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- Subject: REPORT:MIRacles #9 from Balkans
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- /* Written 3:27 pm Aug 19, 1992 by gn:jsax in cdp:gen.quaker *//*
- ---------- "MIRacles No. 9" ---------- */
- Subject: MIRacles No. 9
-
-
- ==================================================================
- MIRacles No. 9
- Joel GAzis-SAx
- Zagreb, 19 Kolovoz 1992
- Copyright 1992
- ==================================================================
- "Our homeland is where we live," Ivan Polakovic of the United Croatian
- Democratic Party of Vojvodina (DSHV) and member of the Vojvodinan Parliament
- tells me. "We are not looking to become part of Croatia. What we want is
- cultural autonomy." He has bad news for me. The day before I arrive in
- Subotica , Vojvodina, (August 3) two Croats, Nada and Stipan Gustine, are
- killed in the village of Bac. No one knows who killed them. On their chests
- had been carved the legend "HDZ: We will drink your blood."
-
- According to Ivan, 17,000 Croats have been expelled or forced to flee
- fromSrem, the southernmost third of Vojvodina. They leave because of violence
- or threats against them or because of the Serbian Republic government attempts
- to mobilize them into the army. Ivan believes that mobilization constitutes a
- means of "ethnically cleansing" Vojvodina of its Croats and other minorities.
- The Croats, he insists, were drafted by force and sent to the Slavonian,
- Bosnian, or Dalmatian front. There many of them died when they were put in
- forward units. Their wounds, Ivan says, were in both the back and the front.
- "Officially we have peace. We are not at war. The coffins, however, come
- from Bosnia and from Dubrovnik."
-
- "If you live here," he says, "this is your duty. What can you do? Either you
- go into the army or you flee. In either case, the house is empty." Ivan is,
- himself, a mobilization resister. He spent several months of his life hiding
- and working, hiding and working so that the mobilization officers could not
- find him. You can see that he has lost weight. The darkness under his eyes
- betrays the many fitful nights he has spent worrying about his freedom. When I
- take my leave of him, he gives me several copies of the party newsletter. I
- shake his hand and ask him if there is anything he wants. "The same rights
- guaranteed to the other Yugoslav citizens," he replies."It is difficult for
- Serbs to understand minority problems," said Ferenc Csubela, Hungarian MP from
- Mornica. "They have no language problems, no problems with their schools." I
- found even peace activists insisting that part of the problem in the new
- Yugoslavia was caused by the unwillingness of certain minorities to join in
- the national culture. Serbs and Yugoslavs (people of mixed ethnicity who
- choose this designation for themselves) tend to characterize Croats,
- Hungarians, and others as people who do not wish to be part of their society.
- These others speak of the unwillingness of the Serbs and the Yugoslavs to
- allow them to be different within that same society.
-
- The Hungarians of Vojvodina insist that what they want is to enjoy their
- personal and ethnic rights within Yugoslavia. They do not look to Hungary to
- liberate them by invading and annexing Vojvodina. They want their language,
- they want their culture, and they want their schools in Yugoslavia. They want
- to remain where they are.
-
- There are many threats to their continued life in Vojvodina. According to
- Ference, the Serbian Republic government has been telling Serbian refugees
- from Bosnia, Dalmatia, and Slavonia that they can come to Vojvodina where they
- can live in the homes of the Hungarians. One Hungarian woman reported to me:
- "A few weeks ago, some little Serbian refugee children came to our house and
- asked my mother when we Hungarians would go."
-
- Hungarians flee economic pressure as well as political pressure. Csubela
- reported the story of one man whose salary fell to 75 dm or about $50 a month.
- His rent remained stable at 100 dm or about $70! The lure of better jobs
- depopulates Vojvodina, not only of its Hungarians, but also its Serbs, Croats,
- and other ethnic groups. The wealthier life that beckons from abroad strips
- the land of much of the Hungarian workforce.
-
-
- Many Hungarian homes are empty because of mobilization. Though Hungarians
- comprise less than 2 percent of the total population of Serbia, the mayor of
- Ada told us, they form about 10 percent of the army. As Hungarians die in the
- field, many young men choose to resist. Ada was the first town in Yugoslavia
- where the young men banded together and openlydeclared their resistance to
- mobilization. Though the 100 refusers could have served 60 day prison terms
- before being called up again, nothing happened.
-
- When residents of nearby Oromhegyes decided to resist by declaring a
- surrealistic "Spiritual Republic of Zitzer" last May, the Serbian government
- responded by surrounding the town with 92 tanks for three days. Other
- villages (including at least one Serbian town controlled by the Serbian
- Democratic Party) have also organized support for their young men who chose
- not to fight in the Serbian war. Of the estimated100,000 young men who left
- Yugoslavia to escape mobilization, 25,000 were Hungarian.
-
- The Hungarians have been emphatic about facing mobilization and other ethnic
- pressures nonviolently. "The problem cannot be solved by arms," one Ada town
- official told me. "This would mean the massacre of the Hungarian people."
-
-
- Serbian and Yugoslav officials regard every action of Hungarian ethnic
- organizations and political parties with suspicion. When the HungarianParty
- of Vojvodina held its annual meeting this year, the official media reported
- that its purpose was to declare Vojvodinan independence. A delegation of
- Hungarians was dispatched to Beograd to set the story straight with Slobodan
- Milosevic. The Serbian President, Ada's mayor reports, was surprised by this
- revelation.
-
- "We must fight for our rights with both the Serbian Socialist Party and with
- the opposition, too," the mayor told me. I now believe that as a peace
- activist, my duty is not to struggle against nationalism, but against those
- nationalisms which oppress other nationalism. The struggles of the Croat and
- the Hungarian minorities in Yugoslavia and of the Serbs in Croatia demonstrate
- the failure of Yugoslav nationalism and of the nationalisms which succeeded
- it.
-
- "The solution is not for all Croats to become Serbs," says Tibor Varody, the
- Yugoslav Federal Minister of Justice, "or Serbs to become Croats, just like
- the solution in the Middle East is not for all Jews to become Arabs or Arabs
- to become Jews." Varody, a Hungarian Yugoslav, is emphatic that nothing in
- his remarks implies that there is no state called Croatia or that there is no
- Bosnia or that there is no Slovenia. He is realistic about the present state
- of affairs in former Yugoslavia and he knows, like everyone here knows, that
- something terrible has happened.
-
- "I do not believe that national affiliation is bad in itself," he continues.
- "It is fine for a Serb to be proud to be a Serb, for a Croat to be proud to be
- a Croat, for a Hungarian to be proud to be a Hungarian. The problem starts
- when you are losing tolerance. When a Serb starts to believe that a Hungarian
- is not a human being, here the problem starts."
-
- Because I arrived so ignorant, I am at first surprised by Varody's sincerity
- and compassion. As an outsider, I had to struggle to get beyond the
- misunderstanding that the new Yugoslavia was identical to Serbia and that
- Slobodan Milosevic was its its leader. I had difficulty understanding where
- this Yugoslav-American businessman, Federal Prime Minister Milan Panic, fit
- into the picture. When I come back to Croatia, others who have not visited
- Yugoslavia, are quick to dismiss Panic as a Milosevic puppet. But after
- meeting Varody, I am not so sure. The government of the New Federal Republic
- of Yugoslavia may, at this time, not have much power over the constitutionally
- subsidiary government of Milosevic's Republic of Serbia, but Panic, I now
- believe, is struggling to lead the country away from militarism and ethnic
- persecution.
-
- "Minorities not only have the right to be equal: they have the right to be
- different," Varody observes that this is not a matter of economics, but of
- culture. "Minorities," he goes on to say, "are also taxpayers." So they have
- the right to have separate schools and cultural institutions if they so
- please.The answer, he feels, is autonomy and decentralization. International
- monitoring and guidance are additional components, he believes, in the
- ultimate formula of peace and national tolerance.
-
- Varody has drafted an Act on Amnesty for all those who refused to take part in
- "this senseless war". The act, if passed by the Yugoslav Parliament, will
- apply to all those who did not otherwise take up arms against the Yugoslav
- republic.
-
- I decide to press him about the case of seven Croat soldiers convicted of war
- crimes and armed insurrection by a military court in Beograd. When I ask him
- about under what juristiction the court can try these men, he explains that
- the crimes for which the men were tried occurred in October, two months before
- Croatia received international recognition. It is a legalistic splitting of
- hairs, but I feel moved to continue. I express my disagreement with him, but
- ask if he would accept the jurisdiction of a neutral international court in
- such cases. Varody pauses to think for a moment and says "Yes. I think that
- could help bring peace."
-
- I and the other members of the Peace Camp talk excitedly about our meeting
- with Varody for several days. This sincere man represents some of the best
- hopes for peace and ethnic harmony -- if his agenda can succeed over that of
- the Serbian Socialist Party. When I ask him about whether the Serbs will
- allow him to do his work, he tells me about the men and women, leaders of Srem
- villages, who came to him during his first two weeks of office, to ask him to
- intercede on behalf of Croat victims of atrocities. "All the leaders were
- Serbs."
-
- We are led to hope for the passage of Varody's Amnesty while we are inthe new
- Yugoslavia, but a few days later we learn that parliamentary machinations and
- objections by the Serbian Socialist Party effectively postpone action on the
- bill until September. We visit many more villages of resisters and we visit
- Vukovar. While we are in Vukovar, four Serbs die in a nearby village when
- they pass too close to the Croatian lines. The ultimate human rights
- violator, the war, takes these four from their homeland. Whether Croat or
- Serb or Bosnian or Hungarian, we are all equal in death.
-
- ABOUT THE TITLE: Brethren theogian Dale Brown once counted the ability to
- believe in miracles as an essential component in the psychic constituency of
- the peace activists. "Mir" is the word for "peace" in Croatian, Serbian, and
- most other Slavic languages. The title, therefore, reflects the writer's
- personal belief in persistant peacemaking.
-
- * * *
- This publication is circulated over the Association for Progressive
- Communications Networks, Quaker-L, FidoNet, EcuNet, and UseNet by Joel
- GAzis-Sax. Users may download this article for their own use, but areasked to
- make a donation to help support Joel's work in the Balkans.Checks should be
- made in U.S. dollars and made out to Palo Alto Friends Meeting and earmarked
- "Balkans Peace Fund". The address is:
-
- Palo Alto Friends Meeting
- 957 Colorado Avenue
- Palo Alto, California 94303
- U.S.A.
-