What's New
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Sunday: The suspense of the cease-fire expectations in Sarajevo at midnight...
Will it hold? Will the UN be able to secure the airport so that the people can
get much needed help with food and medicine.
Monday: First reports are favorable. With minor problems the cease-fire went
into effect. Some shelling reported in the afternoon.
Last night Serb forces concentrated their attack on the old town and on the
core of the city, the Bascarsija. Heavy fighting was also reported in
Hrasnica, Butmir and Sokolovic. Four people were killed and twenty were
wounded. There are also reports of Serbian tanks moving towards the airport.......
Tuesday: Cease-fire still holding, barely. The latest UN sponsored cease-
fire has crumbled as Serb forces continued to pound the city center, Stari
Grad (Old Town), Dobrinja, and the Airport.......
Wednesday: The Sarajevo quarters of Novi Grad and Kobilja Glava came under
fierce artillery attacks yesterday. Serbian irregulars on the Trebevic moun-
tain range opened anti-aircraft fire on Stari Grad. One person was wounded
from sniper fire in Novo Sarajevo.......
Thursday: Croatian Radio reports civilians being taken prisoners from the Do-
brinja and the Airport districts.
Artillery attacks by Serb forces subsided after midnight. There were at-
tacks on the Stari Grad section and on the center. In the Dobrinja district
two people were killed and many wounded from shelling. UNPROFOR Commander in
Sarajevo, General Lewis MacKenzie, is still being detained at Lukavica
military base. The Croatian Radio correspondent in Sarajevo maintains
that General Lewis MacKenzie and other UNPROFOR soldiers are being held
to assure that the Lukavica military base is not attacked by local defense
forces.
The Health Minister of the self-proclaimed Serb Republic of Bosnia &
Herzegovina told reporters that peace in Sarajevo depends on the division of
the city along with the division of the rest of the republic. He stated it was
impossible for Muslims and Serbs to live together. He emphasized the division
of Sarajevo and Bosnia was in the interest of peace not territorial conquest???......
Friday: I just got off the phone with Mira (my friend in Dobrinja). She says
that the Serb bandits have entered the Airport suburb. Some people escaped to
Dobrinja which is just 1/4 mile away, some were taken away, some died. She
fears they are next.
Croatian Radio: The result of Serbian aggression in Bosnia-Herzegovina so far:
- ten civilians slaughtered today in the Airport district of Sarajevo by Chetnik
bandits, among them a 10-year old girl and an invalid elderly man.
- 7,200 persons killed (15% children),
- 25,000 persons wounded (50% permanently disabled, 20% children),
- 30,000 persons missing,
- 1,303,498 refugees (25% of total population),
- 200 physicians and medical personnel killed,
- 60% territory under control.
NPR: UN Secretary General suggests formation of an all-volunteer quick de-
ployment force as a peace-enforcing mechanism. Do we see writing on the wall?
Are we going to see military involvement in B-H? Please advocate material
support rather then the involvement of foreign troops.
CNN: Airport could open by Sunday?
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f anyone heard us last night, the whole night, in a place which used to be a
coffee pub, in the midst of the Sarajevo darkness and almost impossible silence,
they would say that we were either mad or the enemy. We sang the songs from our
youth, songs of Sarajevo and songs of love, remembering freedom and talking
about it. A gang of those who really are Sarajevo's rayah
(1), of those who were
the sons and daughters of Sarajevo and those who made this city what it will
forever remain, met in that improbable place at the very dusk: Ugljesa Uzelac,
the man who was everything in Sarajevo, the mayor, the first man of the Olympic
committee, president of "Bosna"
(2), a functionary and a real gentleman; a town
"moton" Mirza Delibasic
(3), a legend of the truly sports oriented Sarajevo;
Davorin Popovic, the singer of our youth, a personification of the city's rayah,
creator of "Zlatne Dunje", "Ti si u svemu naj, naj...;" Goran Milic
(4), the greatest out-of-town Sarajlija
(5), today one of the most famous owners of the city
"communes" in which domestic and foreign correspondents, politicians, actors,
city defenders, local people are eating, sleeping, and creating a new Sarajevo;
Kemal Monteno, whose songs were and remain a source from which the love for this
city is nurtured; Kemal Kursahic and Salko Hasanefendic, people who in this
occupied city, even in its occupied underground still make newspapers for
Sarajlije, and then fax them to tens of other occupied cities in B-H where they
are read in the windows of barber shops, bookstores or bakeries; Zdravko Grebo,
a man who, in addition to everything he did so far, moved into every Sarajlija's
night life by DJ-ing "Radio 99", a program simply incredibly courageous, honest
and filled to the bone with intelligence and patriotism with no unnecessary
sentimentalism.
hen here was this fellow who got a daughter the night before and we all now
plot how we should bring her to the city from the hospital, where to find food
for her, if only for the beginning. Afterwards, we are sure, everything is going
to be OK. Then Topa came, a specialist, who laughingly recited anecdotes with a
photo reporter whose boss from Belgrade still does not believe that the "green
berets"
(6) did not slaughter him as soon as he showed up here. Here was also John
Barns from the New York Times who smuggled a bottle of whiskey here and who
stubbornly maintains that Sarajevo is "the most beautiful thing that happened to
him in his life," and who after all says: "Here, people defeated their genes,
and I have to end my life right here ... "
n this room, in this darkness, disturbed only by Kemal Monteno's and Davorin
Popovic's guitar, our new future was being literally created. The women's
basketball national team for Barcelona was being put together. All the young
women, even those out of the country, confirmed their participation. Maybe that
will be a team for medals. Some men's teams are coming together too. A
proclamation was written, claiming how rayah wants to remain rayah and against
the papaks
(7) who have always been papaks and remain that way. Ugljesa took it
upon himself to, together with "Oslobodjenje"
(8), collect signatures for that
which will become a proclamation of the free city. Kemo, Davor and Milan
Stupar, using Goran's lyrics, composed a song for the "city rayah" with the
message for "Radovan
(9) from Pale
(10), Sarajevo is not your stable."
(11) We agreed
who will secure, with the first plane which arrives to Sarajevo, the satellite
equipment so that we can tell the world what is going on here. It is clear that
those planes will take with them people of Sarajevo, who will, by their name and
prestige, reach the hearts and minds of those who are honest and powerful.
Beber, Safet Zec, Delibasic, Grebo, Milic ... all will go. But not all at once,
we are still fighting battles here and need them.
t is not manly and fighter-like, but it is not a shame to admit — there were
tears present. It is not possible to conceal so much charge and emotions into
human souls, and not ever have any outlet. But nobody spoke this morning of
this little weakness, powerfully pushed by the strings of the guitar. This
morning these men of Sarajevo again were wherever there was a need to tighten up
some small screw in this huge mechanism made of love for Sarajevo.
ooking, before the dawn, at Kemal, Davorin, and Ugljesa, hugging each other and
singing, Goran Milic sort of complained: "They did it again, prepared this ugly,
touchy scenario with which they have been after me for months ... How can I now
explain to anyone that I saw a Muslim, a Croat, and a Serb, singing together.
Nobody will believe me."
he worst is — he is right. Even those three hugging men don't believe it for a
very simple reason — they were not that this night, whatever it is called. They
were the children of the city which "defeated its own genes," as John Barns
would say.
Footnotes:
(1) A term of Turkish origin denoting common people

(2) A darling local basketball team which won European team championships

(3) The legendary star of the Bosna basketball team

(4) A Belgrade TV journalist

(5) A person from Sarajevo

(6) Bosnian Defense forces

(7) Country people

(8) A local newspaper

(9) Radovan Karadzic, the leader of Bosnian Serbs

(10) Sarajevo's, mostly Serbian suburb

(11) This phrase rimes in the original

Number 1, Jun 13, 1992
Number 2, Jun 20, 1992
Number 3, Jun 27, 1992
Number 4, Jul 04, 1992
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Number 5, Jul 11, 1992
Number 6, Jul 18, 1992
Number 7, Jul 25, 1992
Number 8, Aug 1, 1992 |
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