Messages from/to Sarajevo for 1 April 95 22 h

Message 1
DAY TO DAY WITH SARAJEVO RESIDENTS

From March 29 to April 10, 1995, the residents of Sarajevo will have the
chance to respond to questions posed to them by the Internet community.

The conversations will focus primarily on aspects of daily life in Sarajevo,
a city that has been under siege for three years.

The teams of journalists from the World Media Network will only distribute
the actual conversations that take place from day to day. But it will be up
to the residents of Sarajevo to decide which questions to answer.

WHAT WILL HAPPEN AFTER APRIL 10, 1995?

Sarajevo On Line isn't meant as a one-shot operation. Besides there is a
direct link with Sarajevo:
The ZaMir (for Peace) Transnational Network is an electronic mail network
in the region of former Yugoslavia especially dedicated to helping peace
oriented people and groups, humanitarian organisations, NGO's and the
alternative media in order to improve their communication possibilities.

For more information, please send mail to the AEGEE at muumi@dynax.sch.bme.hu

or check the AEGGEE's Web server at   http://www.tue.nl/aegee/ 

HOW TO WRITE TO THE INHABITANTS OF SARAJEVO

You can send email to Sarajevo residents: 

write to: 

       sarajevoonline-en@cnam. fr to send a question in english 
       sarajevoonline-fr@cnam. fr to send a question in french

HOW TO READ THE DIALOGUES BETWEEN THE NETWORK AND SARAJEVO

On the World Media-Sarajevo On Line server: You can use a Web client
software like Mosaic or Netscape and direct it to  one of these URL:

http://web.cnam.fr/Sarajevo/
http://www.tue.nl/aegee/hrwg/exyu/Sarajevo/
http://www.infodesign.ch/Sarajevo/ 

On the news: The messages coming from Sarajevo will also be posted on the
News (Usenet) in the groups: alt.current-events.bosnia and
soc.culture.bosna-herzgvna

Directly in your mail: You can sign up to be on a mailing list which will
transmit the messages to you directly.

   * In French: Send a message to sarajevoonline-fr-request@cnam.fr with
     "subscribe" (not in quotes) as the subject.
   * In English: Send a message to sarajevoonline-en-request@cnam.fr with
     "subscribe" (not in quotes) as the subject.

You can cancel your subscription by sending the message "unsubscribe" (not
in quotes).

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* FROM: Marko VESHOVIC
TO: Ned TEMKO

I am an intellectual, writer born 50 years ago in Montenegro, living for 30
years in Sarajevo. Teaching poetry at the University of Philosophy. In war
I am writing for Oslobodenje and B&H War Days...
I am married and I have a ten year old daughter. My book was published in
Zagreb and that's a book of war articles and the name is "Death is a master
from Serbia" (a verse by german poet Paul CELAN : Death is a master from
Germany) 

What is life in Sarajevo?

Life in Sarajevo can be called life only if one speak in polite manners. To
whom can one be polite in Sarajevo? To God who gave us our lives. So if we
don't want to be rude and unpolite to our creator we can say that what we
are experiencing today is life. Usually, this only a bare imitation of
life. Or even better this is not life, this is a prisonners uniform. And
everyone who died in Sarajevo for the past three years by natural death was
envied by the others. Because he or she took off his or hers prisonners
uniform. So according to that, the question : are the services back in
normal? is ridiculous.
You sit in a street car and ten minutes after they carry you out of it
wounded or shot dead by a serb bullet which was fired from the snipper
guns.

Are the schools functioning?

They are. But do you know how are they functioning? I have a ten year old
daughter. She is attending the 4th grade class of elementary school. She
still hasn't learn anything. Meanwhile she is a healthy normal and clever
girl. So can you say the schools are functionaing since they have not
taught my child anything during these three years?

Do Sarajevans think that international and UN forces are able to do anything?

They are able to do a lot of things but they won't do anything. Because
they do not want to do it. According to my opinion, international and UN
forces look to me as a doctor who has to cure a cancer patient. But they do
not succeed. Why? Because they have to stay neutral. They cannot choose the
patient's side. They have to be neutral towards cancer. Their mandate is
like that.

If the war is over, could Sarajevo be reconstructed?

Of course. Warsaw was destroyed in the WWII and leveled to the ground.
After the war it was reconstructed as it was before.But Bosnians can not do
that with Sarajevo. We are beggars. Bosnia was economically and financially
squeezed by the Serbs, like lemon. If it is worthwhile for the world to
reconstruct Sarajevo, it wil do it.


* FROM: Marko VESHOVIC
TO: Lorie LICHTEN

Do you feel isolated from the world community? Why do they let your city be
destroyed?

The answer is we feel mostly, as the things which are forgotten by the
travellers in the trains. We know, today nobody cares about the
destructions of our city, about us who are living a dog's life. We know
that it is boring for the whole world to watch news on TV about Bosnia. We
know that we are not liked in the world. Because nobody likes sufferers,
they awake bad conscience. With our suffering, we are stoping the world to
think about itself as perfect.



* FROM: Marko VESHOVIC
TO: Carla RAPOPORT

What is life now?

I already answered. I only may add that we are convicted to live
exclusively in NOW. We do not like to thing about tomorrow, because we do
not expect anything good tomorrow., and what happened before hurts us. It
hurts us because of a thousand reasons. So there is no exclusive NOW for
us, like for fishes and trees. 

Do you get enough in the shops?

Such a question could only be put or asked by a person who does not have a
slightest idea about what is happening here.

Do your kids get the right kind of education?

They get. The situation under siege is the best university of all in the
world. If somebody got education under grenades that one understood
everything in life. Today, there is no doubt our children understand
everything. Snippers bullets and grenades explained them everything. I am
only afraid of this: if they understood everything in their tenth or
twelveth year of life, I am afraid that the rest of their lives will be
boring for them !

Do you want your children to grow up elsewhere? Will you try to get them
out of the city?

I won't try. I could have taken out my child out of the city a long time
ago in the April of 1992. I didn't do it and now let her be here. And when
you refer to the question about her growing up elsewhere, I think that
where you are things are a hundred times better. But you created your world
for yourself and not for me and my child. And here is my world. Mine and my
child's. May be it is hell, but my child should, when she grows up, do
everything, like I am doing right now, to make this world of ours more
bearable.



* FROM: Marko VESHOVIC
TO: Dominique DESANTIS

New peace treaty agreement? 

That new peace treaty agreement would be the 158th one. To expect something
new from this one would be madness. 

Which are the governments measures that would provide peace in the region?

As the Bosnian Army gets stronger and stronger, the peace will be closer
and closer. Everything else is a ridiculous story. According to that: if
Bosnian government takes any measures to make our army more stronger, then
that should be greeted as government's new step towards peace.

What are the things that make you and Sarajevians safe?

This question was put by an ignorant man. There is not a single place in
Sarajevo on which a grenade has not fall in the past three years. So how
can anyone feel safe in Sarajevo? We breath unsafety with our air, we drink
unsafety with our water, we eat unsafety with our bread. We are people who
feel: not alive - but alive for now.



* FROM: Marko VESHOVIC
TO: Lorin KALISKY

How do you relax in Sarajevo?

I already told you about having fun. And relaxation is a world which lost
meaning in Sarajevo. Nobody does anything so nobody can rest from that
nothing. But the invisible burden which each and everyone of us is carrying
on his or hers back cannot be removed. We are tired of ourselves.

* FROM:Haris Ceremida
TO:LORIN KALISKY

I am a eighteen-year-old boy,and a work as a technician on Independent
Radio "Studio 99"

I have a rock band called EDGE and i am the singer. Music relax me the
most. That is not slow music but some kind of heavy noise. I think it is
very important for me. I had a few concert with my bands. That was a small
concert, but i hope i will make big concert in music halls in the future.


* FROM: Marko VESHOVIC
TO: Laurent MICHEL

How do you communicate with the outer world?

Me personnally, through the journalist who come to me. But in everything:
the outter world does not mean anything to me. It is becoming for me as an
uncertain rumor.

What do you think about the UN action? 

I think that the UN are making a lot of money on our tragedy. Which is
fine. Because that was before, and that will be for ever. The UN are
supplying us with food to survive. The survivors are being killed by serbs.
So the UN are feeding poultry for the foxes which are going to eat them.
Because they do not do anything against the foxes. 


* FROM: Salman MANDICA - sima Ferhatovica broj 204 - Tel 54 14 94
TO:Everybody

For Sarajevo, which was never divided or conquered,
 
I think this Internet operation is very important. Our city has been for a
long time now, in the lack of the world information system. The suffering
of civilian population of this multiethnical city and old civilization and
good people is slowly been forgotten.

Our suffering in the city, as well as the suffering of the population in
the whole state, which is attacked by the Serbian-Montenegrian aggresssor
is more or less seen before, but in concrete prevention of this big evil of
20th century, we have not seen any results. We are more and more sinking in
worldly Milk and Honney.

It seems like that the world likes to ear about us only when big tragedies
happen - when the agressor carries out a massacre of innocent people, the
medias pay more attention to us and nothing else. Maybe one day we will be
disgusted at other people's destiny outside Bosnia. I look for concrete
actions of the International Community. The old lady Europe is still not
aware of what is happening here. Fascism, which came back to life in its
worst shape in the 20th century is already in their rooms and not in their
back yards. They are not aware of that. Do they need to see our suffering
and in that way be reminded of that? The world has to find out what is
happening on the ground of this country, which has been drenched with blood
for the past three years.

Besides the situation that we are in, besides the aggressor who kills and
destroys us without mercy, the world does nothing. On the contrary, the
world is helping in our extermination. The world has to know, in what
perfidious ways our people were destroyed. Through so called humanitarian
aid, which is given to us, we are, in that way quietly disappearing. Ask
yourselves : what are we eating? And what is send for food by the world?

Further, speaking about the UN organization, I think that is a group of
people who cannot solve anything and who cannot also put into effect any
deed. The concrete facts are that we Bosnians and Herzegovians and also
Republic of Croatia, which is in a similar situation are being attacked by
the same aggressor.

UNPROFOR IS A GROUP OF WORLD MOBSTERS. Through UNPROFOR, every illegal
institutions from the world which are against everybody and everything are
working. Concurrence of events, I was a member of peace keeping troops of
UN in Sinai in Egypt in 1960/61. I was a real soldier and an honourable
representative of my people. Today, everything is totally different. Such
displays of peace keeping forces as these are dangerous for the UN itself.
Today everything is worse than it was before. The citizens, the whole
country and its people are more affected in aggressive and perfidious
manners by the UN than by the aggressors. The resolutions which are written
only on paper are the exact proof of what UNPROFOR is.

I think, when one speeks about our country, one must know about the Serbian
lobby which is not well known in the world has a very big influence
thrrough all institutions of UNPROFOR. The same thing is probably true with
UNHCR too.

Well to emphasize all of the UN missions in our country, are interwoven
with interests of the great world powers and trough their institutions are
getting by organizations with the most negative harbinger "Aid for
endangered nations".I can say that we are endangered by UN and UNPROFOR.
Simply, they do not do their duty, or they do it in disadvantage of our
people and our country. There are innumerable exemples for this assertion.

So my question to UN Secretary General Mr.Ghali is what does he do, does he
see when he doesn't see and vive versa? The time has come for him to resign
from the function which he doesn't do with dignity. The time has come for
the world community to begin to see. Midnight passed a long time ago or did
your clock stopped working when you made the first resolution for Bosnia
and Herzegovine?

I thank you for your attention.

Selman MANDIC 

* FROM: Jasmina/Jasi/NJUHOVIC, SARAJEVO, Sutjeska 9
TO:Everybody in touch with James George BOUTOS,poet, Oakland, California
and his brothers David and Tom, Sacramento and Charles SIMIC, writer, his
friend

Dear Jim, I owe you an answer: police made me break with you. What a coward
I was. I have deserved Sarajevo. I am as miserable as you predicted. It's
hell here. I'll tell you more about it if you decide to get in touch with
me. Please send me your news.

Love, Jasi

* FROM:SOSEVIC ANESA;TV journalist from studio 99
TO:Michael SRAGA

I am Anesa Sosevic from Sarajevo. I had finished literature of world and
library science. Now I am a TV journalist and I will run program called the
little talk of night. People who I will call in my program, they will not
talk about politics and i am not interested with political man because they
bore me. 

I want to say about my town Sarajevo. Sarajevo is a mixture of east and
west and that is why the most interesting town in the world for many
visitors and travelers. Sarajevo is a real intersection of different
civilisations. before the war was a amusing town under open skies the most
beautiful part of town is BASCARSIJA that is heart of old part of town
Sarajevo was a town of young people. Almost half the population was under
30. Many people loose their life in war and many friends of mine left
Sarajevo 3 years ago therefore I am very lonely and very unhappy. 

Besides being today's valuable cultural monuments, the sacred buildings
churches mosques sinagogues more than 4 centuries old and erected virtually
side by side represent also species of monument to the mutual cooperation
of the peoples who have lived here. The history of this town does not
record and did not record any conflicts between its inhabitants.

I am finishing my letter by words of my favorite poet. His name is Mak DIZDAR :
The earth is sown with the seeds of death ,
But death is not the end. In truth there is no death.
And there is no end. Death merely illuminates 
the way up from the nest to the stars.

My best regards and wishes

Anessa