PEOPLE FROM THE ISLAND OF DONKEYS

AIM, SPLIT, April 01, 1994.

When you disembark on Obonjan, an island in the Sibenik archipelago, it is highly likely that a sun-tanned old man, wearing a skiing cap on his head, will ask you for some money in a way you won't be able to refuse: he will ask for money for postal stamps. The "catch" is, as you will later learn that he has no one to write to. He does not even have an address. Few people know what his name is, it is only known that his nickname is "Glumac" , that he was born in Kragujevac, that for the past 30 years he loafed in Zadar, where in the war he was wounded by a grenade shrapnel and after he got well, he came to Obonjan , not only as a man without an address, but also as a man without a state. Together with another 130 people who were expelled from Croatia because of their illegal residence there, Glumac is waiting for his destiny on the island, gathering cigarette butts and filling his small pipe with them. Everything is anyway unreal on this island some ten miles away from Sibenik on which the islanders of Zlarin used to leave their old donkeys to die there. Now some people are left there to live. In addition to the asylum seekers, some hundred refugees are also on the island.

Between its donkey past and asylum-refugee present, this uninhabited island had a future. It started being developed in 1972, under the name :Island of Youth. The last remnants of care-free scout youth is the graffito "Robi and Lela '90". Almost a year ago 1,500 people lived in these pavillions. All of them could not be housed in buildings, so many lived in tents. That is so even today.

The inhabitants of the island are a strange mixture of destinies of those who want and those who do not want out of Croatia. The refugees turn their eyes to the west, while asylum seekers - mainly from B&H, Kosovo, Serbia and Macedonia do not even wish to look at the east. Nevertheless, some have to do that, like Mujo Tahiri from Kosovska Mitrovica and Tahir Shabani from Tetovo. Exile is in store for them - by ferry boat from Split to Drac. These passengers without travel documents, count on the understanding of Albania, "the parent country", as Mujo calls it, when the state in which they where born made them stateless persons through its reproduction. The dissolution of Yugoslavia caught them in Zagreb - Mujo was employed by a private businessman, while Tahir ran away from the YPA in Samobor at the end of 1991. At the beginning of this year, when their residence permits were not renewed they ended up in Dugo Selo, in shacks for asylum seekers.

• The accommodation there was deplorable - says Mujo Tahiri. - Five people to a small room. We were locked inside all the time. I spent 42 days there. We could only walk for 15 minutes a day, to the dining room, that's all.

Thanks to some independent Croatian media, which "got wind of" such "accommodation", they left Dugo Selo. Now they will leave Croatia too.

The asylum seekers from Bosnia and Herzegovina are in a somewhat better position. They cannot be expelled, because war is raging in their homeland and after six months of asylum status they can get refugee status. What is harder for them is that many have families in Croatia and that some have earned their pensions working for Croatian enterprises.

A man from Kotor Varos, since 1966 a denizen of Pula, has been on the island for six months now. What brought him to Obonjan? The police, hahaha. Why? Because I did not apply for a certificate of citizenship, and I have and ID from Pula and have permanent residence there". And what now? "There probably is some garbage somewhere, they can dump me there. I have no other option...".

His co-sufferer and co-traveller, who does not disclose his identity for obvious reasons was born in Doboj, he worked for 19 years and 8 months in Croatian enterprises. "My wife and children are in Zagreb, I am here. I did not take their papers. You get a certificate of citizenship and straight to the battlefield. That is why I didn't want it. Because I do not want to go to war".

The difference between asylum seekers and refugees is that the latter can freely go to Sibenik. Now, after the establishment of peace between the Croats and the Moslems it is easier to go to town - says Emin Alibegovic from Urosevic who was in Brcko when war in Bosnia broke out. The asylum seekers can go to Sibenik only when they visit the doctor, only under police escort.

They treat us like refugees, we get food... as many as thirty of us sleep in a pavillion. The hardest thing is that we cannot go anywhere from the island. You can go see the doctor under police escort. I have problems with my blood vessels, but I cannot stand being led about town by a policeman, says an asylum seeker from Breza. - The police is O.K., couldn't be better. I am not to blame for the war. I came in 1989 to work in Sibenik, Split, Sinj, Makarska... and finally you end up as an enemy".

Many of these people are still working, on the island. Where the scouts stopped in peace-time they took up in war. They are building support walls on the island and getting cans and cigarettes for that. Some are fishing and have in this way, with their "excess value", set the closed "island economy" in motion. Fish is bartered for cans and cigarettes, cans for cigarettes, cans are sold in Sibenik for money ( a can of meat, half a kilo, for 5,000 dinars), the money reaches the island and usually ends up in the "cafe" - beer - 5,000, brandy 3,000 dinars. That is how they survive. According to the "internal" island prices, a gilthead weighing a kilo or two is sold for a bottle of wine, etc. till something else happens.

And where is that "else"? Peace reigns in Mostar, do you intend to go back?

Let Alija and Tudjman go to live in Mostar. I will never go back again. For whom did I fight? - says Semsudin Puco, called Kennedy, a HOS (Croatian Armed Forces) member from Mostar, degraded last summer. - My child is 12, she needs a future, I don't... And as for Mostar, I pray to God that America or Australia receives me. If only I could work, man... to stay alive, and this here doesn't interest me, the armistice either... Politics is one thing, we, the people, another.

Meho Budnjo from Foca, eighty-five years old, is less ambitious: I am old, and if someone doen't take care of me I won't fare well... Thinking about a home for the elderly, the old man draws historic parallels: This war is worse than that one. I was in the Croatian army for four years. Those black units, the blackest, you know... "Here comes dawn, here comes day", is what we used to sing then. Well now, this is the blackest possible war. In the Second war there was not so much slaughter, the armies chased one another. The partisans were the best in battle in that war, they were the most honest. I swear to God, so there ... One must tell the truth.

Meho Budnjo never even dreamed that he would live on an island in pavillions which started being built in 1972 in honour of the Day of the Warrior and that he would there for the second time in his life see the sea and that he would watch it for a long long time, perhaps to the end.

After the rains and winter storms, this wooded island at the beginning of spring looks even attractive to a chance traveller: - We fish a little, get together, have barbecues... If someone were to watch us from without he would say we were on vacation. But, I would tell everyone to come here for this vacation and let me go - says Emin Alibegovic, whose two year old daughter learned to walk on the Island of Youth under a tent. Cynics would say that she will surely make it in life. Everything above zero is success. Judging by her father she will go neither to Brcko nor to Urosevac. Probably to Australia.

Senad Popara from Hrasnica is 14, his friends are scattered, most of them have gone to Danmark and the United States of America. Is he going back to Hrasnica? - I would, but there are no conditions, it is not safe, there is no food. And when he does return? - I have grown up, my folks won't recognize me. Until he returns he attends school on the island which "looks like normal school".

• Peace in Sarajevo and Mostar means nothing to me when I cannot go back to my own city - says Dajana Demirovic from Bosanska Dubica. The eyes of this single mother with two children are turned to the west. She has no "concrete" arrangements, but going to "a third country" is more likely than returning to her own. The future holds more certainty for the 20 year old twins from Pec - Zyrafeta and Zyher Shala who were in Mostar when war broke out. They are going to England. They do not think about Mostar - We would be afraid to go back, for fear the same might happen again - says Zyrafeta. And it happened that on July 21, last year they were expelled with a group of 500 people from Mostar, crowded into eight buses, without knowing where they were going - they only knew that they had signed that they were leaving their flat to the people expelling them. Then, quite unexpectedly they found themselves on a long "vacation" on Obonjan. Last summer the "Feral Tribune" published the following caption under their photo : "Instead of at a fashion show - on an island of donkeys".

The others too are on the island instead of in their lives. Here they live between what was certain and the uncertain in store for them. They vegetate in hope. - It is the only thing keeping us from going crazy - says Semsudin Puco.

You can reach Obonjan from Sibenik by the ship "Muha" (fly). And it is known where the "Muha" sails for...

GORAN VEZIC (AIM)