Global Voices » Croatia

Balkans: Online Platform Tracks Reports From Areas Hit by Record Snowfall

Danica Radisic — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 01:12:22 +0000

Since last week, the Balkans have been hit by massive snow storms, the likes of which have not been seen in over a decade, if not longer. After an unusually long period of nearly no real signs of a typical Balkan winter, last week brought what seems to be non-stop snowfall throughout the region, including the seaside areas around the Adriatic that seldom get any snow.

Men shoveling snow from a street in Sarajevo. Record snowfall has paralyzed transportation in the Bosnian capital, where a state of emergency has now been declared. Photo by Sulejman Omerbasic, copyright © Demotix (5/02/12).

Serbia's national television network, RTS, and other media reported on Friday 3 February, 2012, that a state of emergency has been declared by the government, while citizens have been reporting critical situations throughout the country and that municipal services have been doing a poor job of tackling the snowfall in many urban areas.

In an article titled “Serbia Blocked by Snow, State of Emergency in 27 Municipalities, Recommendation to Call Off School Attendance” [sr], the Head of the State of Emergency Sector of the Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs, Predrag Maric, is reported to have stated on Friday:

27 municipalities in Serbia have declared a state of emergency due to heavy snowfall. Maric has told Beta news agency that the most difficult situations are in Sjenica, Ivanjica, Prijepolje, Crna Trava and Surdulica, where the height of snow has reached approximately 2 meters. According to him, power supply is “relatively good,” outages are being fixed quickly and there have been no long power outages.

Maric also announced the possibility of declaring a full state of emergency nationwide, which the Government did on Sunday evening, cancelling school throughout Serbia at least until Friday, February 10, among other things.

Several actions have been organized by the online community in Serbia and the region to fend off the snow and to attempt to regain a functional state in urban areas at least, such as a #lopataup (”#shovelup”), organized by one online community leader, Zoran Torbica, and other local Twitter users.

In the meantime, Al Jazeera Balkans, the recently established regional office of Al Jazeera news network in the region, has joined forces with the team from Ushahidi to set up a platform for tracking verified information on everything from road blocks, power outages to other critical points and information in the entire region.

Ushahidi is an open-source platform for information collection, visualization and interactive mapping, which was also used in Serbia just after the earthquake in Kraljevo in November 2010 to map and track damage in the area.

Haris Alisic, who heads the New Media team for Al Jazeera Balkans, launched the platform on Sunday evening, and many members of the online community, including some of the region's GV authors, have joined the Al Jazeera-Ushahidi team in curating, tracking and verifying reports from the region.

The adapted Ushahidi platform can be located on Al Jazeera's official site, while reports can be sent in by anyone using the following channels:

- via SMS to +387644218661
- via Twitter by using the hashtags #kolaps #sneg #snijeg #lopataup #iskljucenje
- via email to oluja2012@aljazeera.net
- or by entering information directly into the form on the”pošaljite izvještaj” tab on the Al Jazeera page

If you would like to volunteer your time to help map critical areas and are familiar with using online tools, please contact the author of this article, or Haris Alisic via Twitter, or leave a comment here on Global Voices, and we will contact you for more information on what you can do to help. We also ask that you all begin reporting from your area on Twitter and using the above-mentioned hashtags on Twitter, which are automatically collected by the platform and then reviewed and verified by Al Jazeera and volunteers.

CEE: “Spotted by Locals”

Veronica Khokhlova — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 01:08:32 +0000

Spotted by Locals: Experience cities like a local features a few dozen locations, including CEE cities of Belgrade, Bucharest, Budapest, Krakow, Ljubljana, Prague, Riga, Sofia, Tallinn, Vilnius, Warsaw, and Zagreb. A random sample post from Zagreb, Croatia: Hrelić Flea Market – The Aleph of Zagreb; from Bucharest, Romania: The Haunted House – Armenian Neighbourhood; from Sofia, Bulgaria: Nissim – A True Old-School Bookstore.

Macedonia: Ajvar, Glorified

Filip Stojanovski — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 09:03:54 +0000

Jovana Tozija wrote lovingly about making ajvar, a traditional favorite winter provision in Macedonia and some other post-Ottoman countries.

Macedonia: Veles Says “No” to Lead Poisoning, Government Remains Ambiguous

Filip Stojanovski — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 01:12:54 +0000

After the massive protest against restarting of the lead smelting factory in the city of Veles, the citizens feel cheated by the declarative support shown by the politicians from the ruling parties, and demand clear answers from PM Nikola Gruevski on whether the poisoning will continue.

The protests announced in the previous Global Voices article took place on November 9, 2011. Estimates of the number of the protest participants range from 10,000 to over 15,000 [hr], a huge turnout for this community of less than 44,000 inhabitants.

Samoglaska and Vancho Dzambaski published Creative Commons-licensed photo galleries from the event:

Protest march through Veles streets. Photo by Samoglaska (CC-BY).

People gathering on Veles square. Photo by Vancho Dzambaski (CC-BY-NC-SA).

Twitter tags #Veles or #Велес are still in use, and the seasoned local blogger Jovan Petrov provided comprehensive coverage of the protest:

…the families, school children and elders joined forces. Being there I saw people from all backgrounds - the non-governmental sector, doctors, blue collar workers, politicians including former and current mayors and members of the parliement and local council, mothers and daughters, from all ranges of age, social and ethnic background. They protested in unison, NO RESTART! for the smelting factory.

I was never good at guessing numbers, but the group of NGO's called “Green coalition” have managed to gather more participants than any party on a political rally even when they want to boast with numbers carrying people from other cities to enrich the scenery. Some guesses were in the range of 10.000 participants.

The organization was quite good, the people were loud but very polite, the whole process finished without any recorded incident. The protest was lead by an excavator, symbolic image of the vision of the citizens - to dig up the old shadow factory and plant the perimeter with trees in order to decontaminate the land from cancerogens and active chemicals that modify the DNA of the unborn children.

The message was clear and far-reaching - NO MORE POISONING! Now, the state should show its support for the locals not only by speeches and through columnists, but by clear actions. And the solution is simple - rejecting the application of the investor to restart the factory - which everyone is sure that must be done based on strict following of the environmental legislation. Even the investor has admitted that they will pollute in their environmental impact study submitted to the Ministry of environment of Republic of Macedonia (image of the table follows, and remember the fact - the author of this document is the investor itself):

Table on environmental impact from the study with added explanations in English.

After this night - it should be clear to all, whoever tries to do more harm to the citizens of Veles will be punished severely.

A short documentary about the protest [mk] is available on YouTube:

And while the area's politicians and religious leaders turned out in force for the photo-op, they expressed declarative and noncommittal support for the Veles' cause. However, not all protest supporters received media attention, and were not credited at the event.

Vladimir Milchin, the executive director of the Foundation Open Society Institute, wrote [mk] on his Facebook profile:

Yes, members of GEM (Citizens for European Macedonia) were at the protest. And the Soros' foundation supported the NGOs that organized it by supplying funds for 2,000 vests. Just like it supported them in the long bygone year of 2003 with a USD 6,100 grant for the first analysis that proved presence of the toxic materials in the hair of 80 local children.

Dimce Velev, one of the organizers, added a comment:

A reason for this is that road to the truth around the environmental exodus started with FOSM support at the point when the smelter was a taboo topic!

Milchin concluded:

And now some people want to use the protest to build their careers.

GEM activists in the crowd during the Veles protest. Photo by Vancho Dzambaski (CC-BY-NC-SA).

Several Twitter users shared a screen capture of a statement [mk] by former Mayor, Ace Kocevski, published on his Facebook profile [mk]:

Citizens of Veles expressed their position against restarting of the smelting factory with dignity. But statements of the representatives of the Ministry of the Environment indicate that the appeal has not been taken seriously.
Self-censorship of the speakers at the protest and pointing fingers at Metrudhem only did not produce the expected results.
The goal is clear: Veles without a smelter.
The battle for healthy living environment in Veles must continue in more organized, more realistic manner, without improvisations, through the institutions of the system and if needed outside of them.
The municipality must urgently change the General Urban Plan and enact an Detailed Urban Plan to change the zoning of the area into light nonpolluting industry only.
The court process of Veles and the Green Coalition against Republic of Macedonia must continue. EUR 50,000 must be found for judicial analysis of the impact of pollution over the health of the citizens, and the level of intoxication of the soil and waters.
Ask the [Macedonian Bar Association] for pro bono representation.
The pressure must be directed towards the Ministry of the Environment and the Government - they must stand on the side of the people of Veles, to correct the errors of decade-long pollution and selling of the smelter, and to prevent its restart. They must provide funds from the state budget and from international donors to solve the problem of the slag landfill, and to clean the poisoned soil.

In the days after the protest, organizers and participants started expressing concern via the official Facebook group. Nenad Kocic shared the above video and asked the following questions:

1. Is Veles in Macedonia?
2. Does this state have a Government?
3. Does the Government work for the people or not?

After the Minister of the Environment failed to come to the protest and stated [mk] that it was too early to say that the request for license by the factory owners would be denied, the Green Coalition of NGOs asked to hear the truth in person from the “big boss” - requesting a meeting with PM Gruevski, who keeps maintaining detached, eery silence on the matter.

The news [mk], that the PR agency Republika will commence an advertising campaign on behalf of investor, has been taken as a clear sign of support for the investor by the government. During the past few years, this company has been the dominant implementer of numerous advertising campaigns that funneled millions of Euros from the state budget to pro-government media and other beneficiaries (in a setup compared [mk] to the collusion of the Croatian ruling party and Fimi Media).

Veles protester holding a cartoon. Photo by Samoglaska (CC-BY).

In other news: another Macedonian city has been subjected to a similar environmental disaster [mk], apparently due to criminal negligence. On Friday, Nov. 11, Kriva Palanka received an influx of poisonous slag full of lead, arsenic, zinc, cadmium and other toxic materials from the upriver mine Toranica.

Croatia: Relations With the EU

Veronica Khokhlova — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 01:00:13 +0000

Croatia Online examines some of the past and present hopes and concerns related to Croatia's plans to join the EU in July 2013.

Croatia: Alcatraz of Yugoslavia

Vilhelm Konnander — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 10:12:42 +0000

Bill Kralovec of Bill's Blog recounts the story of the Adriatic prison island of Goli otok - the Alcatraz of Yugoslavia - where Yugoslavia held its political prisoners during the reign of Tito.

Croatia: Court Forbids Homophobic Priest From Blogging

Marietta Le — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 20:49:51 +0000

Serbia Insajd, a Hungarian blog about South-Eastern Europe, reports [hu] that the Rijeka Court has banned Franjo Jurčević, a Kastav-based Catholic priest, from writing homophobic blog posts [Jurčević's blog, hr: http://zupnik.blog.hr/]. The court has also ordered Jurčević to publish the court decision in two national dailies at his own expense.

The Balkans: Homophobia

Veronica Khokhlova — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 12:36:01 +0000

Alan Jakšić of Balkan Anarchist writes about LGBT and homophobia in Serbia, Croatia and elsewhere in the Balkans.

Croatia: The Largest “Welcome” in the World

Veronica Khokhlova — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 12:44:36 +0000

Benita Hussain of Matador Network interviews Daniel Lacko, “a sponsored outdoor adventurer writing the largest ‘WELCOME' in the world while exploring the Croatian coastline”; Lacko's travel blog is here.

Macedonia: Euphoria After Basketball Victory Over Greece

Filip Stojanovski — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 22:44:39 +0000

Celebrations erupted among Macedonians worldwide after the national team beat Greece at the European Basketball Championship of 2011 - EuroBasket 2011 in Lithuania - the first such victory ever in the history of international sport.

The victory for the Macedonian national team with 72:58 at EuroBasket 2011 was a big surprise, since the Greek national team “is considered among the world's top basketball powers; they were runners-up in the 2006 FIBA World Championship and they have won the European Championship twice, in 1987 and 2005,” according to Wikipedia.

Soon after the game ended early Satuday evening, the jubilant flag-waving fans filled the public spaces of Macedonian cities and towns. Sport!Denes (Sport!Today) published a photo gallery [mk] from the main square in Skopje.

A Croatian media outlet 24 sata (24 hours) reported [hr] immediately after the match:

The story of the day is the Macedonian win over their southern neighbors, whose [political pressure] forces them to use the designation “Former Yugoslav Republic of” in front of their name. Even though the players do not want to talk politics, they claim this is the dearest victory of their careers.

- “It's crazy now in Skopje and the whole Macedonia, everybody goes to the main square to celebrate this” - Todor Gečevski said, while Pero Antić added:

- “We shall celebrate Independence Day on September 8, and they might build another monument for us on account of this.”

The best player of the game for Macedonia was African-American Bo McCalleb. Specialized basketball blog NBA Macedonia declared [mk] that he's “The Greatest Macedonian.” *

A screenshot from MakNBA blog featuring Bo McCalleb.

Twitter (the main hashtag: #makbasket) and Facebook buzzed with comments. Many Macedonian social media users expressed joy with dignity, while others used triumphant nationalist “in your face, Greece” rhetoric.

Right after the game, Azder wrote [mk]:

#makbasket should be celebrated with going to a town square. Please suggest a square with space for people, instead of statues.

Davorvori9, who changed his profile photo to one with Bo McCalleb, wrote [mk] a few hours later:

I can't remember when I was so euphoric and happy, possibly never. Thank you for this, guys! #makbasket

Roberto Belicanec wrote on Facebook (reprinted with permission):

YEAAH ! We won! Hm - let me explain something to you. Five athletes won over five other athletes while you where turning beer into the piss. - Bill Maher!
But still, this is quite nice :)

And Ivica Anteski retorted (also reprinted with permission):

Our diplomacy will be as strong when we take a Black person for Minister of Foreign Affairs :)

Cchevymk proposed [mk] a new basketball-inspired country car sticker, using [mk] clipart by Rosie Piter, and DzikiKikiriki refered [mk] to the first Greek reactions, linking to an article in E Kathimerini:

Well now it is not our fault that the Greek Government did not have money to send Greek fans to Lithuania…

Border blockade

The next morning, a group of several dozens angry Greek citizens, who allegedly came on several buses, blocked the main border pass towards Macedonia. Reports [mk] by PlusInfo.mk portal claimed the mob consisted of nationalists (according to the signs they displayed), including neo-Nazis or skinheads.

The Greek police redirected Macedonian travelers to other border crossings for a few hours to prevent confrontations, and the crossing was unblocked [mk] without additional incidents.

Victory over Finland, too

During the afternoon, Macedonia also won the game with Finland, and darko_avr refered to an old internet joke based on famous advertisement (”Nokia - Connecting People”) and a favorite Balkan spirit when he tweeted:

Rakia 72 - Nokia 70

Karakash_MakNBA commented [mk] on this much harder won game:

Either due to fatigue, or due to physical or emotional effect of yesterday's victory, or maybe due to getting wasted last night (who knows), the Macedonian team had a hard time with Finland. Even though they are not as weak and naive a team, as everybody thought so before the match. Especially if they start a good shooting series, they are no joke.

Teams that are hard to define and and play fast basketball, without much boloney, are the hardest opponents.

As both Greece and Finland are EU members, Parmakovski joked [mk]:

After today's blockade of [Evzoni], I'm afraid if we win the championship, EU could forever block us from the [Schengen Area]…

This victory, alongside the previous unexpected win over Croatia and continued good showings could result in participation at least in the quarter-finals, according to the analysеs (1, 2) [mk] by angelov480048.

Kuzevski also provided [mk] some applied analysis:

Let's all jointly support Greece and Croatia, since if they win their next games Macedonia would get 4 points in the next group…

Sead93 concured [mk]:

We survived the Hangover Game well enough, we should all most patriotically root for Greece (because it suits our score in the tournament)…

In conclusion MarjanIvanovski informed [mk] about a unquestionably positive consequence, regardless of nationality:

The neighborhood kids immediately gathered to play some basketball :)). There's no better advertisement and greater motivation than an achieved result…

* Note:

Success of multi-ethnic Macedonian national team runs contrary to the ideology of ethnic nationalism, and the irony seems lost on the Macedonian nationalists, who wholeheartedly partake in the celebrations. Like their other Balkans brothers-in-hate, they often use slogans such as “clean Macedonia,” and value “purity” of assumed genetic lineages. Even though the mainstream Macedonian nationalism is not explicitly racist in the color-of-skin sort of way, some of its propagators lean toward white supremacy, like in the film about God's message to Macedonians [mk] by Niche Dimovski, repeatedly aired on the state TV after the current regime took power. It includes claims that prehistoric Macedonians are progenitors of the “White Race”:

[Voice of God:] “I inhabited your Mother Earth with three races: the White - Makedonoids, the Yellow - Mongoloids, and the Black - Negrids. The rest are all mulattoes. I started the White race from you, the Macedonians, descendants of Macedon, and from you all began, till the Japanese Sea.”

Other nationalist products often refer to a genetics study about “Sub-Saharan” (i.e. recent African) origins of modern Greeks to “prove” that Macedonians are older and more indigenous people.

Still, examples of racial violence have been rare in the recent Macedonian history, possibly because not too many dark-skinned people immigrate to Macedonia on account of its depressed economy. There have been football incidents of racial abuse, though, and a chant mentions “Goce's race.” Most regular citizens would say [mk] that “there's no racism in Macedonia.”

Croatia: Top 5 Holiday Islands (+5 More)

Veronica Khokhlova — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 23:35:49 +0000

Croatia Travel Blog links to an article about “Croatia's top five holiday islands,” which appeared in The Guardian earlier this week, and adds five more islands to this list.

Croatia, Serbia: A Flag of Friendship

Sinisa Boljanovic — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 22:22:05 +0000

Just a few weeks after Croatia officially marked the 16th aniversory of the military operation “Oluja” (the Storm), when more than 200,000 ethnic Serbs were expelled from their century-old homes, two young adults from Croatia and Serbia created a mixed Serbo-Croatian flag, as a gesture of reconciliation between the two countries.

Anja Blazevic and Stefan Guzvica, who are taking part in a regional art camp in Gvozd, Croatia, where the flag has recently been created, explained [hr] to Vecernji.hr, a popular newspaper in Croatia, their motivation to do it:

We’ve had enough conflicts based on nationalism […] permanently evoking the past bothers us, while no one is thinking about the future. We feel frustration because of that, and so we decided to make an effort in order to build, at least symbolically, more friendly relationships between the two countries.

We have created the flag in order to call our peoples to love and tolerance. We are aware that the flag will provoke a lot of reactions and polemics, but it is so desirable in democratic societies. We have made a few copies of the flag. One of them is fluttering in our camp in Gvozd, one copy will be taken to Serbia and others have been given to our friends.

More than 850 readers have commented on the article. Below is a selection of some of these comments.

pLoto* wrote:

Behind that are NGOs financed from abroad aiming at some new community to Croats’ disadvantage. But, after two former Yugoslavias that were a failure in blood, they who are working on it did not learn anything. I have nothing to do with Serbs, I’ve never been to Serbia… and I don’t want someone uniting me with them.

Jolly-Roger wrote:

The first step is that Serbs recognize Croatia, especially those who have lived in Croatia for a long time.

The second step is that they ask for forgiveness for all the crimes that they commited in Croatia, not only during the last war.

The third step is that all of them are moved out of Croatia.

Then we can have good relations, and the flag of Croatia will not be changed. We were fighting and dying for it.

cro1com wrote:

[…] We don’t need to be friendly people at all. We have to be very cautious of each other, especially Croats toward Serbs, because Croats have never waged a war against Serbs in Serbia but all of us have witnessed the aggression from the East […]

bilikamen wrote:

They should be killed immediately so that our children and grandchildren are not killed later.

21 KK Kobra wrote:

You are stupid… do you think that we like the flag and that it is OK? I have no words.

Andreeejjj wrote:

[…] Why so, my dear Croats? It will not be excused by anyone from the world! […] The future is the most important, not the past, whatever it was. If the politicians from all former Republics [of Yugoslavia] had wanted to prevent the war, it would have been done. Unfortunately, there was no interest in it because no one of them could become so rich. That’s all and brutally true, my people, be wiser just once. It’s the time.

Serbian daily Blic re-published [sr] the news, which has generated more than 600 comments. Below are some of them.

Persa wrote:

I support each initiative which contains a desire for well-being of the people, for mutual understanding, for love, for kindness, for offering aid… I’d like that everything that was bad does not happen anymore […]

Nikola Radovanovic wrote:

Hey, people, what’s the matter with you? Let’s forget once what happened! Look into the future and allow our children to live in peace and without hatred.

per-aspera-ad-astra wrote:

It should allow everyone, regardless of nationality, who hates and chokes in their own hatred, but I don’t understand how they want to go to Europe?

Serbian blogger Strongman also re-published [sr] the news and more than 80 people commented on it.

Mariopan wrote:

Bravo to the young people. A little bit normalcy in the crazy Balkans.

Looping wrote:

I believe the motive is good, but the creators should be taking care of their lives.

ivanivica wrote:

I am only reading and thinking of how many times the young Israelis and Palestinians meet up. And?

newyorkcity.boy wrote:

All honors for maturity and courage. I support it. Finally, someone has tried to make an effort of reconciliation. I hope the move will be just the beginning. All honors to you. How much further will we hate each other?

This issue has drawn attention of several thousand people from Croatia and Serbia, as well as the rest of the region, who have left their comments on many other internet platforms and forums in the past few days.

Croatia: “Peka Time!”

Veronica Khokhlova — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 00:47:54 +0000

Zagreb Diaries writes about peka, a Croatian way of slowly baking food “in a cast iron pan that is covered with a cast iron lid, and then covered in hot coals.”

The Balkans: History, Politics and Ethnic Identities

Veronica Khokhlova — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 23:37:55 +0000

At OpenDemocracy.net, Milan Marinkovic writes about history, politics and ethnic identities in Bosnia and Herzegovina. At Balkan Anarchist, Alan Jakšić writes about his own Croatian Serb identity and some of the political issues related to it.

The Balkans: Travel Blogs

Veronica Khokhlova — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 01:20:27 +0000

At Balkan Travellers, Sarah Hucal writes about Yugo Yoga performance that took place on a makeshift stage at Belgrade's Museum of Yugoslav History in July 2011; more of Hucal's Balkan travel writing and photos are at her blog, Solo in the Balkans. Jana Orsolic's Istria Week travel photos and journal [sr] are here, here, here, here, here and here. Piran Café's latest entry on the June 2011 trip to Sarajevo (plus links to earlier posts) is here; the blogger also links to the New York Times' recent travel piece on Slovenia, Slovenian Rhapsody.