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A CHILD OF FIRST LOVE

NOVEL IN CONTINUATIONS 6

Preparing for the breakup of Yugoslavia

Years passed, life was good in Yugoslavia, and then America and Germany decided to destroy the country as such, which led to complete disintegration. According to the usual and tried-and-tested procedure, the quarrels between the peoples started through the politicians who were mainly brought to power by them. The leaders of both Croatia and Serbia were prepared by the Americans beforehand, so when they brought the situation in the country to a boil, those of their own people began to defend the interests of their "pets" and led the country into war.

Historically and culturally, the Yugoslav peoples have always been enigmatic and attractive to the West. It is difficult to describe them briefly, but Rebecca West managed to describe them well in her book "Black Lamb and Gray Falcon".

Serbia and above all Bosnia was occupied by the Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary, and then by Germany. There have always been disagreements and hatreds between Serbs, Croats and Muslims. Western colonizers always looked out for their own economic interests. During Yugoslavia, all its peoples: Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Macedonians, Montenegrins and Muslims enjoyed freedoms that none of the other peoples had enjoyed until then. During the reign of Josip Broz Tito, Yugoslavia had the best education and health system, which no other country in the world had. Yugoslavia had one of the fastest development systems with the highest productivity and prosperity, better than many capitalist countries of the West. In Yugoslavia, everyone had a job, with a decent income, an apartment and a guaranteed pension. There were no homeless people in Yugoslavia, and there was no crime. It is true that many apartments and houses were not locked. People learned about major crimes, murders and rapes only by traveling to larger American cities. Yugoslavia was considered a land of paradise, and that paradise was transformed in 1991-1992. by bringing American and German troops to Slovenia. Germany was the first to recognize Croatia, and then Bosnia and Herzegovina, as independent and independent states. By doing so, Berlin and Washington violated international law and the Charter of the United Nations.

America and Germany did it by justifying that they were doing it in order to defend against communism in Eastern Europe, at the door of the Soviet Union. Until then, Yugoslavia played a balancing role between East and West during the Cold War. America and Germany did not want Socialism in Europe, nor Russian influence in the Balkans. The United States and the European Union practically colonized Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The education and health systems in these countries were totally destroyed, and the once prosperous economy was turned into ruins, many residents became homeless, unemployment rose to enormous proportions, and pensions were reduced to absolute minimums, organized crime and drugs took on enormous proportions and were constantly increasing.

Many factories were sold to Westerners or closed. Many natural resources were given into the hands of Westerners, and the employees were turned into cheap labor for the Americans, English, Germans and Italians. The Yugoslav market was flooded with products from the West, and the Yugoslav agriculture was brought to the "Beggar's stick", Yugoslavian products were denied access to the Western market at economic prices, they were replaced by modified American products. It is now 21st century colonialism imposed from Washington and Brussels. Wages of employees have been cut catastrophically, residents are cut off from gas and electricity when they are unable to pay their bills, and residents, including children and the elderly, are exposed to the mortal danger of freezing. Americans poisoned the earth with depleted uranium for all centuries in advance, 40% of men become sterile.

The young generation of educated personnel is en masse leaving for Western countries, which receive them without a dollar invested in their education. And the Serbian government is not taking any steps to keep them in the country.

NATO forcibly took the province of Kosovo and Metohija from Serbia. Such an act of violence has not been seen in world history until now, and there they built the largest military base in the world, which brought them closer to Russia. There are about 120 to 150 Serbian churches and monasteries in Kosovo and Metohija, many of which are ruined or destroyed. Kosovo's criminals were given power, they were enabled to trade weapons, drugs, and even human organs, as well as mass crime and prostitution of all kinds. And Serbian national heroes from Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina were judged by the so-called international (read American) court.

What has America done to Serbia in the past? Officially, he introduces himself as a friend, and boredom has done the following to her: America has never built anything in Serbia, it has only destroyed, stolen and polluted. The mass bombing in 1999 was cynically called the "Merciful Angel". In 1943 and 1944, the United States and Britain bombed Belgrade eleven times: three times in April, twice in May, once in June, once in July and four times in September. On the second day of Easter 1944, they bombed the main railway stations in Topcider and Rakovica, the Albani Palace, Post Office number two, the Fabric Factory, the Technical Faculty, Weifert's Brewery, the Student Dormitory, the Serbian National Theatre, the Hospital for Infectious Diseases, the Home for the Blind, the Orthopedic Institute, Homes for children of Serbian refugees from Croatia and Bosnia, Children's Hospital and Dispensary and Cinema in Terazije.

And how did it start?

Here are some of the events, chronologically, that led to the war in Yugoslavia and its disintegration:

On July 8, 1989, the Founding Assembly of SDK "Zora" was held in Kistanje. On July 9, the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo was marked in Dalmatian Kosovo. The Croatian authorities banned the cultural and artistic program and arrested 20 Serbs, and on July 11 Jovo Opačić, the president of SDK "Zora", was arrested.

During 1990, events went in this order: on January 22, the Croatian and Slovenian delegations left the 14th Extraordinary Congress of the SKJ. On April 22, multi-party elections were held in Croatia. HDZ won with 83%. On July 25, the Great Serbian Parliament was held in Serbia, Jovan Rašković spoke, and the Declaration on the Sovereignty and Autonomy of the Serbian People was adopted. On August 17, the MUP of Croatia sent police officers to several municipalities in Northern Dalmatia and Lika to confiscate weapons from the reserve militia. On August 24, Stipe Mesić was elected as a member of the SFRY Presidency from Croatia, instead of Stipe Šuvar. On December 22, the Croatian Parliament adopted the Constitution, which places the Serbian people in Croatia in the position of national minorities. On December 26, the Parliament of Slovenia declared the independence of the republic. On January 23, 1991, Franjo Tuđman announced that Croatia would suspend all federal regulations. On January 25, a film about the illegal importation of weapons into Croatia was shown, under the direction of Martin Špegelj, the Croatian Minister of Defense. The next day, the murdered crown witness on the importation of weapons, Zvonko Ostojić, was found in the village of Borovo. On February 10, the Vatican announced that it would give Croatia 4 billion dollars for breaking up Yugoslavia. March 2 in Pakrac, conflict between the police and the Serbian people. The next day, a rally for peace was held at Ušće in Belgrade. On March 14, the Presidency of the SFRY did not adopt the Proposal of the Supreme Command of the JNA to increase combat readiness, as the following voted against: Janez Drnovšek (Slovenia), Vasil Tupurkovski (Macedonia), Stipe Mesić (Croatia) and Bogić Bogićević (BiH), the majority. This pushed Yugoslavia into the chaos of an international and religious war. On April 6, the first rifle went off in Pakrac. On May 5, Franjo Tuđman in Trogir called for an uprising against the JNA. On May 19, a referendum on the secession of Croatia from Yugoslavia was held in Croatia. Croatia declared its independence on June 25, 1991. On July 1, the Presidency of SFRY, under pressure from the European Union, elected Stipe Mesić as president. On August 1, Franjo Tuđman called on the Croats to be ready for a general war. Fighting began in Dalje, Erdut, Osijek, Darda, Vukovar and Kruševo.

And how did things unfold in Bosnia?

Alija Izetbegović, through private connections, created an army of mujahideen with the Islamic world, who came to Bosnia to fight for the creation of the first Muslim state in Europe. He personally traveled around the world explaining that it was Serbia's aggression against an independent state. His propaganda was accepted by the West, so they sent him weapons, food and medicine. He also demanded sanctions against Serbia. The Muslim world awarded him awards: the King Faisal Award for service to Islam in 1993, the "Thinker of the Year" Award of the Ali Osman Hafiz Foundation from Medina in 1996, the State Order of Turkey in 1997, an honorary doctorate from the University of Riyadh in 1997, Order of the State of Qatar in 1998 and the Islamic Personality of the Year Award of the United Arab Emirates in 2001.

In July, Alija personally wrote to Bill Clinton about Srebrenica, that a mass genocide of 8,000 Muslim residents was committed there, which the West accepted as an "epithet" and the "Satanization of the Serbs" began. A group of Muslims led by Šaban Šabanović tore down the monument of Nobel laureate Ivo Andrić in Višegrad. Stories of genocide are fabricated and exaggerated.

The war in Bosnia lasted from March 1, 1992 to December 14, 1995. The main cause of the war is the request of the IMF for payment of loans from the 1980s, as well as the interest of Austria and the Vatican, and later of Germany, Hungary and Italy. It is believed that the Vatican played a major role in the breakup of Yugoslavia, in the desire for the penetration of Catholicism to the East. The Vatican was the first to recognize the independence of Slovenia and Croatia on June 13, 1992. Although the United Nations imposed an arms embargo on the SFRY, Chile, Argentina, France, Hungary and Germany supplied arms to Croatia, and Iran and Turkey to Bosnia. Military interventions of the NATO pact against Republika Srpska were carried out in 1994-1995. year and against FR Yugoslavia in 1999. NATO thereby violated the norms of international law, as well as its own statute, and by bombing with depleted uranium, it violated the norms of war and humanitarian law. During the war, 130,000 people died in Yugoslavia, 95,000 of them in BiH, about 21,000 in Croatia, about 13,000 in Kosovo and Metohija, and the number of refugees and displaced persons is 3,725,300 or 15.83% of the total population of the SFRY in 1991.

Fleeing in front of the bloodthirsty, armed Mujahideen, the Serbian population left their doorsteps in panic. The Mujahideen mistreated them and inflicted violence on the people, while all those who remained to defend the village perished. From the cities, columns of refugees flocked to the mountains and to more remote places, in an effort to save their lives. Among the refugees, there were mostly weak children and emaciated and sick old people. Everyone was tortured and hungry, some rode in carts, some in tractors, and the vast majority moved on foot. Those who died along the way were buried without any religious customs, formally just to avoid being exposed to wild animals. Silent columns moved along the main and secondary roads, and at night they spent the night under trees and/or in abandoned barns. The journeys led them through a dead end, into uncertainty. In transit shelters, they received some food, what was found where, and the medicines they managed to get were mostly with expired use-by dates. It was delivered to them by the American Red Cross, as humanitarian aid.

Dunya and Boris during the war years

Slobodan and Dunya, with her mother Branka and Branislav, found themselves in a situation like everyone else, where they had to take shelter anywhere. Branka's house was soon set on fire by the Muslims, it was impossible to go to Sarajevo, it was under siege. Slobodan could not get information about his parents. For his brother, he assumed that he was engaged in the army, and for his sister, he had no idea where she could be. The two of them, Slobodan and Dunya, as health workers were indispensable to the people and tried to save whoever they could. They dragged Branka with them, because they had nowhere to leave her. She just felt miserable. She got older and became quite weak, started to get sick, and the state of war couldn't be worse. She prayed to God to die a natural death, but even God in Bosnia was of no help.

Dunya heard through some relatives that Boris had moved to Canada, where all those who had some connections and opportunities fled, but Boris had no knowledge of Dunya. He did not know that she was married, nor that they had a son. They both lived their lives, separated and distant from each other, not thinking that they would ever meet in their lives. Both occasionally remembered their first love, which neither of them forgot, but they kept their memories only for themselves in beautiful thoughts, as memories.

***

Having moved to Canada, Boris began to find his way around, as all immigrants do. In a certain sense, it was easier for him because he had already been in Canada several times, although his acquaintances did not respond to the messages left. In foreign countries, life must always start from the beginning, "from scratch" or "from the streets". The children went to school, and he and his wife took the first jobs they could get. He was still obsessed with travel. Only then in a new environment that he needed and wanted to get to know as well as possible. He used his first annual vacation for a trip to the west, to get to know another city in which he had not been until then. It was the city of Saskatoon, including a couple of places in the immediate vicinity. He was among the first to visit Wanuskewin, the old home of the local Indian tribes. And then there was a visit to the Indian reservation and a two-day stay at the lake in the endless forests, where the Indians still live. Soon he developed a sympathy for the Indians, perhaps based on the stories he had read in his childhood. Later on, he would read a lot about the life of the Indians and travel to the places where they still live to this day. He simply loved the Indians.

In the following years, they both used their annual vacations to travel, first to Cuba, which suited them in terms of prices, and even more so in terms of the warmth of the sea. They felt completely safe and relaxed in Cuba, and they were happy to take day trips to Havana and other places. The Cubans gave them the impression of a pleasant world and they enjoyed their stay there. That is why they traveled to Cuba several times.

One year they spent their vacation in Venezuela, on Margarita Island. It is interesting that these are two islands, connected to each other, connected by a sandbank no more than a hundred meters long, and these two islands have different climates. Eastern Margarita Island is fertile and western Macanao is desert. There is a record there that there is no more beautiful sunset in the world than on Macanao Island. The most beautiful corals grow in that part of the sea, where the constant water temperature is 24 degrees, and in the forests live parrots that imitate human voices the best. This type of parrot is threatened by tourists stealing eggs from their nests.

One summer, Boris spent his annual vacation alone in Cuba, during which he befriended a young Cuban woman who taught him Spanish. Here's how it went:

"Hola" (Ola), Hello, she said to him at the first meeting.

"Hello," Boris greeted her.

"Como esta usted" (How are you?), she asks.

"Soy casado bueno, Como esta usted", I'm fine, how are you?

"Habla usted Espanol", Do you speak Spanish?

 "No, Solo hablo un poco de Espanol", No, I speak little Spanish, Boris answered her.

"Es usted Americano", Are you American?

"No, Soy Canadiano", No, I'm Canadian.

"Como se llama". What is your name, Boris asked her.

"Me llama Daisy", My name is Daisy, she answered and continued to talk about herself, which Boris was unable to follow because his knowledge of Spanish was still poor. Then she continued with questions:

"Es usted casado", Are you married?

"Si, estoy casado. Tengo dos hijas. Soy vivo en Toronto '', Yes, I am married and have two daughters, we live in Toronto. Dacey continued her story again, she mentioned that she lives in the neighborhood with the famous boxer, world heavyweight champion Stevenson Teofilo, whom Boris remembered from the world championship and the Olympics. At parting, Daisy waved to him and added: "Adios.... Te quero", and Boris waved to her and replied: "Adio Daisy ''. Deisi tormented him a little, but also tested his knowledge of the Spanish language, which Boris learned on his own initiative before leaving for Cuba.

Boris and his wife traveled to Alaska on the ship "Volendam'', departing from Vancouver, visiting Tracy Arms, Juneau (Capital of Alaska), Glacier Gardens, Mendenhall Glacier, the town of Skagway, Carcross and Lake Emerald on the way, and on the way back via Klondike Valley and by train on the Yukon Route down from White Pass, above Dead Horse Valley, to Skagway. Returning to Vancouver, they also visited Ketchiken and Misty Fjords. Returning to Calgary, they visited Lake Lewis and Lake Moraine and spent some time in the beautiful mountain town of Banff, a famous tourist center.

On one occasion, they privately spent a week at a friend's place in Yellowknife, the capital of the North Western Territory, a city they call the "Diamond of the North", with many surrounding lakes, where mostly the "Den" Indians live. In the far north of Canada, around the city of Inuvik and further north, the sun does not set from May 24 to July 24, a full 57 days, and from December 5 to January 5, it does not set at all.

There were many shorter and longer trips, visiting states in America: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Delaware, Florida, the cities of Washington, Princeton, Philadelphia and many others.

One of their unforgettable journeys across the North Pole and Siberia to Beijing is a three-week stay in China, which is really worth seeing. An unforgettable tour of the "Forbidden City", the Great Wall of China, the Tomb of the Terracotta Warriors near the city of Xien, and the cities of Hangzhou, Shanghai and especially Guilin and Guangzhou. Continuing their journey, they visited the country and the city of Macau and finally stayed in Hong Kong.

Boris collected information about cities, states, peoples from all his travels and wrote down his impressions wherever he was, and wrote and occasionally published them in his spare time. Thus, over the years, he published a very large number of works, and he also wrote novels and poems, which were also published.

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