The City of Refugees

It is not easy to find a quarter in Osijek in which there are no signs of shelling. Holes left by shell fragments are splattered all over a facade in the city center on which one can still read a message from the bygone era of Socialist Yugoslavia: "Kadijevic resign". It is interesting that approximately every second building in Osijek is scarred with shell holes while the others have been painted recently. The citizens of Osijek say that these buildings looked even worse, but that they have been restored in the meantime. "We started mending and restoring while the shells were hitting the city. No city in Croatia has been rebuilt so quickly", claim the locals with pride. The young people who are responsible for the normalization of life in the city say this is due to Mayor Zlatko Kramaric who is also a deputy in the Croatian Parliament (Sabor) and vice president of the Croatian Social Liberal Party (HSLS). His popularity is best illustrated by the fact that the Liberals won nearly 70% of the votes in Osijek at the 1993 election, without entering into a coalition. At the same time, Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) hard line member Branimir Glavas was elected as the Osijek-Baranja Zupan (district prefect), so that Kramaric appears on local television or state HTV only when he can't avoid it.

Kramaric said that Osijek suffered the fate of Subotica in 1918, because its links with the mainland were suddenly cut off, especially in the North and the East. Serb Krajina units control practically all of Baranja, except for a narrow strip around the recently rebuilt city bridge on the Drava River, while the Faculty of Agriculture is only a few hundred meters from the first Serbian positions in Tenja.

Shells have hit Osijek recently, and this is interpreted as the Serbs' reaction to the attack in Western Slavonija, while tension in the region is caused by both sides capturing positions in "no man's land". The intensity of the shelling is a hundred times less and can't be compared to that in 1991 and 1992. Lately suburban quarters have come in for sporadic bouts of heavy shelling.

Some 43,000 displaced persons and refugees have converged on Osijek (according to Croatian criteria, displaced persons are those who have left Krajina, while refugees are those who have come from Bosnia, Vojvodina, Kosovo...) Thanks to the fact that there is such a large concentration of people, and that most of the displaced persons come from Eastern Slavonija and Baranja, i.e. from relatively near by, Osijek is also called the "city of refugees."

The refugees would like to return to their homes, and judging by the rhetoric, they are increasingly militant and less inclined to wait for the results of negotiations. "No normal person wants war", said one of the officials of the Association of Refugees of Croatia. "But if this situation goes on forever, then... If I knew that negotiations would last ten years, then I'd be the first to support a war solution."

War suffering has left its mark on the people's souls and when speaking of ideological and political views. Osijek Mayor Zlatko Kramaric, alluding to his party's election victory, calls his city "the most liberal city in the world". However, a survey conducted by the Split-based "Feral Tribune" shows a different picture. According to the "Feral Tribune" if this were 1941, 26% of the inhabitants of Rijeka would join the Partisans and 5% the Ustashi. The situation is the same in Zagreb, while the ratio in Split is equal, but the "Ustashi" won in Osijek 17:9. The survey was carried out on a very small sample so that it can't be taken seriously, but those familiar with the situation claim that there is a lot of truth in it. The rage of placing national symbols everywhere has abated in comparison to 1991, but after talking to ordinary citizens in Osijek it became clear that they had acquired an unusual characteristic in the meantime: a sincere and passionate love of the state and all state institutions (including the police, the President, the Sabor, even scowling clerks). Probably because of the proximity of the war, the army is not looked on as a "glutton" gorging on national wealth, but as an institution which heightens national pride, especially after the attack on Western Slavonija.

The man the local television public remembers as the protagonist of one of the more spectacular roles in the film on the illegal import of Kalashnikov rifles into Croatia, and now a Croatian Army General and Commander of the military district Osijek Djuro Decak, wasn't very militant when talking to VREME.

"To present the Croatian Army as an army in the making is silly. We are by far the most powerful force in the occupied territory both in arms and men. But to be objective, in the event that Serbia enters the war (which would result in the uncontrolled spreading of conflicts, which is something no one needs) we wouldn't be superior. But all must know that we would be a pretty hard nut to crack."

There, are however, those who view the war differently. One of the participants in the war from Osijek nearly started weeping while sending messages to his friends in Belgrade: "I didn't know if I was shooting at some of them or their sons. Please tell them that I am not an Ustasha."

An elderly man, on seeing the Belgrade plates on our car, approached VREME and "Radio B-92" teams in Harkanj, a Hungarian town close to the Croatian border:

"Good morning. I have friends in Belgrade."

He didn't introduce himself, just stood there a few seconds, and then said: "Good luck, people", turned around and left.

(In the next issue we will bring an article: Serbs in Osijek and Western Slavonija. The other side of "democracy". What the proclaimed equality looks like in practice and how correct policemen, after taking off their uniforms, change.)

VREME and "Radio B-92" journalist teams arrived in Osijek at the invitation of the committee for Human Rights of the Association of Refugees of Croatia. The obviously influential hosts did their best to enable the Belgrade journalists to meet with as many representatives of civil and military authorities as possible, so that the timetable was rather packed. Right from the border the journalists went to the offices of the Osijek-Baranja Zupanija (district) where an interview with Branimir Glavas had been set up. Our 'guide' from the Association of Refugees of Croatia turned at a crossing and said: "Let's go this way, it's forbidden to go that way, there'll be problems". Two days later the local paper "Glas Slavonije" which is controlled by the ruling party carried a photograph of the automobile with which the team had come from Belgrade and the following text:

"All drivers in Osijek know that Kapucinska St. has been closed to traffic for a long time and that only the public transport company can pass through it. Considering that it is forbidden to pass through the street, it is logical that there can be no parked cars in it. But, there are always exceptions, both with regard to vehicles and their drivers, especially those who justify their traffic violations with an ignorance of the city's regulations. Such a problem and justification held true for the driver of a Yugo Koral 45 car with unusual and foreign registration plates, the only one to have fulfilled the years-long dream of his compatriots to appear in his car on Osijek's central square(?!) and also commit a traffic violation..."

While the local paparazzi photographed our car, the journalists from Belgrade ran into an "ambush" in the Zupanija building: some twenty odd journalists working for "morally and politically fit" media (HRT, the local television station, "Glas Slavonije"...) were waiting for them. Asked if Glavas was holding a press conference, the answer was negative, and the explanation was that the journalists from Belgrade were just going to talk to the Zupan, while the others "would just be there". And that's the way it was. During the rather long interview, the journalists from Osijek did not ask a single question, but took everything down and photographed the scene. The same evening the local information program and the HTV news carried a rather correct report on the interview. The camera managed to peep over VREME reporter's shoulder, but all the viewers saw were a lot of scribbles and abbreviations and in Cyrillic! Had the HTV cameramen said what he wished to film then he wouldn't have had to peep over the reporter's shoulder and the handwriting would have been legible.

There were no state media journalists in the Osijek Mayor's office, so that we learned later in informal conversation that this was the usual practice of ignoring the opposition. This could also mean that the small media spectacle over Glavas's interview with the Belgrade journalists was set up at the Zupan's order, and not the people for the Association of Refugees. Their organization of the visit, their kindness and courtesy cannot be faulted.