SHORT CIRCUIT

Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Srem

AIM, Vukovar, September 24, 1996

In the village of Nijemci there are 18 Serbian families living there since December 1991 after their exile from Western Slavonia. A new nightmare is haunting these already alarmed people. There are indications that they might soon be moved as Nijemci, just like Bilje in Baranja, has been chosen as a location for the implementation of a pilot project of the return of Croatian exiles.

However, since for the time being the Serbian refugees cannot return to their homes, they will be located within the UNTAES area. Protesting against this plan, representatives of the Serbian refugees from Nijemci visited several times Klein's administration headquarters in Vukovar as well as the offices of the regional Serbian government in Borovo. In the meantime, members of the Jordanian UNTAES battalion have erected a barrier on the main road leading to Nijemci, and request from inhabitants to show identification papers and search them each time they cross to the other "half" of the village, for one reason or another. In addition, since the workers of the Croatian firm "INA" pass through Nijemci on their way to work in the oil field in Djeletovci, whenever they meet Serbs, as often as not, using abusive language, they shout at them curses, threats...

After he heard the complaints Phillip Arnold, Klein's deputy, promised the Serb refugee representatives from Nijemci that he "will look into their problem" and try to prevent any further provocations. The Nijemci case is still under consideration, same as the resolution of other problems which are piling up in the process of peaceful reintegration of Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Srem into the constitutional-legal system of Croatia. However, the time left for endless consideration of reintegration short circuits is running out.

The transitional administration, headed by Jacques Klein, who ever so often complains of the lack of cooperativeness on the part of Serbian authorities, has joined the notorious haste of Croatia, intensified by the normalization of relations between Zagreb and Belgrade, to repossess its eastern borders. Although the willingness of Vojislav Stanimirovic's government to cooperate cannot be denied, according to Zagreb and UNTAES, its contribution to the reintegration schedule is unsatisfactory so that it should not come as a surprise if the Serbian leading echelons undergo a change soon.

This could happen with the assistance of the Chief Administrator Klein, who has already hinted such a possibility in his speech to those attending the Summer School of Democracy in Crikvenica. The role of "terminator" in case of departure of Stanimirovic and his associates, will be entrusted to Goran Hadzic, President of the region, who is dissatisfied with his status for some time (no one asks him anything) and is seeking a way to rectify that. The so called Presidential Office has 49 people, and according to the Regional Government they are nothing but Hadzic's useless ornamental figureheads.

Although Hadzic came to this post directly at the insistence of the official Belgrade, he is totally disregarded and can only be seen cutting the band at the opening of roads, waterways, etc. Milosevic is not inclined towards the Regional Government and has received its members only once, while they were not sufficiently willing to cooperate with Klein either. Therefore, it is expected of Hadzic to initiate in the Regional Assembly the change of cabinet and unquestioningly carry out orders of Belgrade and Zagreb which are now on the same wave-length.

However, apart from interested protagonists, hardly anybody in Srem-Baranja region is thinking about this future change. Ever since the opening of Offices for the issuance of Croatian documents the "bugaboos of passports and citizenship papers" have overshadowed all other events, including the excavation of the mass grave on Ovcara, which will, according to the announcements, take much longer than planned.

Although people have been queuing up from early morning in front of such offices in Vukovar and Beli Manastir and, as of recent, in other places, these queues mostly include refugees from Croatia temporarily residing in Serbia, and only an occasional "local" Serb. Only after a text about forms Serbs had to fill in stating that they are "members of the Croatian nation...", rose dust had that form been withdrawn from circulation with the explanation of Ivica Vrkci, Head of Osijek Reintegration Office, that a misunderstanding was in question.

Up till now over thousand Serbs have passed through these offices (which are open four hours a day three times a week), but only a few have succeeded in obtaining the wanted documents. According to Croatian officers the reason is a procedure of verifying data in places of previous residence, while according to activists of the Vukovar Center for Peace and Legal Advice, for reasons known only to it, Croatia is deliberately stalling.

Since the local population still refuses to take out the Croatian papers, and there is no political nor media campaign aimed at overcoming or at least alleviating that problem, Peter Galbraith, American Ambassador to Zagreb, took advantage of his recent visit to Vukovar to send a message to the citizens of the Region that they should take out the "Croatian papers" as soon as possible as that was the only way in which they could exercise all their rights, including the right to vote at the forthcoming elections. He announced the termination of the UNTAES mandate for summer next year, and in connection with all disputable issues advised the Serbs to resolve them through direct discussions with Zagreb.

Galbraith, same as other representatives of the international community, no matter how hard they try to hide it, are still fearing the "Sarajevo syndrome" in Vukovar. Namely, the process of silent emigration of Serbs is still going on, while the Serbian leaders in their public speeches still do not rule out the possibility of a larger-scale exodus. The attempt of Jacques Klein to bring Serbs and Croats together again by organizing meetings of families and a market on the Osijek-Vukovar road, was spoiled by the Croatian police which at the third such meeting, with rallied some 10 thousand people, arrested Martin Brnad, a refugee from Banija (a Croat who stayed behind to live with the Serbs in the so called Republic of Serbian Krajina), temporarily residing in Korosa.

He was taken to Osijek prison, with the explanation that he was on the wanted list. Although Brnad was returned six days later after the Transitional Administration interceded on his behalf, his arrest had its effect on the Serbian population. Petar Djukic, head of the Transitional Police Forces sent a public appeal to citizens to be careful at "Klein's market", soon after which the fourth meeting was postponed until further notice...

Although political and economic negotiations are continuing, there is no sign of any results. Leaders of the Slavonian Serbs went to Zagreb two times, while representatives of the Croatian Government and Parliament are more and more frequently in Vukovar. For the time being these visits do not attract much attention among the citizens, except when among-the-Serbs-still-undesirable Croats come as members of the delegation. Thus, a protest rally of Serbs was held in Ilok recently, when Vladimir Seks and Drago Krpina started towards that small town on the Danube river after their visit to Vukovar.

"Why are they provoking us with people like Seks and Krpina? The first one called us dogs and the second slapped our deputies in the Croatian Assembly", says Dragutin Bolic from Ilok aware that his argument will not "hold water" for long. Namely, the Croats are also protesting, they also do not like the Serbian negotiators, nor the Transitional Administration for that matter, labelling it more and more frequently as occupying, like the Association of the Croatian Exiles whose leaders even demanded of their authorities to enter Vukovar by force.

In such an atmosphere, the following reasoning of an elderly Serb from Borovo Naselje on his journey back from Sid by bus, does not come as a surprise: "I have found a small house near Sid, on the verge of collapsing, but, just the same...Nothing will come out of this. They can say whatever they want. No one believes in life together after all that has happened...

(AIM) Milka Ljubicic