[PEN-L:5433] (Fwd) Letter from Yugo factory

[ts99u-1.cc.umanitoba.ca [130.179.154.224]]

------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
Date sent:              Fri, 16 Apr 1999 16:57:21 -0700
To:                     [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From:                   Sid Shniad <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject:                Letter from Yugo factory

Letter from Yugo factory                        Monday, 12 April 1999

Dear friend,

We are sending you letter of workers from automobile company 
“YUGO” that was bombed by NATO planes regardless that workers 
decided to make live shield around their factory. Now with factory 
destroyed more than 40,000 people has lost their jobs and means to 
feed their families. Photos and more stories about crimes committed 
over Yugoslavia You can find at www.aic.org.yu and 
www.barw.org.yu.

COMMUNICATION TO THE PUBLIC OF ALL NATO 
MEMBER COUNTRIES

This night, the 9th of April, the ZASTAVA factory plants in 
Kragujevac were bombed. The live shield is broken through. This 
bombardment has inflicted sever damage to factory equipment and 
almost completely destroyed the energy supply complex that served 
not only to the ZASTAVA needs, but also for the heating of the 
entire city of Kragujevac: its residential houses, schools, faculties, 
hospitals... 

Yet, horror-stricken we were at the civilian victims: tens of men 
inside a live shield that was safeguarding the factory plants. Among 
the victims there were not only the ZASTAVA workers, but also 
members of their families and other citizens of the city of 
Kragujevac. What none from among us either could, or was willing 
to assume as possible did happen: Kragujevac has re-experienced its 
WW II tragedy, its citizens have again become the target of a 
barbarian assault. In the name of what aims did war planes take off 
from the once our friendly countries which used to send us the ideas 
of humanness, freedom, maybe the greatest treasure that we have in 
the modern civilisation? What has happened to all those ideas and 
have they been just an illusion that had dispersed at the first sound of 
raised arms? We, the small people, that has looked with admiration 
at all the great things coming from you, could nor, or did not want 
to accept that this was so. 

Haven't we, still, been mistaken? Has any one from among you give 
a thought to our future and the future of our children that has 
become entirely uncertain due to this insane act, and precisely this 
future we have been defending at the price of our own lives. Already 
exhausted by sanctions that have reduced our average monthly salary 
from DEM 870 to DEM 5-60, knowing that a destruction of the 
factory would bring into the question the very existence of ourselves 
and our families, we have made a desperate move: with our bodies 
we have made a live shield that has been guarding our factory night-
and-day.  We have been resolute, since the very onset of the attack 
on our country, and persisted  in the realisation of that decision 
every day, not to leave our plants after the expire of the working 
hours, not even when the alarms would sound air strikes, thus 
staying round the clock  by our workplaces. 

By night our family members and citizens of Kragujevac were 
visiting us, giving us support and making us these moments of 
painful suspense easier. In order to prevent a horrendous catastrophe 
that may arise due to an insane act of attack on our factory, through 
the media, we have addressed local and world public, giving the 
precise co-ordinates of the factory, and pointing at the potential 
losses, spiritual and material, that may be inflicted by its destruction. 
In our addressees we appealed to the public of NATO member 
countries, to the conscience of the common men in those countries. 
Besides by local, our appeal was published and broadcast by 
numerous foreign media: TV networks and news houses. We, the 
ZASTAVA workers and citizens of Kragujevac, are afraid of the 
future standing in front of us. Now we wonder  whether we  have 
any future at all. Our children are hungry, and their eyes  filled with 
horror. We have no more answers to their questions. 

Kragujevac, 9thpril 1999

EMPLOYEES AND MANAGEMENT OF  "ZASTAVA" AND 
CTIZENS OF KRAGUJEVAC

Sincerely Yours,

Belgrade Academic Association for Equal Rights in the World
[EMAIL PROTECTED]