*HELLO PEOPLE

J *HELLO PEOPLE!*J

Welcome to MM’s JANUARY 2000 Newsletter!

This month Mostar experienced the harshest winter for almost 50 years (according to local shopkeepers) as temperatures dropped dramatically to sub zero and 20cm of snow fell in town. The snow then iced up to form rivers of ice on the pavements and roads creating a death trap for pensioners and speeding Mercedes. The MM house was freezing cold, so please excuse any typing errors…

SITUATION IN MOSTAR AND BOSNIA HERZEGOVINA

This month saw the beginning of a period of elections for both Croatia as well as BiH. On 3^rd 6, 500 polling stations opened in Croatia for 3. 85 million elibile voters to elect a new parliament. There are also 350, 000 voters living abroad who can cast their votes in polling stations in 47 different countries – the largest group being Herzegovinians in BiH. RFEurope claimed that BiH witnessed a 90% turnout rate – approximately 120, 000 people cast their votes. On 4^th the main opposition Social Democrats – Social Liberal coalition won 71 parliamentary seats. The other main opposition coalition of 4 parties will take 24 seats. The former ruling party since 1990 the Croatian Democratic Community (HDZ)’s power has been reduced to only 40 seats – as a result of intensive continued support from the diaspora communtiy, who cast 85% of their votes for HDZ. Through a 15 point agreement between the 2 main coalitions the Social Democrats will hold 50% of seats, the Social Liberals 25% and the 4 party coalition will take the remainder.

The first session of the new government was held on the 27^th led by new Prime Minister Ivica Racan. Commitments were made to cut ministers’ salaries in recognition of Croatia’s economic problems, investigation into corruption would begin and a new policy concerning Croats in BiH would be developed. New Foreign Minister Picula stated on 31^st January that he would continue to support Croats in BiH but by implementing the Dayton agreement and maintaiing ‘transparency’. He called for the end of ‘political manipulation’ (RFE Newsline) of Herzegovinian Croats.

News of the elections were generally received well in BiH, Belgrade, Slovenia as well as by the international community. Representatives from USA, Germany and the European Commission have already booked their appointments with the new government for next month. Croatian representative in the Croatian parliament Ante Jelavic however continued to state his belief that the connection between Herzegovinan Croats and Croatia proper would be maintained.

The Croatian presidential elections continue to a second round due to the lack of an outright majority from the vote on the 24^th. After much internal squablling and public slandering between the extreme and moderate factions of HDZ over leadership of the party Mate Granić (former Foreign Minister) was selected – only to be knocked out on the 1^st round. Stipe Mesić, of the 4 party coalition, and Drazen Budisa, from the main coalition opposition,are the favourite candidates winning 42% and 28% of the votes respectively. Mate Granić won only 20%, confirming HDZ’s failure to secure any key positions at a national level. Until the 2^nd round, set for 7^th February, Reuters expects a ‘tough and dirty campaign’.

This month has seen HDZ fall into a steady decline, torn apart by in-fighting – particularly between the hardline Herzegovinian faction led by Pasalić and Vladimir Seks – of leadership but also by charges of corruption. Granic claimed that this chaos serious effected his candidacy for the president – HDZ were the favourites before new year. Jutarnji List reported that on 27^th former Minister of Tourism, Ivan Herak, was arrested on suspicion of redirecting $195,000 intended to rebuild a hotel on Rab to his own company account. There has also been controversy over the cost of Tudjman’s funeral, tomb and the free transport which was laid on for Croats from Croatia and BiH to attend the funeral - $662, 000. To be paid by Croatian tax payers.

This month the UN extended their peace keeping mandate in the southern pensinsula Prevlaka under UN peace keepers. The area is Croatian territory which controls access to Kotor Bay, Montenegro’s only sea port but the area has been continually disputed by Belgrade. Mesić, in his election campaign, claimed that he hopes the issue could be directly resolved between Croatia and Montenegro.

Zeljko Raznatovic, more commonly known as international ganster and indicted war criminal ‘Arkan’, was murdered on 15^th January in the Intercontinental Hotel in Belgrade. Much controversy surrounds the event, particularly concerning crucial information about the killer or killers from Police and witnesses reports. While there are many groups who would be glad of Arkan’s ‘demise’ there is a strong feeling that he was assasinated because of his powerful role due to his amassed riches and role in the atrocities in BiH – knowledge of which make him a threat to the Belgrade regime and particularly Milosević. Beta News Agency quoted a former Interpol officer as saying that ‘if we do not soon receive a precise police report as to who is behind the assasination, one should then ask the question as to whether the police are hiding the facts about the murder or maybe because they are behind it.’.

‚ ƒ FOTO PROJECTƒ ‚

After a very relaxing holiday for both Uli and Džemal the project’s activities started again at the 4^th of January. As the holidays were still going on for most of the students in Mostar, a lot of participants came to use the darkroom. Besides the regular Photo Group students Džemal and Uli also continued to work with the YWELN photography project participants to print the photographs they have shot during the workshops.

Work continues with planning for the next 15 months for the Foto Group in the form of the ‘Young Photographers’ Media Network (YPMN)’ – a program to provide technical, instructive and material support in the form of seminars, exhibitions and publications for young photographers and groups in former Yugoslavia with the visual aim to create ‘A Portrait of former Yugoslavia in the year 2000, 5 years after Dayton’.

Uli and Džemal did a little research trip through BiH and Croatia. On their journey they visited photography groups, who already showed interest in participating within the Network: Alter Art – Travnik, Moj Prijatelj – Sarajevo, Firefly – Brčko and Youth Peace Group Danube – Vukovar. The aim of the visit was to assess in which kind of structure the groups are working, the level of photography skills they have, what kind of resources, what they think about the YPMN plan and who would participate in it. The photo groups they visited are all working on a lower skilled level with very limited recourses and no or very few possibilities to receive professional photography skills training. All the project leaders expressed great interest in participating in the program of the YPMN, also with the aim to pass on the skills they will learn to their groups. Inspired, Uli and Jude continue to squeeze out the proposal and budget to send on to funders…

The Photo Group received an invitation to present the "Portrait of Mostar" exhibition in the LIPA art-gallery in Washington DC at the beginning of March. The connections to Washington were made during the summer camp 1999 in Vukovar, where a group of American and former Yugoslavian filmmakers came to shoot activities from the photography seminar there held by the Mladi Most Photo Group. The photos will be sent at the beginning of next month.

‚ ƒ YOUNG WOMEN’S EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING NETWORKƒ ‚

The YWELN project officially started working on January the 12^th under the funding from the Norwegian Embassy, which will continue until April 1^st, 2000. According to our plans, three Creative Writing Workshops were held in Mostar, still involving participants from Blagaj and Čapljina. There was no Outreach this month, but two theatre workshops were held in MM, which were facilitated by a professional from the Center for Drama Education – the localised project which developed from the CARE ‘Pax Project’ in Mostar. There were no seminars held this month but they will start in February with a weekend of ‘Educational Theatre’.

Two more workshops of "Self Defense and Rape Prevention Awareness" for women were led by Holgier this month - there is only one more workshop before the completion of the seminar.

YWELN staff members participated in the seminar in Makarska called "Communication – Help to Helpers", organized by the citizens assotiation "Ideja" on 22^nd and 23^rd of this month. Except the seminar topic, this seminar also focused on connecting the NGOs in this part of the country (Herzegovina region).

‚ ƒ NINPO and FAR EASTERN PHILOSOPHIESƒ ‚

The group did another outreach workshop in Konjic, this time it was lead by Hala, Čule and Haris with the help of Frank. We had aproximatly 15 participants who were very focused and open. After the workshop the Mostar Group sat down and reveiwed the workshop to see what we could do better. We came up with some good stuff like reading an article written by a leading authority on Ninpo. The article’s topic "Martial Arts, Politics, Goverments and Religions" talks about the way that these things often start with a good intention but somewhere along the way people change their involvement as a stepping stone for personal gain. It also states that one should never lose touch with the basics and in Ninpo it is following the Code of Conduct and forms of Ettiquette.

The leaders also left the outreach group with an assignment called "Language Concepts". The assignment was to create something using whatever medium they want i.e. art, photo, music, writing etc. When planning for the next workshop we realized we had never done the assigment ourselves so the next class we all brought our own creations with us. Frank made a photo, Hala a sculpture of a man in wood, Haris wrote a poem and Ćule mixed some music. We then looked at our creations critically and thought about why we created them, then we looked at them as if we created them for someone else or a business. After analizing each others’ work we talked about the different ways we would have approached creating the piece. After telling each other what we thought the others were trying to express we finally we talked about how we communicated all of this to the group – complicated it may sound but the results were really interesting in terms of our perceptions and what was communicated!

Last month 2 proposals for funding a 8 month program to the Jephcott Charitable Trust and Schueler Helfen Leben, and this month another 2 are being prepared for Catholic Relief Services and the Canadian Embassy – keep ‘em rolling...

‚ ƒ MM IN GENERALƒ ‚

The internal structure of MM has changed as an extended stage of the localisation process and the upcoming departure of Jude as coordinator. Jude’s responsibilities as coordinator will be passed directly to the Management Board (staff) - the president of the Management Board, Dzemal, will be the spokesman for the board and so sign all contracts and documents although responsibility still lies within the Management Board as a whole. We hope to be able to gather our Super(visory) Board once again next month to discuss the future.

Plans are now being made for the arrival of Timm Koehler from Germany who will be joining the team at the beginning of March. He has been part of the group in Berlin for some time and has excellent skills to be joining MM in Mostar as an administrator – replacing Jude’s practical role, writing reports, correspondance, supporting proposal writing, researching fundraising, book keeping. There will be at least 2 weeks when he and Jude can work together and all the vital information (and Jude’s bizarre filing systems) can be passed over…

Jude, Frank and Uli took part in a weekend evaluation of Schueler Helfen Leben at their seminar house in Sarajevo from 28 – 30^th January. The relationship between MM and SHL has a long history of cooperation, support and friendship and it was an exciting opportunity to be involved – much was also learnt about MM in the process. They will also participate in the future strategising seminar next month.

We hope this letter finds you all well – thank you for your support but

DON’T FORGET OUR NEW EMAIL ADDRESS: mladi-mo@bih.net.ba

Jude, Bartol, Uli, Džemal, Adisa, Amna, Arijana, and Frank (and puppy).