291594, to Kat, Pieter Jan Herman Fredrik, Brace Domany 6 6fl nr3, 41000 Zagreb. Please notify me if you send or have send any donations. ## CrossPoint v2.92 ##