More recently: In October this year there
was a Helsinki
Citizens Assembly meeting in Tuzla (Bosnia). One afternoon U.S. envoy to
Croatia, Peter Galbraith, gave an impromptu session. New York based HCA
activist, Dorie Wilsnack, attended, and here is her recollection of the event: "He
was just like US foreign policy: friendly and liberal on the surface, but
underneath, evasive and arrogant and completely wrapped up in his own
self-interest. Some of his statements were outright lies (The US played no role in
helping the Croatians in Operation Storm) and some were so offensive that I had
to write them all down. For example, one woman from Danish Parliament asked
him who in the Dayton meeting would be representing the perspective of a
multi-ethnic Bosnia: Milosevic? Tudjman? Izetbegovic? His answer: "The
Americans will. Because we are the most multi-ethnic country in the world and
we understand the importance of this." Another quote: "All Western democracies
treat their citizens equally." That one got a ripple of laughter from the
audience."
All this would not be possible without ZaMir Transnational Net and the network
of anti-war activists on that net. Fifty years of "Yugoslav
peace" was enforced on the people by the threat of imprisonment for even the
faintest sign of nationalism. I had a friend who in 1986 was confined to three
years in a maximum security prison for having hung a picture on his living room
wall of what would in 1990 become the Croatian state flag. This kind of "peace" had to vanish once communism
lost the stamina to enforce it. And there was little or no political will among the
Party nomenclature to change the old ways.
