From notes@igc.apc.org Thu Feb 8 15:26:56 1996
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Date: 08 Feb 1996 11:23:02
Reply-To: Conference "zamir.chat" 
From: hfp@ConXioN.com
Subject: Re: http://mediafilter.org/SJ/Pages/re: Chat with Bosnia
To: Recipients of zamir-chat-l 
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Our local Junior High is installing an Internet lab.  We are interested in
conducting

a chat session with the soldiers in Bosnia.  Do you know of any chat
sessions with

the US soldiers in Bosnia?  -- Henry Plummer




From notes@igc.apc.org Thu Feb 8 15:29:10 1996
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Date: 08 Feb 1996 11:19:11
Reply-To: Conference "zamir.chat" 
From: kajosevi@newschool.edu
Subject: CROATIA ATTACKS WOMEN'S RIGHTS -Forwarded
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From: INDIRA KAJOSEVIC 
Subject:  CROATIA ATTACKS WOMEN'S RIGHTS -Forwarded

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Date: 08 Feb 1996 03:20:20
Reply-To: Conference "women.east-west" 
From: vanyova@phil.muni.cz
Subject: CROATIA ATTACKS WOMEN'S RIGHTS  (fwd)
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Subject: CROATIA ATTACKS WOMEN'S RIGHTS  (fwd)
From: Magdalena Vanyova 

Forwarded message:
> From notes@igc.apc.org Thu Feb  8 01:50:10 1996
> Date: Wed, 07 Feb 1996 17:50:10 -0800 (PST)
> Reply-To: Conference "women.clinicdefense" 
> From: Tom Burghardt 
> Subject: CROATIA ATTACKS WOMEN'S RIGHTS 
> To: Recipients of conference 
> Message-Id: 
> X-Gateway: conf2mail@igc.apc.org
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> 
> With roots in the fascist Ustasha government of Nazi
> collaborators and clerical fascists, the present Croatian
> government is launching a concerted attack on women's rights.  I
> received the text below from a Croatian contact; it makes for
> chilling reading.  I am writing her to check whether Human Life
> International has provided "technical assistance" to the Tudjman
> government.  I'll keep you posted...Oh yes, BTW, the Tudjman
> regime is strongly supported by the "liberal, pro-choice" Clinton
> administration.  USAID funds flow freely.
>  
> Tom Burghardt,
> Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights
>  
> [begin forward]
>  
> From: BABE_ZG@ZAMIR-ZG.ZTN.APC.ORG (B.a.B.e.)
> Subject: Croatian pro-lifer's attacking women's rights
> Date: Wed, 07 Feb 1996 14:49:00 +0200
>  
>  
> CROATIAN PRO-LIFERS ATTACKING WOMEN'S RIGHTS
>  
> B.a.B.e., Women's Human Rights Group, has learned that at a
> meeting in the Zagreb City Hall on Jan. 30. several Croatian
> pro-life organizations met to discuss the governmental Program
> for Demographic Development which was recently adopted by the
> Croatian Parliament. The participants of the meeting say that
> they are supporting the governmental program, but with some
> objections:
>  
> "Abortion in Croatia has killed 180.000 children", stated Don
> Ante Bakovic, President of the Croatian Population Movement.
> "Since the establishment of an independent Croatia, gynecologists
> have killed six times as many little Croats as the Chetniks
> killed during the war".
>  
> Bakovic continued: "The second evil of the Croatian nation after
> abortion is contraception". According to Bakovic the Croatian
> "medical underground" has smuggled 1.000.000 IUDs (Inter Uterine
> Devices) into the country. "What is  more important for Croatia:
> The Croatian future or 13 existing women's groups which all
> together didn't give birth to 13 children...", asks Don Bakovic,
> alluding to politicians which, he belives, are too afraid to
> "provoke the demons" by confronting women's groups on
> reproductive rights.
>  
> Bakovic also condemned the youth magazine "O.K." which supports
> the use of contraceptives among Croatian youngsters. Furthermore
> he stated that the authors of school books on sex education are
> "poisoning Croatian youth".
>  
> Other members of the gathering suggested that people with many
> children should have a "broader" voting right than those without
> children. They were also talking about "rotten magazines",
> "pesticides" such as contraception, sterilization, massive HIV
> infection (though Croatia has one of the smallest number of HIV
> infected people in Europe), etc...
>  
> The organizations concluded the meeting with a demand that the
> Croatian State annul the "controversial law" from 1978 which
> makes abortion in Croatia legal and accessible. They quote the
> governmental Program for Demographic Development which states
> that "human life should be protected from the moment of
> conception to natural death". The existing abortion law is, as
> they say, in contradiction with the Program and the Constitution,
> (although the Croatian Constitution states that every human
> beeing has a right to life, but does not mention "the moment of
> conception").
>  
> The following organizations were present at the meeting: The
> Croatian Population Movement, the Croatian Family Center,
> Croatian Catholic Chorus, and the Croatian Movement for Life and
> Family.
>  
> BACKGROUND:
>  
> The appearance of Don Ante Bakovic ("Don" is his clerical title,
> as he is a former Franciscan priest) is not new to the Croatian
> public. Bakovic is a well known catholic fundamentalist, militant
> pro-lifer, also known through his open war mongering and extreme
> chauvinistic statements against Serbs and Muslims during the war
> in Croatia and Bosnia.
>  
> Until recently Don Bakovic and his movement have not received as
> strong support from governmental institutions and state
> controlled media as they used to. However, Zagreb City Hall is
> not usually open to non-governmental organizations, but the
> pro-life organizations were granted access to the meeting space.
> Prime time news on Croatian state television and all three
> national dailies gave enormous publicity to their meeting. Media
> have never done the same when truly independent non-governmental
> groups such as the peace movement, human rights or women's
> organizations are in question.
>  
> All the publicity and support is connected to the governemental
> National Program for Demographic Development, which recently
> passed the parliamentary procedure thanks to the strong support
> of the ruling party (HDZ), despite critical comments from the
> opposition, parliamentary representatives of Serbian minority and
> women's groups.
>  
> As a matter of fact, Don Ante Bakovic is the conceptualist and
> spiritual father of the present governmental Program:
>  
> In Spring 1992 the Croatian Government, following the President's
> initiative for a "spiritual renewal of the nation" established
> the Ministry for Renewal with a special Department for
> Demographic Renewal. Don Ante Bakovic was at that time the head
> of that Department. The Department's Program, among other things,
> proposed MOTHERHOOD as the highest vocation and profession for
> women with four or more children and presented a strategy for the
> development of an "ethnically clean" birth-rate in Croatia by
> proposing social service incentives to Croatian women who give
> birth to more than four children, and by limiting immigration of
> non-Croats from the countries of former Yugoslavia.
>  
> In 1993 the protests of liberal press, women's groups, and
> international pressure succeeded in removing the Program for
> Demographic Renewal and the Don Bakovic's Department for
> Demographic Renewal from the state Ministery.  Don Bakovic
> subsequently established a quasi-NGO, the Croatian Population
> Movement, which is being supported by leading national
> politicians, including President Franjo Tudjman, and many
> nationalistic intellectuals.
>  
> The state Fund for Privatization enabled the Croatian Population
> Movement to take ownership of a small printing factory which
> illustrates that the groups activities continue to be favoured by
> the government.
>  
> In the meantime the Program, renamed to the National Program for
> Demographic Development, was processed within the Ministery for
> Reconstruction and Renewal (under the ministry of dr. Jure Radic)
> and finally recognized by the Croatian Parliament in January
> 1996. This time, the project was given to a team of "experts",
> and Don Bakovic's typical phrasing about "creating the familiy of
> the Croatian future" was replaced with more scientific languague,
> but the substance of the project has remained the same.
>  
> The present Program for Demographic Development suggests the
> following:
>  
> 1. The huge and general threat of extinction of the Croatian
> nation due to a higher death rate than birth rate, as well as
> emigration, is momentarily, according to the Program, among one
> of the biggest problems of the whole nation and state.
>  
> 2. The reasons for this are historical, political and social
> circumstances which were created during the last centuries of
> "anti-Croatian" policy, especially during the forty-five years of
> the former ("Communist") Yugoslavia's rule of which aim was to
> "eradicate the Croatian nation". Due to the fact that the
> political system is now changed, and ,"despite Great Serbia's
> aggression" Croats finally have their own state, so the right
> time for change in the population policy has come. Finally, the
> time to stop the "national haemorrhage" has come.
>  
> Demographic policy, e.g. demographic development is focusing on
> two main points:
>  
> 1. Increasing the national birth rate, described as "demographic
> renewal of Croatian people and family", and,
>  
> 2. "purposeful replacement of the population", "planned
> displacement of immigrants" and "selective immigration". Such a
> replacement of people includes the use of "legitimate means that
> Croatian state has on its disposition, like any other state". The
> project openly states that "redistributive population policy is
> in function of political and military circumstances"
>  
> Some of the proposed measures that were ratified by the Croatian
> Parliament and which will be incorporated in different laws are:
>  
> - Immigration of Croats from Bosnia and Herzegovina should be
> stopped, as it is of "national strategic interest" that Croats
> stay in Bosnia. If this is impossible (and it is), the immigrants
> should be directed in organized ways to under-populated and
> ethnically cleansed territories (e.g. the territories that the
> Serb population left during the four years of war.) The number of
> Serbs who left is estimated to be between 300.000 and 600.000
> people. Only in the last Croatian military operation in Krajina
> in the Summer of 1995 approximately 200.000 people fled in a few
> days.  All the regions formerly inhabited by Serbs are in the
> Program called "regions of strategic importance" for the Croatian
> state.
>  
> - Immigration from countries of former Yugoslavia should be
> regulated by (ethnic) quotas.
>  
> - Although the Program very precisely develops a policy of
> returning the Croatian diaspora from all around the world,
> especially from Europe, the United States and Australia, and
> suggests an active population policy towards Bosnia and
> Herzegovina, it does not mention the returning of hundreds of
> thousands of Croatian citiziens of Serbian ethnicity who have
> left the country.
>  
> - Demographic renewal of the nation (increasing the birth rate)
> should be backed-up and followed by a "positive spiritual
> atmosphere" which will be created through "protection of the
> family as a basic society unit" which is the "headquarter of the
> renewal of nation and state",  through "speech and behavior of
> public persons who will incorporate respect towards life from
> conception until natural death, as well as respect towards women,
> marriage and family". "The beauty of family life should be
> promoted through mass-media".
>  
> In general, the Program does not define the status of women in
> any other way than being reproductive vehicles for new Croats. It
> foresees "positive measures for the population policy" such as
> privileges for famillies with three or more children (prolonged
> paid maternity leave - three years for third and any additional
> child, tax reduction, child support, professional status with
> salary, health- and social-seccurity for parents with three or
> more children, etc).
>  
> One of the Program's conclusions says: The massive immigration of
> demographically stronger peoples to Croatia has already started.
> This could by the end of 21st century lead to the Croats becoming
> a minority in their own country.
>  
> Although women's groups could support social security measures
> for families and women with many children, the existing practice
> shows that so far the Croatian state does not fulfill obligations
> already guaranteed by the existing laws - child support,
> prolonged maternity leave for women, or by the Labour act which
> was effective of January 1996 which recognizes women with four or
> more children with a paid status as a "Mother Educator".
> Participants in public discussions have stressed that the state
> budget for 1996 cannot cover the expenses for such a population
> policy, neither will the future Croatian economy.
>  
> Women's groups consider the National Program for Demographic
> Development, and new laws which support its policy as purely a
> political and ideological campaign being exclusively ethnically
> oriented and fundamentally anti-woman as it announces a policy
> which will exclude women from labour and the public world and
> return them into the traditional roles of mothers and spouses in
> kitchen, family and church..
>  
> Although the authors of the Program have tried to use a
> politically correct language, sometimes using expressions such as
> "Croatian people" and "all citiziens of Croatia", they cannot
> avoid slipping into terms like "Croats" and "the Croat nation".
> This presents the true context of the Program as well as the
> general perception and consequences of the Program.
>  
> The new proposed abortion law walks hand in hand with the Program
> for Demographic Development. Consequenses of this law, which has
> yet to be processed in the Parliament, is already being a heavy
> experience for women.  In January B.a.B.e. reported on a woman
> from Split who went to Split Clinical Hospital to have an
> abortion.  She was rejected by the doctor who called on his
> conscientiousness reasons.  She went to have the abortion
> perfomed at a private practice. She there faced the very same
> doctor who this time performed the abortion for a charge of 1.000
> kuna (which is almost an average salary for women in Croatia).
>  
> This disturbing incidence is one of many that B.a.B.e. has
> knowledge of. We are afraid that illegal abortions will be the
> regular procedure in Croatia in the future.
>  
> B.a.B.e. has learned that doctors in Slavonia daily rejects
> performing abortions because they are afraid of the (re)actions
> from the pro-life movement.
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>                                  APPEAL
>  
> We call upon all women and international and national human
> rights organizations to fight for women's reproductive rights,
> women's human rights and their right to self determination.
>  
> We call upon all women to lobby relevant institutions to void the
> Program for Demographic Development and to keep abortion in
> Croatia safe and legal.
>  
> Please send appeals to:
>  
> President Franjo Tudjman                    Fax: +385 1 44 30 75
>  
> Croatian Government                         Fax: +385 1 27 70 82
>  
> President of the Croatian Parliament        Fax: +385 1 44 35 22
>  
> The Croatian Parliament (Human Rights Committee) 
>                                             Fax: +385 1 44 36 66
>  
> SDP (Social Democratic Party)               Fax: +385 1 45 528 42
>  
> HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union)             Fax: +385 1 45 526 00
>  
> ## CrossPoint v3.02 ##
>  
>  
>