by Lorenzo Strik Lievers

ABSTRACT: "The testimony of radical senator Lorenzo Strik Lievers who, together with a "nonviolent commando", reached the line of the fightings between Serbs and Croats".

(IL GIORNALE, Sunday 5 January 1992)

I have returned to Milan from Osijek after seven days at the front in Croatia with the other friends of the Radical Party: Marco Pannella, Roberto Cicciomessere, Sandro Tessari Olivier Dupuis, Sandro Ottoni, Renato Fiorelli and Josip Pinesic. The former federal army bid us its farewell on the night before our departure, between 2 and 3 January, with a non-stop bombing of mortars and cannons on the centre of Osijek. A cascade of bombs fell on the square of town hall, where our hotel was, the Central Hotel. Two bombs - one containing napalm - hit the house next to our hotel, destroying it completely. According to the Croatian authorities, there was the precise intention of hitting the hotel where we were staying.

But this is exactly why we were in Osijek, which, after Dubrovnik and Vukovar, has become the concrete symbol of the tragedy which is taking place in Croatia, a few kilometres from the Italian borders. In the face of a patent aggression, as nonviolents - the nonviolent person is not neutral between the aggressor and the victim, he takes a stance - we meant to take part in the defence of the city, sharing the situation and the dangers of its inhabitants and of its defenders without weapons, if anything with the idea of foreshadowing new "international brigades" of nonviolence, and in the spirit of an appeal and of a dialogue with the Serbian military, who are forced to murder and be murdered.

Departure on 27 December, from Trieste. In Zagreb, cordial meetings with President Tomasz - a member of the Radical Party like several other Croatian ministers and MPs, including Gregoric, Prime Minister, Stipe Mesic, former President of Yugoslavia - and with other authorities. The Chief of Staff of the Croatian army illustrates the difficult military situation of his unprepared forces versus opponents who have access to all the means of the former Yugoslav army. He describes the work that is being done to control the bands that formed themselves during the first stage of the war and integrate them in the discipline of the regular forces.

We arrive in Osijek, the most advanced line of the front, on 30 December. The atmosphere is eerie: rubble and disfigured facades everywhere, the streets with few wary passersby - people know a grenade could fall from one moment to the other - the doors of the houses protected by sacks of sand and stones. Yet in the central square, with the background of the bombed cathedral, there are two Christmas trees, a "normal" one, with lights that go on and off, and one decorated with objects of war. Hanging from the branches are splinters of shells, broken weapons, helmets. Its branches are obviously bare, almost to symbolize the passage of the war, which burns and destroys everything, even the fundamental symbols of nature.

Under the square a large shelter, with shops, a press centre, offices. This is where the population gathers, this is where many spend their days. Later on, as we will see, many spend a few hours of an inevitably "normal" life in the streets and at home. This is how people live and die in Osijek, day after day. And perhaps this effort of dangerous abnormality - suffered with a courage which impresses you at all moments - is the way in which ordinary people show their intention of resisting and affirming their reasons and their rights.

We are not here on a visit. We immediately "assimilate" ourselves into the defence structures. Without weapons, of course. But, in order to better testimony the presence of this "band of jailbirds for conscientious objection and antimilitarism", as Pannella calls as and as we really are, two of us are wearing the Croatian uniform: Pannella himself and Dupuis (with a record of eleven months in prison in Belgium for having refused to wear a uniform).

We spend New Year's Eve - from eleven to three - in the front line trenches, together with the Croatian soldiers. The trenches are a few kilometres, at times even a few hundred meters, from the centre of Osijek: the city itself is on the fighting line, surrounded on three sides by the federals and the guerrillas (the ones who shoot with greater fury). Under constant fire, the city is almost deserted: of the city's 120.000 inhabitants now there are just over 30.000. The fire of the guerrillas often claims victims: during this long siege, there have been 650 victims and 3.500 injured, over half of which are civilians. On the other hand, the soldiers who garrison the trenches are mostly citizens of Osijek in uniform. The others, who have staid home, do so with the spirit of a presidium which intends to keep its position to the end.

The impression we receive at the front is odd and distressing: it is as if we were in World War I, with trenches dug in the mud, where soldiers torment themselves as they wait to see where the next grenade will land. But in fact the atmosphere in the centre of Osijek is identical. It is a constant uncertainty. The whole of New Year's Eve is marked by "fireworks" which the Serbs create with their shells, but accompanied by real fire, artillery fire. When I comment on the fire, which I naively consider a preparation to an offensive, the officer who is accompanying us says "tonight it's dead calm". I ask a soldier "Will you resist?", and I'm thinking of the more than three hundred Serbian tanks, which are supposedly deployed around Osijek, whereas the Croats have no heavy weapons. He says "we are united and determined, because we are defending our homes". Let us hope for the better. On the last evening, we gather a group of citizens of Osijek who are members or sympathizers of the Radical Party. The result is a

n appeal, signed by us and them, for which we are collecting other adhesions in town, urging the Europeans to come and have a look. During the night we get to have a look ourselves: at about two o'clock a constant cannon bombing starts. We try to guess whether the fire is coming closer to our hotel-refuge. Then the explosions make the windows shake and lastly the square is bombed. The bombing goes on all night and the following morning, with varying intensity.

As we leave according to our schedule, bombs continue to fall on the city, on the remaining inhabitants, who must endure this ordeal as they wait for the world to stop this senseless tragedy, before it's too late.

Lorenzo Strik Lievers