Wednesday, August 14, 2002
Dubrovnik, Croatia: Full Circle
Dubrovnik is spectacular.
The bright limestone walls encircle the city in a protective embrace, repelling warring armies and raging pestilence since medieval times. Today, they have also kept out McDonald’s, Burger King and Pizza Hut, while attracting tourists, mostly European, who come to enjoy “the Pearl of the Adriatic,” scramble over its walls and lie out on its beaches. Although it is part of Croatia, the languages we hear most frequently are English, German and Italian.
Inside the walls is a sea of red roofs, topping sandy-colored, limestone buildings. There must be a tremendous fine for using anything but red tile on your roof here. The streets are also made of blocks of the same bright stone; after centuries of people walking on them, they now shine as though someone polishes them every day.
Outside the walls are the clear, bright blue waters of the Adriatic Sea, and a newer town, with modern versions of the same limestone buildings and red roofs. It is the most color-coordinated city we have been to on Semester at Sea.
It is also the most beautiful of the eight ports we’ve now docked in, and has the most fascinating history. For seven centuries, until Napoleon conquered it in 1808, Dubrovnik was an independent republic. It was known for commerce and traded all around the world. The current inhabitants are very proud of this diplomatic heritage and will point out to us traveling Americans that they were one of the first European sovereignties to recognize the upstart 13 colonies when we became independent back in the 18th century.
After Napoleon gave up, Dubrovnik became the southernmost tip of boomerang-shaped Croatia, and so was part of the cobbled together federation known as Yugoslavia, both as an independent capitalist country after World War I, and as a communist dictatorship after World War II. When the other Eastern European communist countries started to fall in the late eighties, Yugoslavia began to fragment as well. Croatia declared its independence in 1990, and was engaged in a five-year war to break free of Yugoslavia, a bloody precursor to the ethnic conflicts that would soon engulf neighboring Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro.
Peaceful, diplomatic Dubrovnik became a symbol of the senseless brutality of that war. In the fall of 1991, while the world, including me, watched live on CNN, the Yugoslav People’s Army shelled this art and culture capital of the Balkans for eight months. I remember seeing the images of ugly warships sitting in the beautiful blue harbor of a Mediterranean walled city that glistened in the sunshine. Dubrovnik had no military importance and had not been at war since the 15th century. The only strategy advanced by the bombardment was the total destruction of the tourist industry and the hurt to the pride of the Croatians. As we realized when the Taliban blew up the ancient statues of Buddha in Afghanistan, a government so determined to destroy art can go on to destroy humanity too easily.
When we walked the city walls of Dubrovnik with the other tourists, we looked down over the charming Mediterranean style buildings, stairways and courtyards, as well as the few crumbling houses that have yet to be restored. In the other cities we have visited, mounds of rubble indicate years of neglect, or the inevitable forces of nature at work. Here it is the more recent effect of man’s inhumanity to man and culture.
Serbia, the largest chunk of the former Yugoslavia, is not that far away, and its former president, Slobodan Milosevic, is currently on trial by the World Court for crimes against humanity, including attacks on Croatia. When Semester at Sea was in Belgium a few weeks ago, special arrangements were made for some to go to The Hague to observe the trial. 15 students and staff decided to make the trek, and were able to observe the last day of testimony before a four-week recess. I have asked two of those who experienced this bit of history to tell us about what they saw.
Linda is a librarian at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and is in charge of our library here on Semester at Sea, and Amy, one of my students, is a senior communications major at the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs. Welcome Linda and Amy.
Gypsy Teacher: You arrived at The Hague that morning and had to go through metal detectors to get into the building. When you first came in, give us an idea of what the courtroom looked like and what you saw, Amy.
Amy: When we first came in there was a room set up with chairs for us to sit in and a bulletproof glass window that we could look through to see the courtroom, including Milosevic and the judges, prosecutors, lawyers, bailiffs, security guards and lots of computer screens. There were just people everywhere.
GT: What was your first impression? Did it look at all like a courtroom in America or did it seem very foreign?
A: It didn't look like the courtrooms I've seen in America. It had a lot higher security and there were a lot more people than what I envisioned. There were more judges, more lawyers, more of everything.
GT: And Linda, you have a law background. From the point when you came in and they returned from the recess, what was going on in the trial?
Linda: We walked in right after a 30-minute recess that had been requested by Milosevic. This was so that he could prepare to cross examine his former security chief who was the witness that day. Milosevic wanted to question him about whether the security chief had ever specifically received orders to kill Albanians in a particular town. That’s what he was questioning him about.
GT: Milosevic was doing the cross examination. What was your general impression of him and of the whole legal process?
L: He asked a lot of long questions, a lot of multiple part questions. I can paraphrase. They were something like, Did you ever receive any kind of memo or any kind of communication from me about killing the Albanians in that town that day? There were so many different questions all at once and the security chief could easily answer by selecting a part of it, which is what he tended to do in response to Milosevic’s questions. One of the ones I recall was when Milosevic asked something like what I just said, Did you have any kind of communication from me about killing the Albanians in that town when you went there in that week that had already been established in direct examination?
When the cross examination was finished, the prosecutor redirected and asked the separate parts of that question. Were you ordered to go in that day ? Yes. Were you ordered to kill that day? Yes. Were you ordered to kill Albanians that day? No. We were there to rid the area of terrorists. Were you aware that there were Albanians living in that town? Yes. He admitted that there were. It was that kind of breakdown that had to occur.
And after that re-direct, the prosecutors went on to directly examine Milosevic about a memorandum, which none of us had seen of course and which was not available in English, but by following the hour or so of testimony we were able to ascertain that this was a memo that had been transcribed based on interviews with this security chief while he had been in prison. It was his description of why and how corpses had been transported from mass graves into Serbia.
GT: Milosevic has insisted on representing himself, right? He's his own attorney. How is he? Is he a good attorney?
L: Yes, I thought that he was doing fine. On the day that we saw him, he was asking for relevant facts and seemed to have a good sense of the feel of the room—who was whom and how things were organized and when to assert his rights. I mean, there was a point at which he objected to a piece of evidence, some testimonial evidence. The prosecutor was asking the security chief about the cash to finance this operation of the transfer of corpses in a refrigerated truck. Immediately Milosevic jumped in and objected on the basis that it had not been established that there was any cash transfer. And so the prosecutor, without knowing better than to withdraw the question, went backwards and said, Do you remember transferring money on that day and was that to finance this operation? Yes. And where did that money come from? And was that money in the form of cash? Yes, it was. And so Milosevic kept them on their toes; I give him credit for that.
GT: And Amy, you were very young when all these atrocities happened. You went in without a lot of historical background. But what was your impression of him, of Milosevic, just seeing him there?
A: He really looked like a nice little old man with gray hair and a nice suit. It’s hard to picture him as the nasty man that they accuse him of being. I didn't have that impression of him just by his physical looks. He was very friendly with the guy they were interviewing. They were kind of buddy buddy.
GT: What about any of the other attorneys, the movement and activity in the courtroom while you were there?
A: There wasn’t a whole lot of movement. They all sat at their desks, and when they were questioning the security chief they stood up and gave him his questions and then sat down. Everybody else stayed seated and just helped while everything was going on.
GT: And then after Belgium we went on to Italy, but then to Croatia. I assume for both of you this is the first time you had ever been to Croatia or the Balkans for that matter. Having seen Dubrovnik and what a beautiful city it is, where there any impressions that you had? Related to the fact that you had seen this trial of this person who actually ordered the bombing of it—we suspect that that was what he did. Were there any connections that you made?
L: I was on a tour of a hospital and orphanage while we were in Dubrovnik and the guide was pointing out facts that might be relevant to people who were visiting the hospital. And he showed us where the old hospital was and he said it was almost completely destroyed. He said they had to move patients into the basement and he was saying, Imagine how it is to be sick and hardly able to move and you are so sick you have to be in a hospital and they take you downstairs to the basement because there are bombs crashing all around. You can't even feel safe in a hospital, that was the impression that we got. And he took us on to the newer hospital and assured us that they are going to be renovating the old hospital. But that he was there and witnessed it and felt it and knew people who were in it was very moving.
GT: And Amy, what were your general impressions of Dubrovnik?
A: When I walked around the city walls and you could see out over the town, I was amazed at how rebuilt everything was. It was all bright and white and shiny but there were a lot of new roofs. You could tell that they had been replaced just in the last few years and there were just a few old roofs that were blackened and dirty. They were the ones that stood up to the war I guess. But it was very rebuilt. I hardly saw anything that wasn't perfect. It looked good.
GT: I think most of the people on the ship were very surprised with Dubrovnik, even though people had told us how beautiful it was. It was just such a delight as the last little crowning jewel on our trip. Thank you Linda and Amy.
At a hotel near the beach, Tony struck up a conversation with a young man who had a really strong Dublin accent. Tony was amazed to find out that this fellow Dub was actually a Bosnian. Part of the wave of 2000 refugees accepted into Ireland from the war, just over the ridge of mountains to our north, he had spent the past 10 years living and working in Dublin with his family. Now he was here in Dubrovnik on holidays.
Ten years ago today, in Dublin, Tony and I met. We’re celebrating our anniversary next to the clear blue Adriatic, now married, marveling at what forces of fate brought us to this point. Tonight the ship will leave to bring us back to where the voyage started, in Athens.
Compared to anywhere else we have been, Dubrovnik has a different feel. Thanks to sturdy medieval construction, and the constant work of the Croatians over the centuries to repair every bit of damage, the walls of Dubrovnik are still intact.
It feels complete.
For the WLRN Radio Reading Service, this is Kathleen Dixon Donnelly—at Sea.
Dubrovnik is spectacular.
The bright limestone walls encircle the city in a protective embrace, repelling warring armies and raging pestilence since medieval times. Today, they have also kept out McDonald’s, Burger King and Pizza Hut, while attracting tourists, mostly European, who come to enjoy “the Pearl of the Adriatic,” scramble over its walls and lie out on its beaches. Although it is part of Croatia, the languages we hear most frequently are English, German and Italian.
Inside the walls is a sea of red roofs, topping sandy-colored, limestone buildings. There must be a tremendous fine for using anything but red tile on your roof here. The streets are also made of blocks of the same bright stone; after centuries of people walking on them, they now shine as though someone polishes them every day.
Outside the walls are the clear, bright blue waters of the Adriatic Sea, and a newer town, with modern versions of the same limestone buildings and red roofs. It is the most color-coordinated city we have been to on Semester at Sea.
It is also the most beautiful of the eight ports we’ve now docked in, and has the most fascinating history. For seven centuries, until Napoleon conquered it in 1808, Dubrovnik was an independent republic. It was known for commerce and traded all around the world. The current inhabitants are very proud of this diplomatic heritage and will point out to us traveling Americans that they were one of the first European sovereignties to recognize the upstart 13 colonies when we became independent back in the 18th century.
After Napoleon gave up, Dubrovnik became the southernmost tip of boomerang-shaped Croatia, and so was part of the cobbled together federation known as Yugoslavia, both as an independent capitalist country after World War I, and as a communist dictatorship after World War II. When the other Eastern European communist countries started to fall in the late eighties, Yugoslavia began to fragment as well. Croatia declared its independence in 1990, and was engaged in a five-year war to break free of Yugoslavia, a bloody precursor to the ethnic conflicts that would soon engulf neighboring Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro.
Peaceful, diplomatic Dubrovnik became a symbol of the senseless brutality of that war. In the fall of 1991, while the world, including me, watched live on CNN, the Yugoslav People’s Army shelled this art and culture capital of the Balkans for eight months. I remember seeing the images of ugly warships sitting in the beautiful blue harbor of a Mediterranean walled city that glistened in the sunshine. Dubrovnik had no military importance and had not been at war since the 15th century. The only strategy advanced by the bombardment was the total destruction of the tourist industry and the hurt to the pride of the Croatians. As we realized when the Taliban blew up the ancient statues of Buddha in Afghanistan, a government so determined to destroy art can go on to destroy humanity too easily.
When we walked the city walls of Dubrovnik with the other tourists, we looked down over the charming Mediterranean style buildings, stairways and courtyards, as well as the few crumbling houses that have yet to be restored. In the other cities we have visited, mounds of rubble indicate years of neglect, or the inevitable forces of nature at work. Here it is the more recent effect of man’s inhumanity to man and culture.
Serbia, the largest chunk of the former Yugoslavia, is not that far away, and its former president, Slobodan Milosevic, is currently on trial by the World Court for crimes against humanity, including attacks on Croatia. When Semester at Sea was in Belgium a few weeks ago, special arrangements were made for some to go to The Hague to observe the trial. 15 students and staff decided to make the trek, and were able to observe the last day of testimony before a four-week recess. I have asked two of those who experienced this bit of history to tell us about what they saw.
Linda is a librarian at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and is in charge of our library here on Semester at Sea, and Amy, one of my students, is a senior communications major at the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs. Welcome Linda and Amy.
Gypsy Teacher: You arrived at The Hague that morning and had to go through metal detectors to get into the building. When you first came in, give us an idea of what the courtroom looked like and what you saw, Amy.
Amy: When we first came in there was a room set up with chairs for us to sit in and a bulletproof glass window that we could look through to see the courtroom, including Milosevic and the judges, prosecutors, lawyers, bailiffs, security guards and lots of computer screens. There were just people everywhere.
GT: What was your first impression? Did it look at all like a courtroom in America or did it seem very foreign?
A: It didn't look like the courtrooms I've seen in America. It had a lot higher security and there were a lot more people than what I envisioned. There were more judges, more lawyers, more of everything.
GT: And Linda, you have a law background. From the point when you came in and they returned from the recess, what was going on in the trial?
Linda: We walked in right after a 30-minute recess that had been requested by Milosevic. This was so that he could prepare to cross examine his former security chief who was the witness that day. Milosevic wanted to question him about whether the security chief had ever specifically received orders to kill Albanians in a particular town. That’s what he was questioning him about.
GT: Milosevic was doing the cross examination. What was your general impression of him and of the whole legal process?
L: He asked a lot of long questions, a lot of multiple part questions. I can paraphrase. They were something like, Did you ever receive any kind of memo or any kind of communication from me about killing the Albanians in that town that day? There were so many different questions all at once and the security chief could easily answer by selecting a part of it, which is what he tended to do in response to Milosevic’s questions. One of the ones I recall was when Milosevic asked something like what I just said, Did you have any kind of communication from me about killing the Albanians in that town when you went there in that week that had already been established in direct examination?
When the cross examination was finished, the prosecutor redirected and asked the separate parts of that question. Were you ordered to go in that day ? Yes. Were you ordered to kill that day? Yes. Were you ordered to kill Albanians that day? No. We were there to rid the area of terrorists. Were you aware that there were Albanians living in that town? Yes. He admitted that there were. It was that kind of breakdown that had to occur.
And after that re-direct, the prosecutors went on to directly examine Milosevic about a memorandum, which none of us had seen of course and which was not available in English, but by following the hour or so of testimony we were able to ascertain that this was a memo that had been transcribed based on interviews with this security chief while he had been in prison. It was his description of why and how corpses had been transported from mass graves into Serbia.
GT: Milosevic has insisted on representing himself, right? He's his own attorney. How is he? Is he a good attorney?
L: Yes, I thought that he was doing fine. On the day that we saw him, he was asking for relevant facts and seemed to have a good sense of the feel of the room—who was whom and how things were organized and when to assert his rights. I mean, there was a point at which he objected to a piece of evidence, some testimonial evidence. The prosecutor was asking the security chief about the cash to finance this operation of the transfer of corpses in a refrigerated truck. Immediately Milosevic jumped in and objected on the basis that it had not been established that there was any cash transfer. And so the prosecutor, without knowing better than to withdraw the question, went backwards and said, Do you remember transferring money on that day and was that to finance this operation? Yes. And where did that money come from? And was that money in the form of cash? Yes, it was. And so Milosevic kept them on their toes; I give him credit for that.
GT: And Amy, you were very young when all these atrocities happened. You went in without a lot of historical background. But what was your impression of him, of Milosevic, just seeing him there?
A: He really looked like a nice little old man with gray hair and a nice suit. It’s hard to picture him as the nasty man that they accuse him of being. I didn't have that impression of him just by his physical looks. He was very friendly with the guy they were interviewing. They were kind of buddy buddy.
GT: What about any of the other attorneys, the movement and activity in the courtroom while you were there?
A: There wasn’t a whole lot of movement. They all sat at their desks, and when they were questioning the security chief they stood up and gave him his questions and then sat down. Everybody else stayed seated and just helped while everything was going on.
GT: And then after Belgium we went on to Italy, but then to Croatia. I assume for both of you this is the first time you had ever been to Croatia or the Balkans for that matter. Having seen Dubrovnik and what a beautiful city it is, where there any impressions that you had? Related to the fact that you had seen this trial of this person who actually ordered the bombing of it—we suspect that that was what he did. Were there any connections that you made?
L: I was on a tour of a hospital and orphanage while we were in Dubrovnik and the guide was pointing out facts that might be relevant to people who were visiting the hospital. And he showed us where the old hospital was and he said it was almost completely destroyed. He said they had to move patients into the basement and he was saying, Imagine how it is to be sick and hardly able to move and you are so sick you have to be in a hospital and they take you downstairs to the basement because there are bombs crashing all around. You can't even feel safe in a hospital, that was the impression that we got. And he took us on to the newer hospital and assured us that they are going to be renovating the old hospital. But that he was there and witnessed it and felt it and knew people who were in it was very moving.
GT: And Amy, what were your general impressions of Dubrovnik?
A: When I walked around the city walls and you could see out over the town, I was amazed at how rebuilt everything was. It was all bright and white and shiny but there were a lot of new roofs. You could tell that they had been replaced just in the last few years and there were just a few old roofs that were blackened and dirty. They were the ones that stood up to the war I guess. But it was very rebuilt. I hardly saw anything that wasn't perfect. It looked good.
GT: I think most of the people on the ship were very surprised with Dubrovnik, even though people had told us how beautiful it was. It was just such a delight as the last little crowning jewel on our trip. Thank you Linda and Amy.
At a hotel near the beach, Tony struck up a conversation with a young man who had a really strong Dublin accent. Tony was amazed to find out that this fellow Dub was actually a Bosnian. Part of the wave of 2000 refugees accepted into Ireland from the war, just over the ridge of mountains to our north, he had spent the past 10 years living and working in Dublin with his family. Now he was here in Dubrovnik on holidays.
Ten years ago today, in Dublin, Tony and I met. We’re celebrating our anniversary next to the clear blue Adriatic, now married, marveling at what forces of fate brought us to this point. Tonight the ship will leave to bring us back to where the voyage started, in Athens.
Compared to anywhere else we have been, Dubrovnik has a different feel. Thanks to sturdy medieval construction, and the constant work of the Croatians over the centuries to repair every bit of damage, the walls of Dubrovnik are still intact.
It feels complete.
For the WLRN Radio Reading Service, this is Kathleen Dixon Donnelly—at Sea.
posted by Kathleen at 8:49 AM
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