Going to the Front

After six days in the refugee column, a man from Lika got to Serbia with his wife, three children and mother. Everything he owns is a second hand car.

He got stopped in that car by a Belgrade policeman on August 14. The cop wanted to see the Krajina man's documents and asked him where he was from and where he's going. The answer was I have no idea where I'm going and the cop responded with: "Great, I know the right place for you".

From that moment on the refugee family (anything but taken care of) knows that its only military age member became a "volunteer" on some front line.

Another Krajina family, who escaped from Plasko, spent 17 days on the road from one refugee center to another (they spend only a night at each place) and finally settled down near Prokuplje. Their friends and relatives found a woman who let them have the use of a house and three hectares of land.

Just 10 minutes after the six homeless refugees began taking their belongings off their tractor for the first time in three weeks, a police patrol showed up. They gave the man of the family 10 minutes to get ready before they took him away.

Relatives managed to find out two things: the main refugee camp is in Nis and it housed some 600 volunteers last Wednesday. There is no intervention that can save them from the fate the local authorities have in store for them.

There was also a report that police went into a bar where Serbs from across the Drina gather to trade information. The moment the cops walked in everyone stopped talking because they didn't want to give themselves away with their accents as long as the police were there.

The one thing all the refugees have in common is the complete lack of will to go to war. After everything that happened to them the only thing they want is to settle down somewhere. Some of them are trying to emigrate as far away from Serbs and Croats as possible, others want to settle permanently in Serbia, a third group which isn't all that small are thinking about going back to Croatia. In that context they agree with everything but war.

Informal sources, official reports are unavailable, said the Krajina men are being deported to the Bosnian Serb Republic and Eastern Slavonija. Nasa Borba published the stories of two men who managed to get out of a military camp somewhere in Slavonija. They said they were humiliated and beaten on a daily basis.

TV stations in Belgrade (state and private) are airing videos calling for solidarity with the Krajina refugees. The videos say they lost it all and need everything even a kind word but there are few who protest the mobilization.

The Democratic Party asked Serbian parliament speaker, Dragan Tomic, to mediate with the military authorities to temporarily free a party parliament deputy from Leskovac from army reserve obligations. It's suspicious when the regime drafts the opposition. The Democrats joined the nationalist opposition in accusing the authorities of selling out the Krajina but didn't protest the mobilization of the Krajina men. It seems that after four years of shedding blood no one needs them except as cannon fodder.