| In 1992 a group of young people barricaded themselves in the Hungarian Cultural
Center in a small village of Tresnjevac (Oromhegyes) in Northern Serbia refusing
to be drafted for the war Serbia waged against Croatia and Bosnia. They declared
independence and sovereignty. They assumed a name Zitser
Spiritual Republic (Zitser is a term used in a game of pool there, when you
get a ball in the pocket in one clean shot). Their anthem was Ravel's Bolero and
their coat of arms became a Pizza pie surrounded with three billiard balls. War
Resisters League from Hungary (Alba Kor) helped spread the word using Internet.
In the effort for them to be able to keep in touch they needed a computer with
modem. A New York based group of artists and activists, Neither East Nor West
organized a benefit rock concert in CBGB's in November 1993 to raise funds for
that purpose. New Yorker later wrote about the event. Today ZSR is on-line:ZSR. |
|
"The media
[in former Yugoslavia] were used
to turn people against each other," Eric Bachman, sysop of Zamir Transnational
Net that connects anti-war activists in former Yugoslavia, told Germany's Die Zeit
newspaper. "We are building up a medium that brings people together." Now independent magazines like Arkzin (Croatia) and Vreme
(Serbia) publish their electronic editions on ZTN and are being read by the "other
side". In fact, many people read ZTN-produced information, the U.S. government
included. Through ZaMir, Bosnian refugees in San Francisco have e-mailed
contacts back home and traced lost relatives. Some American entrepreneurs once
sent a query asking whether raspberries were still being planted in former
Yugoslavia because they wanted to get back into business. And a Sarajevan who
pleaded, ``Please send Doom,'' was bombarded with software from around the
world. |
