Los Angeles Times me je intervjusiao da stavim svoju životnu priču u kontekst događaja koji su 1999 obuhvatili našu zemlju. U to vrijeme, te novine su kažu imale malo više od 1.5 miliona čitatelja u nedeljnom izdanju. Drago mi je da su mene odabrali da intervjuišu jer u to vrijeme je bilo teško doći do glasa po američkim novinama. Stavili su samo dio priče koju sam im ispričao – za dio o El Šatu i sta su mi tada saveznici značili nije valjda bilo mjesta.
Ovo je na Engleskom napisano kao što vidite i to sam iskopirao iz Los Anđeles Tajmsa.
1,000 Stage Antiwar Protest in L.A.
Crisis in Yugoslavia
Reaction: The demonstrators, mostly Serbian Americans, demand an end to the assaults on their ancestral land.
March 28, 1999|PATRICK J. McDONNELL | TIMES STAFF WRITER
Nikola Cuk said he is tired of running because he is a Serb. When he was a youth, he and his family escaped Nazi occupiers. Five years ago, he said, he fled Croatian soldiers in his native Krajina, now part of Croatia.
Now, Cuk said he wants to be with his wife and family in the Yugoslav republic of Serbia, never mind that U.S. bombs and missiles are falling there and that people are scurrying to take shelter in basements and fearing for their lives.
“Can someone please open up the border so I can go home and die with my people?” Cuk, 62, asked as tears welled in his eyes. “I’m ashamed that people are dying over there and I’m walking in sunny Southern California.”
The Serbian visitor’s anguish was shared by many among the estimated 1,000 protesters, mostly Serbian Americans, who staged a boisterous but peaceful antiwar demonstration Saturday outside the Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles. Even as NATO was staging a fourth day of fierce air raids on Yugoslavia, the protesters demanded an end to attacks on their ancestral land.
Their viewpoint is one diametrically at odds with the way the current conflict has been depicted in the U.S. and Western media. The protesters see the Serbs as the victims of international aggression, not as the principal proponents of atrocities in the Serbian province of Kosovo and in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Many marchers hoisted the traditional Serbian flag–red, blue and white with a double-headed eagle and golden crown. They chanted at passing motorists, many of whom honked their horns in support.
Handwritten placards compared the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to Nazi Germany and excoriated President Clinton as the next Hitler. Protesters dismissed NATO’s avowed humanitarian mission, contending that territorial expansion or other sinister motives are at play.
“Bombing Serbs Is the Worst Mistake, Bill,” read one sign.
Many in the crowd worried about the fate of relatives in Yugoslavia.
“They talk about precision bombing, but I have heard that a bomb fell in the middle of my city,” said Don Radovich, an aerospace engineer from Long Beach who has lived in the United States for 37 years.
Blue balloons declared that the disputed province of Kosovo is Serbia’s “Jerusalem” and will never be given away. Just about everyone seemed to want to cite the historic Battle of Kosovo in 1389, when Serbian Christians were defeated by a Turkish Muslim force, thus beginning centuries of Ottoman domination.
Leave A Comment