Thursday, October 07, 2004

Good neighbors

In this post I will talk about border conflicts between Croatia and Slovenia, Croatian Independence Day, and EU.

Well, tomorrow we celebrate Day of Independence in Croatia, anniversary of Croatian autonomy from ex. federal republic of Yugoslavia. It was 08.10.1991, when Croatian parliament has voted for independence. The rest of the story is probably better known, because of war in ex. Yugoslavia. And what now when the war is over? Once we have “Brotherhood and unity” as slogan in ex. Yugoslavia: I don't know if it's result of this, but we where in war with Serbia, and now We are “fighting” with Slovenians for border.

Slovenian - Croatian border

Probably all have heard about incidents and provocations on Slovenian – Croatia border. Seams that all have their opinion about who is right and who is wrong, but I will not argue here about this.
What I want to say is, that I have few friends Slovenians, and that they are all excellent people. On our trip to India this year, we stayed one night at one Slovenian family, our friends, and they all where very, very gently with us. We where so grateful. So I don’t like, and fear, the atmosphere of conflict and hate that is spreading around our two countries. Politicians sometimes use unscrupulous means to achieve their goals, without bothering about impact on peoples life. And here I don’t think about peoples material interests, but about security, integrity and happiness in life.
Recently I’ve read that group of Croatian hooligans has demolished one Slovenian vehicle, and attacked the owner… maybe the same can happen on the other side also. And this is no good, the ordinary people don’t have too much in common with political provocateurs as Joško Joras. We, as common people, should not let the political situation influence our opinion on Slovenian or Croatian people. We can “judge” the politics, but not the people, because there are good and less good people everywhere: we cannot putt them all in the same category.

Croatian independence

Now, back to independence… Are we really independent? One of the main reasons(at least formally) why Croatia has voted Independence is the economic situation, where due to political structures, the distribution of money was not balanced. In other words, Croatia the goods were produced in Croatia, but streets, cities and other things were developed elsewhere, for example in Kosovo, Serbia… In other words, it was some kind of steeling. So, we thought if we where independent, if there was no Yugoslavia, all would be grate, we would have enough resources for better life. But seams that reality has proved itself as “little” different.

We where not able to survive alone, we needed funds from outside, and now big part of our most profitable economy is in foreign ownership. Croatian Telecom now belong to Deutsche telecom(they have even recently took away “Croatian” and left only “T” Deutsche telecom brand), with shameless monopolistic contract with the state. Actually, they charge us few times bigger prices, than they are chargeing in their own Country! So we are poor, and because of expensive communications, development of our enterprises is becoming heavier… Isn’t this a colonialism of new age? For illustration, our family, 4 persons of which 2 children’s(they have their mobiles) of which no one uses telephone, internet or mobile heavy, is about spending 20% of my salary on telephone bills!
From other hand banks are in hands of Austrian an Italian banks… So we have fought a war to prevent our wealth going outside the borders, and now probably we own less in our country than ever. Actually, are we Independent at All?
See also draxi's article with recent news on Croatia and EU, he is better than me in writing english...

1 Comments:

At 9:21 PM, Blogger Michael M. said...

A great post, and let me quickly add that I was equally disappointed with the irrationality that bubbled up on this side of the border during the "incident." I think (hope) that in 50 years, incidents like these will be unthinkable, just the way they are between western European states. (When's the last time you heard Germany and France squabbling over their border?)

 

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