EXILE BECOMING PERMANENT

AIM, ZAGREB, November 24, 1994 By a decision of city authorities in Zagreb, adopted a couple of months ago, the exiles who die on city territory are to be - cremated. The relatives of the deceased exiles have no right to enter the crematory on the occasion. There is no solemn ceremony either. The urn with the ashes is then brought to the Mirosevac cemetery, handed over to the family which can then bury it according to a religious ceremony. But, there is the other part of the sad story: the urn is buried at the end of the cemetery, somewhere by the fence.

The decision about cremation of the exiles, or "more precisely" the recommendation, caused doubt at first, and then indignation among the exiles. "They proposed to me to have the mortal remains of my mother cremated, but I refused. For Christ's sake, we were born and lived in Vukovar, and not in India. The tradition of us Croats is to have our dead buried in the ground, and we do not intend to give it up. Many of us from Vukovar and other exiles died, somewhere a space could have been found for them where they would be buried and a sign put up saying 'this is the Vukovar postwar cemetery'. At least once a year we could gather there. The world would also be able to see where we are buried, where we were dispersed and how we ended up", Vinko Domazet, an exile from Vukovar, complains.

But, the topic of controversial cremations was soon forgotten, after a few articles in the newspapers, which were, most probably, accidentally given passage to. Accidentally or not, but at the same time, loud announcements of the exiles that they would do everything to have the controversial decision annulled as soon as possible, also disappeared from the media. Once again, the problem of the exiles, just like they themselves, was pushed aside, as far from the eyes of the public as possible.

The Golgotha of the exiles is in the beginning of its fourth year, and the problems are piling up with no prospects to be solved soon. The impatience of these 196 thousand people, according to the latest census, who were expelled from their homes, is acquiring enormous proportions. The latest wave of dissatisfaction started after the repeated attempt to evict the exiles from hotels, and then the exiles accomodated in Solaris Hotels in Sibenik also raised their voices because of the meagre fare they were given. The exiles from the Split-Dalmatian district threatened with demonstrations if the Government would not take urgent measures for the improvement of living conditions which are constantly deteriorating. As a response, the Government increased the exile pocket money, and pecuniary compensation for persons staying with families for another 50 kunas or 14 German marks. This increase, obviously, cannot improve the difficult position of the exiles, especially those living with families who are receiving less and less food sufficient to sustain them for hardly several days, as they claim. In the past few months the quantities of humanitarian aid which is arriving to Croatia are decreasing, and the number of items in it is also reduced. "The reason for this is that the European Union hasn't enough food either, because new focal points are springing up in the world which need help. Apart from the EU, noone else is sending aid any more, so that the Red Cross, the Caritas and the Merhamet are almost out of supplies", Adalbert Rebic, the director of the Office for Exiles and Refugees, explains.

The meals which are getting scarcer and poorer are accompanied lately with a growing fear for uncertain accomodation. Despite the promise of the Government that the exiles will not be evicted from the hotels without their consent, and that hotel rooms will be replaced with adequate substitute accomodation, the "temporary tenants" are more and more frequently the targets of attempted evictions. New owners of privatized hotels wish to prepare for the tourist season and by all means and without warrants of the Government, they are doing their best to evict the exiles. Even without such pressures, the life in the hotels, which have become specific types of ghettos, is getting difficult to endure. In Punta Skala, once a famous nudist settlement, there are 1200 refugees living now. Small gardens have appeared in front of the luxurious bungalows. The young are trying to adapt to new life, they are looking for jobs or are already employed in the army, while the elderly appear lost. In the past three years, the mortality rate among the elderly has increased up to 300 per cent.

Whole families of 5, 6 or even more members are living in small hotel rooms. Zagreb Hotel Panorama offers a typical picture of exile misery. In one of its rooms, Ante is living with his wife and four children. He is a disabled veteran from Vukovar and for almost three years he is living in these inhumane conditions, just like all other exiled families accomodated in that or any other hotel. "There is no man who would not lose patience. The children are growing and need more room and completely different conditions for living. They are cramped like this, and they have no idea what to expect and where they will end up. Traumas are inevitable, because this isn't normal life of a human being", Ante says.

But, for thousands of other people who were left without their homes in the war, a hotel room is an unattainable safety. Only in Osijek, more than 400 families are now accomodated in apartments whose owners seek their eviction. The exiles have, therefore, made a demand for the adoption of a moratorium on disposal of property they are using at the moment. Only in August and September, 500 exiles addressed the Office for Exiles in Osijek, because they were threatened that they would be evicted, or were thrown out of the apartments they had hired as subtenants, or because they were forced to seek new accomodation for their relatives could not support the burden any more.

As the only solution offered for all these problems

• is the possibility of construction of new settlements. Yet, the Association of Exiles of Croatia is decisively against it. "Let them tell us first that we will never be able to go back, and then we will agree to construction of settlements. But, in that case they would have to be houses built of solid material and settlements where exiles would not be isolated as citizens of the second order", the President of the Association, Mato Simic says.

The exiles hardly believe that they will soon return to their homes any more. By choosing the so-called roundabout projects, the Croatian authorities seem to be indirectly signalling that there will be no returning home. When district authorities in Zadar, in cooperation with the central state authorities, are planning to connect the Sibenik and the Zadar waterworks in order to solve the problem of supplying the Zadar region with water, this is the best indicator that Zrmanja will not be reached soon, nor the villages around Obrovac where the Croats used to live before the war. Construction of settlements near the borders are another sign that the central authorities do not have much hope in a quick return of the exiled people. The Government Office for Exiles and Refugees is striving to have the settlements constructed as near to their destroyed homes as possible, and they still insist that the newly constructed settlements should not be "solid" because that would verify the permanence of the exile of these people.

Recently, the opening ceremony of a settlement near the border, in Pokuplje, was held at the very verge of the occupied territory. "The exiles are against such organized accomodation because they feel isolated like in a camp. Here they are like 'clay pigeons', targets for Chetnik arms on one side, and restricted by the river Kupa on the other", an exile from Petrinja says, who has given up the offered accomodation at the last moment, because he could not overcome the fear and the feeling of insecurity at the location.

The thousands of people whose entire properties were destroyed by the war are on the verge of mental and bodily endurance. Their problems cannot be solved by the best of policy. The only solution for them is to cease being exiles and return home. But, despite numerous promises none of the exiles managed to return, at least not to the regions which are on the other side of the line of separation and not controlled by the Croatian army and the police. To a question about the date of the return at the moment, noone in Croatia can answer, if they do not wish to give false promises.

In the meantime, the ruling and the opposition parties will continue to dispute and collect political points on their misfortune and destiny. The army of exiled persons is used from time to time only as a joker in political games. Last autumn as an expression of disapproval in relation to the UNPROFOR, they were sent to build a wall around the seat of the "blue helmets" in Zagreb. They raised the wall brick by brick for days, writing the names of the killed and disappeared persons on them. Everything was soon forgotten - the passers-by do not even notice the wall any more, and the names on the bricks have faded. The same scenario was repeated this autumn. The exilants have demonstrated for days because of inefficiency of the UNPROFOR and prevented the traffic of their vehicles. As always, however, world power-wielders were the ones who decided about the mandate of the UNPROFOR. The exiles then returned to their rented cabins and cellar rooms to wait to return home return or, at least, to wait for a new opportunity to manifest their misery.

BRANKA VUJNOVIC