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"DANAS" War
days in the children's village of Sremska Kamenica Sremska Kamenica has no bridges. It is a sad island of war which represents a real adventure for children. In peacetime it takes a few minutes to go there, now the journey lasts several hours. But the war, and the skeletons of destroyed bridges, the rubble of the television station, are easily forgotten in a little oasis of a Kamenica park, the Dr Milorad Pavlovic Children's Village, with thirteen houses among the green of ancient trees and about a hundred children from the ages of three to eighteen. "We're trying to keep the village looking nice, as though these were normal times, without war," explains the manager, Jelena Milojevic. "It's our way of struggle, preserving the health and lives of our children. We've also noticed something strange. Since the aggression began, the children here have had fewer injuries and illnesses." But the possible trauma to the children's souls cannot be prevented the manager and staff of the village. These injuries are invisible, caused by a higher force inaccessible to them, and they will reverberate in ten, maybe twenty, years from now. "Children are afraid of the sound of planes, explosions and everything that happens in and under the sky. We try to act preventively. We keep convincing them that children's villages have never been bombed in any war. However the children talk too much about the war," says Milojevic, adding that the village has not so far suffered any major structural damage from the attacks. Windows have been broken and debris from bombs has been found on the village's lawns, but no child has been hurt. In order to protect the lives of the children the staff renovated the cellars at the very beginning of the aggression. Now the cellars serve as dormitories, because the children are not allowed to sleep on the upper floors during air raid alerts. Unfortunately there has been only one night without an alert. Every house has a cellar of about sixteen square metres, in which twelve or thirteen children sleep each night. Two children per pillow. "When we're together we're not frightened," say Maja, Anica and other villagers. Until they fall asleep they spend the time playing group games. The cellars are aired and cleaned every day. Everybody tries to observe the rules of hygiene. Perhaps even more than in peacetime, although it is not easy at the moment. There are about 180 children at the Village (together with the children's institution from Zmaj Ognjeni Vuk). The financial situation is bad: the institutions founders are not regular payers. The traditional donors have come to the rescue, so things are somehow kept moving. Life here is made more difficult by the destruction of nearby bridges. Their supplies are delivered from Novi Sad. "We are grateful to the Hleb company and the Novi Sad Dairy," says Milojevic. "They deliver milk and bread by ferry every day. We're trying to provide food which doesn't need freezing. We've arranged with a company in Temerin to send us our meat orders in small and regular consignments." The greatest problem in the village, however, is water. Now, finally, there is industrial water for washing, while drinking water is taken from the fountain in the village itself. When the main water supply dried up, staff sent water samples from the fountain for laboratory examination and received confirmation that the water was fit to drink. There was no hot water, because there was no gas, but they heated water on stoves - when there was power. Thanks to the Nis Gas company the village now has gas stoves so the staff can cook soup and prepare food for the children. The company has also recently provided boilers. The staff in the village work 24-hour shifts because travel is now lengthy and complicated. There is an adult in each of the cellars at all times. The biggest problem is that the children are not attending school, which may affect their later development. "Therefore," says Jelena Milojevic, "we constantly urge them to be active, in sports, in painting, in music. But the older kids gradually become resigned. Before this they lived like their peers anywhere, with their families. Cafes, concerts, discos. Now they have to be in the village by 7.00 p.m. at the latest. They are becoming lazy because this situation is not normal. Although the older kids are allowed to go by ferry to concerts in Novi Sad, on the condition that they return to the village 4.00 p.m., some of them are not interested. "I haven't been to the city for a long time," says one thirteen-year-old girl from this, the country's most humane village. "To be fair, I didn't even like to go to the city in peacetime when the bridges were there. I used to stay at home with my family after school." AN APPEAL FOR HELP The Dr Milorad Pavlovic Children's Village in Sremska Kamenica needs assistance with food and hygiene supplies. Donors may call 461 871, 461 177 or 461 971. Donations may be made to account no. 45700-603-9-7337 at SDK in Novi Sad. HOW
FOREIGN JOURNALISTS LIVE IN BELGRADE "How could CBS get to Nis without an official permit! They were even allowed to send pictures from there! This makes no sense: what's this whole procedure for?" howled a producer from American NBC television the other day at the Yugoslav Army Press Centre. He was irritated by the fact that the competition had gone to the location without the army's permission and had sent pictures to its viewers, while his crew was unable to leave the city. The Army Press Centre is crowded all day. Hundreds of foreign journalists are always waiting for something - permits for filming, to visit locations, for interviews, approval to send material out. The big television stars have Yugoslav staff waiting for them, usually employed as translators or fixers in charge of all kinds of arrangements. Any material being sent out of Yugoslavia must first be approved by the local authorities. This may take some time and the deadlines are always short. In other words, reporting from the war involves 24 hours a day of constant stress. Katie Cronin, a reporter for Australian ABC, told us that every day was the same. The journalists go to press conferences, follow the Yugoslav media and use their own sources. Her crew has been twice to Novi Sad and has spoken to refugees in Belgrade. They have been waiting for days for a permit to go to Kosovo. Her ten-strong crew is staying at the Hyatt Hotel in Belgrade. Each has his own room and another two rooms serve as technical and editing facilities. One night at the Hyatt costs $150, breakfast is twenty dollars and lunch and dinner are forty dollars each. Sending a minute of television report, the daily minimum, costs about $1,500. It is expensive to keep crews in Yugoslavia, so managements expect an exclusive every day, which is difficult to get under these circumstances. The key person in each crew is the producer, who must decide what is interesting and what can be done about it. The ABC reporter says that they have requested interviews with all major local politicians, including President Milosevic, but have received no response. At the moment they are waiting to be allowed to speak to Foreign Minister Zivadin Jovanovic. Most correspondents from American and Western European media have a very high standard of living in Belgrade, staying at the Hyatt or the Intercontinental. A little lower in the hierarchy are journalists who are staying in hotels like the Moskva and at the bottom are their colleagues reporting for the Eastern European media who mostly live in small groups in rented flats in downtown Belgrade. Justin, one of the NBC journalists who came to Belgrade a few days ago, says he likes the city, but still could not "get himself together". This is the third NBC crew to arrive in the capital. A Yugoslav cameraman who works for an American network, who didn't want it known that he was speaking behind the back of his crew, told us that television crews from the USA did not have a very clear understanding about "all this". "They're not too interested, either. When something explodes somewhere they don't run to see it. They first ask if the CNN crew have gone to the location. That's their measure of exclusivity: if CNN doesn't have it then it didn't happen. If CNN had it then their chiefs will ask why they haven't filmed it. If a Martian were to arrive at the Yugoslav Army Press Centre, he might think he had landed in Athens. There is only slightly less Greek spoken here than Serbian and the Greek journalists, like the Serbs, join tables together, talk loudly, make loud phone calls and play social games. I asked them if they had seen any Chinese journalists. "No chance," grinned one of the Greeks. "Those little yellow people keep running around the city. No one knows where they are or what they do. But they're always somewhere out on the ground. That's their mentality: they can't just sit here if there's no particular job to be done. They're out taking opinion polls on the street." BEATEN FOR SPEAKING ENGLISH Greek journalists claim to like Belgrade a great deal. Some of them have been here for years, while many more arrived when the bombing began. "People here are great, and they're mostly well-disposed to Greeks," one of them told us. "However, one of our colleagues who is a correspondent for the Greek newspaper Nova Makedonija was beaten up by drunken thugs in Skadarlija." "I was going down Skadarlija in the middle of the night, with no one around," the journalist said. "My mobile phone rang, I answered it and went on speaking in English. Suddenly some boys jumped me from the dark. They began to beat me and took my phone." However, he added, he was sure this was an isolated incident and didn't reflect the opinion of the general public. |