wfn.org | Peace builders work for reconciliation in Croatia

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Note #6147 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

9-August-2000
00284

Peace builders work for reconciliation in Croatia

PC(USA) missionaries help keep the dream of peace alive

by Evan Silverstein

DALJ, Croatia  -- Trust does not come easily these days in Croatia. 
	Five years after a peace treaty officially ended the Croatian-Serbian war,
the combatants are not at peace. Talk of reconciliation draws only scorn and
ridicule from the region's Croat and Serb residents, who vividly remember
recent fighting.
	"They look at you like you're crazy," said Michelle Kurtz, a Presbyterian
Church (U.S.A.) mission co-worker serving in Croatia with her husband, the
Rev. Steve Kurtz. "They think you must be a ‘flower child,' if you talk
about peace."
	Yet there is hope, partly because of the Peace and Community Building
Project of the Center for Peace, Nonviolence and Human Rights, which is
taking a stand against the prevailing tides of hatred in the southeastern
European country.
	Michelle Kurtz serves as a consultant to the center, which has a network of
six field offices scattered around eastern Croatia. She and her husband work
through the Reformed Christian Church in Croatia, a PC(USA) partner.
	The Center for Peace is a non-governmental, non-partisan and non-profit
citizens' association that works for peace, human rights and freedom.
	Seventy-eight percent of the residents of the republic are Croatian and 12
percent are Serbian. The remaining 10 percent is divided among several other
ethnic groups.
	"The biggest problem with peace work is that you can't see the difference
from one day to another," said Milena Dragisic, a Croatian peace worker in
the Dalj field office of the Center for Peace. "It is a long-, long-term
process. Especially in this area, where everything is so touchy for the
moment, insecure. Even the economic situation is insecure, and you don't
have money to pay for electricity."
	The peace center's programs focus on creative methods of problem-solving
and conflict resolution, on individual, group and political levels. The
center was founded in May 1992 by a group of intellectuals -- doctors,
teachers, lawyers and economists -- who wanted to preserve civil order
despite the ethnic, religious, political and ideological divisions imposed
by the war.
	The Croatian-Serbian war was fought between 1991 and 1995 as the
non-Serbian peoples in the former Yugoslavia demanded ethnic autonomy just
as Serbian nationalism was growing in Belgrade.
	Michelle Kurtz believes that the path to reconciliation is a rocky road
that will eventually lead to a better place.
	"We wouldn't appreciate the flower unless we had gone through the time of
all the destruction and ugliness," she said. "So now Adam and Eve, their
eyes are closed, and it's with a bitter sweetness because they appreciate
the vision of paradise."
	In 1998, field offices were added in war-torn parts of eastern Croatia --
Dalj, Tenja, Beli Manastir, Bilje and Okucani -- to offer legal aid and
monitor human rights. They employ 28 trained peace workers and activists who
collaborate with religious communities, priests and lay people.
	 Nebojsa Uglik, who also works in the Dalj field office, which is about 20
miles east of Osijek, served during the war in a Serb artillery unit. Now,
instead of preparing artillery shells, he spends his time fighting for
reconciliation between Serbs and Croats. He hopes the peace center and its
various extensions will help improve the climate between Croat and Serb
residents. Ironically, the Dalj office occupies space in a building where
Yugoslavian soldiers interrogated Croatian prisoners during the war.
	"I think the situation is going to get better," he said, "and each day it
is getting better. I can understand the bitter feelings of the people who
have lost somebody ... and their attitude has not overcome those things. I
don't try to open the wounds if they don't want or to change their attitude.
But I think things will continue getting better."
	The center has more than 100 members and more than 150 volunteers who help
with specific projects. Its activities are public and open to all,
regardless of ethnic or religious background.
	"We strongly believe that the word is the most important thing," said
Dragisic, who was so revolted by violence that during the war she fled to
Switzerland. "Words can calm everything down. It is not necessary for there
to be violence."
	The need for the project is clear, in a part of Europe where there is
little sense of civil order. Unemployment is high in Osijek, one of
Croatia's chief cities, and astronomical everywhere else. Civil war could
break out any time in nearby Montenegro. Human-rights violations appear to
be increasing across the border in Voivodina. Even after losing four wars,
Slobodan Milosovic is still dictator in neighboring Serbia.
	The activities of the Center for Peace fall into three main fields --
education, human rights and peacemaking.
	Its projects are developed and implemented by teams that include local and
international volunteers. The projects are focused on the Osijek area,
Eastern Slavonia, Western Slavonia and the Baranja region.
	The Rev. Duncan Hanson, the PC(USA)'s coordinator for Europe, who recently
visited Presbyterian and Reformed workers in central and southern Europe,
said he will seek support for the center's Peace Building Project from
PC(USA) congregations.
	 "After the misuse of religion by all sides to justify war in former
Yugoslavia, the Peace Building Project is a way for Christians and other
believers to show genuine concern for people who have been traumatized by
the fighting," Hanson said.
	From the start, the center has had the support of various European peace
associations and of many European and American intellectuals. Its policies
promote cooperation with similar initiatives, governments and institutions
on local, regional, national and international levels.
	"We are trying to help them think about what is inside them and the good
they can do for themselves and for others," said Dragisic. "But people are
not self-aware, and that is the biggest problem."

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