Covering the War in Croatia
HUSARSKA, ANNA
A REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK Covering the War in Croatia BY ANNA HUSARSKA Zagreb Journalists arriving in Croatia initially find themselves wrestling with the question of whether they...
...All around the city there are Civil Defense posters describing the basics of first aid...
...An armed man in his 30s, he said that 70 per cent of the republic's 600,000 Serbs had to be evacuated because the 4 million Croats, whom he called "Ustashi"—a reference to adherents of the World War II fascist government that perpetrated atrocities against non-Croats—were set to exterminate every Serb in their midst...
...He would neither confirm nor deny the attack...
...One tends to sympathize with the underdog, or at least to appreciate the position of the minority fighting for independence, in this case (in the framework of Yugoslavia) the Croats...
...Efforts to manipulate the foreign media take other forms as well...
...There, in a school converted into a refugee center, we were shown a chart with daily entries of Serbs fleeing from Croats and given a 47-page brochure entitled "The Persecution of the Serbs in Croatia 1990/ 1991...
...I will stay here as long as I am useful, so as not to make it easy for the Serbs to take my town...
...Even the Vjesnik editors confided that they use material from HINA "carefully...
...On tapes (with simultaneous translations) one hears the voices of women crying over their dead relatives, of farmers worried about the livestock left behind when they fled, of angry young men swearing to defend the independence of their homeland...
...But then there are some parts of Croatia where the Serbian population has lived for a long time, and it, in turn, becomes the minority (in the framework of the republic) struggling to break free...
...Reading the broadside of each side brings home their mutual hatred, not to mention the intensity of their respective propaganda campaigns...
...It has organized thefts of arms from museums, memorial houses, shops, educational institutions," says the Croat booklet...
...A few weeks ago, for example, a reporter at the Croat daily Vjesnik informed me that the Croat-controlled town of Kostajnica had come under heavy attack by the Yugoslav Air Force...
...When I reached this capital I heard different "truths...
...In the past people were simply friends and neighbors, he continued, and mixed marriages were common...
...At the daily briefings in the Croatian Parliament, pieces of missiles are displayed on a table in front of the podium for no apparent reason, except perhaps to create the "proper atmosphere...
...The Zagreb branch of the car rental agency couldn't care less about the car...
...The few who agreed to talk refused to give their names and asked me to swear that I would report theirwords, so the truth would be known...
...A REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK Covering the War in Croatia BY ANNA HUSARSKA Zagreb Journalists arriving in Croatia initially find themselves wrestling with the question of whether they are witnessing a) what the outside world tends to see as a civil war, b) what the Croats contend is a war of independence, or c) what the Serbs maintain is a war in defense of their minority rights...
...They said that Croatia's President Franj? Tudjman was plotting to secure weapons from Austria in exchange for promising it a corridor to the sea, and that his government had withheld the salaries of Serbs working in the republic in order to buy arms in Germany and Australia...
...Although ci vil wars are never easy to cover, the situation here is particularly difficult to define because it is not obvious who is right, or closer to being right...
...I asked Antun Vujic, the president of the opposition Social Democratic Party of Croatia, how he views the country's future...
...My own baptism of crossfire came in Borovo, a town 50 kilometers from Novi Sad, capital of the autonomous Province of Vojvodina...
...Today it is a mixture of pan-Serbism and Bolshevism, he says...
...Obradovic believes, however, that before this can happen the governments in Serbia and Croatia will have to change because their present leaders cannot reach any agreement...
...Anna Husarska, a free-lance journalist based in Warsaw, reportsfrequently for the NL on Eastern European affairs...
...The Dalmatian coast of Croatia is empty...
...Alan Ferguson of the Toronto Star had to leave his rented car in Glina after it was crippled by bullets during an eighthour battle in the village...
...Correspondents in Croatia trust each other more than the local press officers, with the result that hotel lobbies have become exchanges for the swapping of information among those who have gone to different villages where fighting has just ended, is going on or is expected to break out...
...Meanwhile, the conflict in the field is claiming an increasing number of victims, and the fabric of everyday life in the whole country is shredding...
...The best solution for what is now Yugoslavia would be some kind of Benelux arrangement, but for that we first have to separate...
...Those were not Chetniks...
...Several times while visiting the ravaged villages around Sisak, I had the feeling that suddenly, in one community, the fair-haired people had turned against the dark-haired...
...A few minutes later, an old man came in...
...Consider the following excerpts on the subject of gearing up for combat...
...The only Croat resentment was directed against the Serbs who occupied the town's crucial posts, not against Serbs per se...
...In Zagreb itself there is a mood of depression...
...Beneathitnoticesofthewar's victims have been posted, alongside instructions for the steps to be taken in the event of "terrorist actions...
...Others in Borovo Selo were quite hostile, "because all journalists work for the Zagreb regime...
...A one-toothed locksmith turned refugee center volunteer, Isidor, warned us that "Croat fascists shoot everything that moves...
...the main office of the agency is in Belgrade...
...In Belgrade Konstantin Obradovic, a Serb at the Institute of International Law, outlined a similar scenario for me: "We are going to have the total disintegration of Yugoslavia into several states and then a reintegration process will start that will lead to some sort of Common Market like the EC...
...Two days earlier I had read one of the agency's bulletins...
...I called the Ministry of Information and was told it was waiting to get the story from MNA, the independent Croatian News Agency...
...After crossing the Danube by ferry to Borovo Selo, I met Goran Hadzic...
...Outside the Philosophy Department at Zagreb University I found an announcement explaining the meaning of different siren alarms (including those for a nuclear, biological or chemical attack...
...Walking along a street named Yugoslav National Army to the edge of the village area, Borovo Selo, now under Serbian control, I tried to approach the industrial area where rubber and footwear factories are located, Borovo Naselo, now controlled by the Croats...
...To get a sense of the Franciscan's politics, I asked him whether the violators were Chetniks, terrorists, or Serbs...
...It began: "The massacre and scandalous crime of the Greater-Serbian terrorists and Chetniks against innocent, unprotected and unarmed Croats, inhabitants of Struge, is much bigger, much more serious and cruel than was thought...
...Families everywhere are stocking food, fearing that inter-republic trade will collapse...
...Some of the younger men joined the Yugoslav National Army at the Vasilje Gacesa barracks in town, but most moved to Serbia to stay with their families...
...Train connections between Zagreb and Belgrade are nonexistent or at best erratic, flights have been suspended, and the highway I took between the capitals of the two republics was almost deserted...
...In Sisak, 60 kilometers to the southeast, a bulletin board still carries the legend, "Sisak Summer Entertainment...
...Vladimira is a pretty, soft-spoken woman...
...Bullets began whizzing around me as soon as I stepped out on the dividing road, persuading meto retreat...
...Today it is a town deeply split, with armed men patrolling its two sectors...
...Those are satans and not human beings," he said...
...The villains here are the Serbs, of course, called either "Chetniks" —an evocation of the proroyalist forces led by General Drala Mihajlovic that lost out to Josif Broz Tito's partisans— or "terrorists...
...They heard there would be an attack and fled...
...Getting to such places is not a simple matter...
...At the Ministry of Inf ormation I was handed a 152-page booklet entitled "Serbian Terrorism and Violence in Croatia 1990-1991...
...Mladen, a gymnast, was one of the few Croats I met in Petrinja who did not use the words "Chetnik" or "terrorist...
...The Father and the old man will shortly be leaving Petrinja, Mladen explained, because it is not considered safe anymore...
...clashes occur practically anywhere...
...I wanted to see for myself...
...She paused for a moment and then added, "It is terrible how I have changed...
...In spite of its public protestations of a commitment to the democratic path, the Serbian Democratic Party has done everything it could to arm the 'barehanded Serbian people...
...I asked if any Serbs were left in Petrinja...
...Since the persistent fighting in this breakaway republic is between individuals who until recently lived side by side without incident in the many villages dotting such regions as Banija (south of Zagreb) and Slavonia (east of Zagreb), there is no front line to speak of...
...Not many," he replied...
...I asked him who was responsible...
...Borovo had a mixed population of 10,000 prior to the current conflict...
...American Express cards are sometimes rejected in Belgrade, since the payments are channeled through Zagreb...
...In any case, instead of seeking "A Way Out for Yugoslavia," to borrow Mihajlo Mihajlov and Ira Straus' title (NL, July 15-29), the Croats are concerned with finding a way out of Yugoslavia...
...neither Serbs nor Croats will venture to take their holidays there...
...He had fled from a village 12 kilometers away, and began telling me how his house had been looted and destroyed...
...The answer, it soon becomes apparent, is all of the above...
...They were Serbs I have known all my life," he said...
...We stopped first at Vajska, the Serbian outpost on the left bank of the Danube...
...Photographs of mutilated bodies are shown to support accusations of atrocities...
...In nearby Petrinja, Mladen Cakaric lamented as he showed me around: "We lived together since World War II, with nobody paying attention to who is Serb and who is Croat, but now that is gone forever...
...Restaurants hand out Red Cross leaflets asking the people to contribute medicine, bandages and gauze that they may have at home...
...After Adolf Hitler, who among other things will be remembered for arming his own political party, President of the Republic of Croatia Franjo Tudjman was the first 'politician' to follow suit in postwar Europe—by arming his own party, the Croatian Democratic Union," declares the Serb brochure...
...Few foreign journalists attend these briefings, which offer little in the way of immediate hard facts...
...I had driven to Borovo Selo with Jouko Juonla of the Finnish daily Aamuleh ti, in a car rented in Belgrade bearing (for security reasons) plates from the Slovenian capital Ljubljana...
...But the police chief in Sisak, who is responsible for the region, told me on the phone that roadblocks would prevent me from reaching the town, and added that Serb terrorists there were shooting everything in sight...
...He conceded, though, that he hears them often when he volunteers at the refugee center in the Croatian Red Cross building, where we had now settled down to continue our conversation...
...That makes checking battle reports a particularly risky enterprise and explains why a relatively high number of correspondents have been killed or wounded in Croatia...
...Father Mario Zagar soon joined us, too, and told me about the 300-year-old church that was destroyed by the Serbs in the same village...
...When asked what she would do if Serbs attacked the house she lives in with her parents, she said, "I would shoot, I would not hesitate to kill...
...Such considerations aside, the need to prevent the disintegration of Yugolavia seems less obvious when seen from the perspective of Zagreb and its surrounding villages than from abroad...
...Mladen's sister, Vladimira, 339-yearold English teacher who works in Zagreb, is determined not to leave Petrinja...
...Finally, the attack on Kostajnica was confirmed by other foreign journalists...
Vol. 74 • August 1991 • No. 9
