|
|
|
|
Working to Establish Civil Society
Katarina Kruhonja, a mother and a doctor of nuclear medicine, remembers the sense of despair and inadequacy she and Kruno Sukic, a teacher of philosophy and literature, both felt as they tried to come to terms with the war between Serbia and Croatia which had turned their lives upside down. ‘We accepted,’ recalls Katarina Kruhonja, ‘that we could not stop the war, that we could not influence what was going on, but we were responsible for the future, for our children and for the generations that were coming, and for a new State that was just beginning. We were disappointed in our parents and teachers who had not taught us adequately about the reality of war and its lessons, and also disappointed with ourselves because we had been so passive before.’*
When these two residents of the eastern Croatian city of Osijek first met in 1991, they had little in common except that feeling of despair and an almost desperate desire to do something positive to confront the violence - both explicit and implicit - that had permeated all aspects of life in Osijek. ‘When the war started,’ recalls Kruhonja, ‘I was a witness [to] the hatred which, in a very tangible way, was visited upon us by shelling, by bombs falling directly on our town ... At the same time I was also the witness [to] the way this hatred was spreading quickly and damaging people much more than the bombs were damaging them.’
In the days that followed, 90 percent of the city’s residents fled, and those who remained were often forced to shelter in basements. But a group of individuals, including Kruhonja and Sukic began to meet regularly, to discuss their feelings about the war and what concrete steps they could take to influence their society to move away from violence. From those discussions by candlelight in the shelters of Osijek emerged the Center for Peace, Nonviolence and Human Rights.
As the Federative Republic of Yugoslavia unravelled at the beginning of the 1990s and the former Yugoslav republics asserted their independence, the structures of a ‘civil society’ were sorely lacking. As Kruhonja writes, ‘The tradition of NGOs as forms of democratic civil society was hardly known. All organisations dealing with different civil society issues were established, financed and/or controlled by the state.’ During the 1980s however, a few feminist and environmental organisations had been established, and these became the nucleus from which various anti-war, human rights and peace organisations developed. Organising around peace and human rights issues was made especially difficult at a time when Croatian nationalism was ascendant and peace organisations were viewed as ‘anti-patriotic’ and were, in Kruhonja’s words, ‘marginalised’.
Members of the Center must accept a set of seven principles which
define its philosophy and approach to conflict resolution:
Principles
• The organisation is non-governmental, non-partisan and non-profit
• The aim of the association is to protect human rights and freedom
and to promote and apply creative, nonviolent methods of conflict
resolution
• Human rights and freedom are an expression of basic human needs
• Peace is a dynamic process
• Work on behalf of human rights, freedom and peace takes the
form of educational and advisory programmes affirming and effecting
peaceful and creative means
• The Center’s work focuses on long-term results and helps people
to become more self-aware in order to create understanding and
work toward reconciliation. Reconciliation is the beginning of
spiritual renewal and is a prerequisite for building relationships
which will preclude violence
• The work of the Center is public and open to all people of good
will, regardless of ethnic background, national affiliation, religion
or ideology.
But beginning with six members meeting in each others’ flats, the Center evolved into a multi-faceted organisation with programmes directly effecting the lives of thousands of people in Eastern Croatia.
The Center now carries out its work in four broad areas - psychosocial work on behalf of the victims of war, including displaced persons; human rights; peace education; and peace-building and community development. Some of its members draw their strength and commitment to peace organising from their religious faith, while others are motivated by political analysis and a personal philosophy which embraces the principles of nonviolence. In its work, the Center is assisted by a steady flow of volunteers from abroad, as well as financial support from international organisations.
‘Our first activities,’ recalls Katarina Kruhonja, ‘were to support the population wounded by war with the idea that long-term support and healing would be necessary to achieve the momentum so that individuals and groups wounded by war could overcome the war trauma and become carriers of reconciliation and peace-building efforts.’
About 34,000 people from surrounding areas that had been occupied by Serb forces took up residence in Osijek. Beyond the hardships that these people endured, their presence has also put additional stress on a city already suffering from the economic and material effects of a devastating war. The Center organised one of the first workshops in Osijek (and perhaps anywhere in Croatia) for social workers, psychologists and volunteers who were working with displaced persons. It was followed up with another workshop for 60 people, including displaced persons and humanitarian assistance personnel, to help the displaced persons prepare to return home. ‘In that time, when ... low grade military activities were going on, it was the very first voice coming from civil society in Croatia for a peaceful solution to the problem in our region,’ says Kruhonja.
The Center has subsequently undertaken several other creative programmes to assist displaced persons in and around Osijek. In many cases, the driving forces behind these programmes are themselves displaced persons. One example is Petar Gazibara, a former teacher and elementary school headmaster. Gazibara, who was driven from his home in the village of Bilje, across the Drava River from Osijek, was instrumental in organising a photography programme for young displaced persons in the Cepin refugee camp, just outside of Osijek. He was also involved in organising sewing groups to train displaced women in sewing and tailoring on sewing machines provided by international donors. The programme has provided these women with a source of income, and has also served an important supportive function for women suffering from the psychological traumas of being forced from their homes.
Another initiative of the Center has been a gardening programme at the Cepin camp. A leading force in promoting this project has been Martin Kovacevic, another refugee from Bilje. The gardening programme has provided another source of income to jobless refugees, and like the sewing programme, it has had important therapeutic value as well.
Another important international initiative in which the Center participated, along with other groups, was the establishment of a ‘Peace Bridge’ in the town of Mohacs, Hungary. In the climate of mistrust and fear that has followed the end of the war, it was not always possible to return, even for visits, to areas that were abandoned during the war. But the ‘Peace Bridge’ programme brought people from both sides of the conflict together in a nearby town across the border in Hungary, where they were able to meet and to begin to engage in dialogue and to try to move towards reconciliation.
The Center’s principles prominently mention human rights, but there is little to suggest how support for human rights can be translated into concrete programmes. But early on, before the Center had even defined its human rights advocacy programmes, it was confronted with a challenge. A woman approached the Center, asking for assistance to resist pressures to force her from her home (see box). The Center intervened on her behalf, and the woman and her daughter were allowed to stay in their home. In succeeding months, the Center took up the cases of twelve more families. Though there is no way to measure the overall effect, it is quite possible that many other families were also able to remain in their homes because of the example set with this first intervention.
The advocacy also evolved into a more general campaign at the national level to end the practice of eviction based on ethnicity. ‘Our effort was to make our government aware that this was not acceptable, even during the war,’ says Kruhonja.
The Center now maintains human rights offices in five locations, including Osijek, with six lawyers working on behalf of individuals whose rights have been violated. Besides housing cases, the office also takes on many cases addressing citizenship rights, employment rights, pension rights, right of return and reconstruction, women’s rights, and rights of conscientious objectors. These activities are on behalf of all members of the community - both Croats and Serbs. As of 1999, more than 5,000 individuals have received assistance from the Human Rights Office.
Peace education, which has been a third important element of the Center’s programme, takes two forms - self-education, and education of others. During the first year of the Center’s existence, the main efforts were towards self-education. Members of the Center were still looking for ways to deal with the emotional traumas that they had lived through. They were also trying to find ways to create an effective movement to work for peace and reconciliation in an environment where there were few examples from the pre-war, Communist era.
Between 1992 and 1995, the Center members participated in more than seventy-five seminars, workshops, and conferences. Many were held in Osijek, but members also travelled extensively abroad, where they established and solidified links with other peace activists. An important focus was on the development of interpersonal skills, including nonviolent communication, listening skills, mediation, and conflict resolution. Trainings in the history and practice of nonviolence were another important area of study. There were workshops for teachers and for Center members working with displaced persons. Educational programmes around human rights were also a major focus.
‘Tanja’, the wife of a Yugoslav army officer, lived with her teenage
daughter in a flat that had been assigned to the Yugoslav army
before the break-up of the Yugoslav federation. Her husband had
been taken prisoner at the beginning of the war. Armed men began
to visit the flat at night, insisting that she would have to leave
her home. She tried unsuccessfully to get support from local authorities
so that she could remain in the flat, but they refused to intervene. At one stage, her daughter was so frightened that she fled to
a neighbour’s flat. But that proved to be fortuitous, as the neighbour
was outraged by the treatment ‘Tanja’ was receiving simply because
of her family relationship to a military officer. She herself
had similar status, and she also had a Serbian name, so that she
might have received the same sort of treatment. The neighbour
had heard about the Center for Peace, Nonviolence and Human Rights
and suggested that ‘Tanja’ approach the Center to ask for help.
With support from the Center, ‘Tanja’ was able to remain in her
flat, and her daughter eventually completed her studies at the
university. All three women became active in the Center as volunteers,
helping others in similar cases of eviction, as well as other
activities. For Katarina Kruhonja, who acted as advocate on behalf of ‘Tanja’,
it was a sort of trial by fire, in which she came to understand,
among other things, the enormous pressures brought to bear on
the local authorities to evict ethnic Serbs in order to accommodate
Croatian refugees. But more importantly, she came to understand
the need for both the victim and the advocate to take a firm stand
- the victim claiming the rights he or she is entitled to, and
the advocate taking responsibility for those whose rights are
denied.
Meeting the Challenge
With a stronger foundation in nonviolence, conflict resolution, and the other areas related to Center work, the Center began to organise various outreach activities to provide a peace education element to the overall programme. Logically, one early area of activity was among teachers. After attending several peace education training sessions herself, Center member Ljerka Tonkovic initiated a series of ‘Creative Workshops’ for displaced teachers and children, where the emphasis was on the cultivation of non-judgemental approaches to interpersonal communication. Some 500 teachers have participated in Center programmes, and 45 have become trainers in peace education. An estimated 4500 students have benefited from these programmes.
The Center is also working towards reconciliation through its ‘Conflict Resolution Training for Religious People and Community Leaders’ programme, sponsors youth activities to provide support for young people who have suffered emotional trauma as a result of the war, and organises programmes for women on alternatives to violence, dealing with trauma and conflict, communication skills, human rights, democracy and community development.
The Center’s peace building programmes support the peace process in areas where citizens were forced to flee their homes during the war and are now returning. It emphasises the integration process of the Serbian population within Croatia, and the re-establishment of trust and a sense of common security in communities torn apart by the war. Its ongoing project ‘Building Democratic Society Based on a Culture of Nonviolence’, carried out in co-operation with the Life&Peace Institute of Uppsala, Sweden, is deeply involved in reconciliation work in five communities of Eastern Croatia. The aim is to help empower individuals to resolve their conflicts nonviolently, and to strengthen the structures of a democratic civil society. Elements of the multi-dimensional programme include such activities as workshops and trainings on identifying and solving community problems, community development activities, women’s and youth empowerment programmes, peace-building through media and culture, educational work on democratic institutions, and legal assistance for returning refugees.
In Croatia’s fractured post-war society, it is clearly too early to state definitively that a permanent peace has been established, or that civil society has firmly taken root. The tradition of civil society is too new, the pain and the hatred have penetrated too deeply into the hearts and minds of Croatia’s citizens, and the healing process will be long and difficult. But that healing process begins by addressing the root causes of the schisms in society, in standing with those who have been and continue to be the victims of war and hatred, and in creatively working to bring enemies together to rebuild society. Osijek’s Center for Peace, Nonviolence and Human Rights can serve as example, within Croatia and beyond its borders, of the sort of institution which can, through the commitment of concerned individuals and the application of creative energy, make a very real contribution to the difficult task of reconciliation.
* See Jegen, Sr. Mary Evelyn, Sign of hope: The Center for Peace, Nonviolence and Human Rights in Osijek (Life and Peace Institute: Uppsala, 1996). This citation and much other material in this article is drawn from this publication. The author conducted extensive interviews with members of the Center for Peace, Nonviolence and Human Rights during a visit in 1995.
Feedback please to
j.verhoeven@euconflict.org