Nachricht Nummer : 463 Übertragungszeit : 3 min 37 sec Nachricht von : WAM@ZAMIR-ZG.ztn.zer.de (Wam) Betrifft : Zagreb Diary on 29 March, 1994 Kopienempfänger : /REG/NEWS/DIARY/WAM, /APC/YUGO/ANTIWAR, /CL/EUROPA/BALKAN, /SOC/CULTURE/BOSNA-HERZGVNA, /SOC/CULTURE/CROATIA, /SOC/CULTURE/YUGOSLAVIA Erstellungsdatum : 12.04.1994 01:13:00 W+1 Zagreb Diary 29 March, 1994 Dobar dan, Early in the morning we drive down to Okucani, in the hope the make some contacts down there in order to start some work on the youth development project before Jane comes back from the State. The three of us, Jane, Zoran (from Beograd) and I leave our house short after 7 o'clock. But we loose a lot of time just a few kilometres away from the village were we (Jane and I) slept this night. Today UNPROFOR, in co- operation with a local constructor, have started to make the sand road connected this part of Pakrac with the bigger road coming down from Lipik to Okucani, a bit more usable. Before the war nobody used the sand road, you drove down to Pakrac city, from there to Lipik and than the big road down to Okucani. But the people from here can't take that road anymore, even the shortcut, which they normally took goes about 5 meters over Croatian controlled territory. It is a bit like the telephone connection of the Serbian part of Pakrac, also those came down from Pakrac city, between the Serbian part of Pakrac and Okucani there is no telephone line. Everything went over Lipik and Pakrac. In totally the miss about 8 kilometre of cable at the moment, but it means that app. 1000 houses which use the have a connection are now without any form of communication with the outside world. It takes us about 1 hour to pass all the heavy UNPROFOR equipment and just before 10 o'clock we arrive in Okucani. Simo is still sleeping when we arrive. His mother first don't recognise me, I haven't seen her in months, but than she starts to cry and explain in German how happy she would be when this all would be over. We also meet Simo new girlfriend, who proudly introduce herself as his wife, she comes from Bosanski Gradiska, or rather Gradiska, since the all Serbian countries SDS (Serbian Democratic Party) has decided a few weeks ago that all town with Bosanska (Bosnian) in it no longer can use the name Bosanska. She explains how the street where she lives have changed names 4 times in the last 3 months and probably will change it name soon again. We walk to the kindergarten, where we did a performance with the Peace circus back in December last year. A month ago somebody put fire to the place and it totally burned down. Also here the immediately solution have been found in the use of containers, according to Vienna they should arrive any moment now. Nobody really knows why the kindergarten had to burn, but it happened on a Saturday evening, so maybe some drunken guys thought it was a good joke. A kindergarten is rather needed since Okucani is overcrowded with displaced people, it use to have 3.000 inhabitants and counts now over 13.000 A bit further down the road is the old furniture factory from Okucani, it produced almost all the furniture for kindergartens and school in Croatia and Northern Bosnia, but was totally destroyed in the first week of the war. It wasn't done as I thought earlier by withdrawing Croatian guards, but by JNA, something most people in Okucani can't forgive them. Waiting for the guy we have to speak here Jane and I walk in the open air in what use to be a big factory hall, on the ground lays a small layer from melted aluminium, that used to be the roof. The factory has been burning for 3 days, at the moment some of the former workers are slowly busy to make one of the least damaged halls ready for some small scale production. And that is the main reason for being here, I want to find out if something has changed in the last months with all those elections and changes in the government it is good possible that all the information I had before about the economical rules has changed at all. When I asked the guy about it later he answers with a smile. "You see, we have the super Dinar now, but everybody who got it in his hands want to get ride of it as soon as possible, they all like to have DEM". "There are rules all right and even a tax system, but who really cares". We talk about some possible projects and make an appointment for tomorrow in Pakrac. After tat meeting we go to the high school to meet one of the youngest teachers in this area, he is also busy to build up a kind of youth organisation, but absolute don't know where and how to start. He wants to make a survey of the ideas and the amounts of youngsters in this part of Krajina, but nobody can really tell him where everybody lives and the state can't really help him there, since also they don't really know how many people are living in this part of Western Slavonia. e asked him to make some more clear demands for next week when we visit Okucani again. Late in the evening we heard from the UNPROFOR commander that Saturday evening there was some shooting near by. At the checkpoint in Lipik some Croatian Police men tried to pass the point in the direction of Okucani, but the UNPROFOR soldiers didn't let them through, than at a moment a few Serbian Krajina Militia men came out of the bushes and started to shot at the car and it drove off back to Lipik breaking all the speed limits, it seems that only one guy in the car was a bit wounded, but the whole station is now putted under heavy alert. Mir from somewhere in Hrvatska, Wam ------------------------------------------------------ "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.ztn.zer.de . 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 (postbox 33), 41000 Zagreb. Please notify me if you send or have send any donations. Old numbers can be found by sending a message's with as subject "FILES" to pakrac.info@ZAMIR-ZG.ztn.zer.de, to order a file send a message with subject "SEND " to same address. ## CrossPoint v3.0 ##