[PEN-L:6063] (Fwd) BOMBING BRINGS TERROR TO NOVI SAD

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Date sent:      	Mon, 26 Apr 1999 16:22:08 -0700
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From:           	Sid Shniad <shniad@xxxxxx>
Subject:        	BOMBING BRINGS TERROR TO NOVI SAD

The Globe and Mail	                     Monday, April 26, 1999

BOMBING BRINGS TERROR TO NOVI SAD

	Normal life ceased to exist a month ago
	for residents of Yugoslavia's second-largest city

	By Estanislao Oziewicz

Belgrade -- One of the most difficult things Milena Popov has to
cope with are the questions of her two children: "What did we do?
Why are they trying to hurt us? Why don't they like us?"
	Like hundreds of thousands of Serbian children, eight-year-old
Nina and three-year-old Dunia are collateral victims in the
undeclared NATO air war against President Slobodan Milosevic of
Yugoslavia and his policies in Kosovo.
	For Nina there is no more school, there are no more piano
lessons or gymnastics classes. For Dunia, there are no more
preschool programs. For both girls, there are daily preparations to
spend terrifying nights in an air-raid shelter.
	Ms. Popov, 34, husband Sasha, 38, and their children live about
150 kilometres north of Belgrade in Novi Sad, which has sustained
unrelenting bombardment for going on five weeks.
	With a population of 180,000 in the city proper and about
500,000 in the surrounding urban area, Novi Sad is Yugoslavia's
second-largest city. Its Danube River bridges, oil refinery,
industries and nearby communication transmitters have all been
devastated.
	So has the city hall building, considered by residents as an
architectural treasure. Water and electricity have been cut off to
parts of the city.
	The nightly and early-morning bombing has had a profound
impact on its residents, and not only in terms of deaths and injuries,
for which the authorities are not releasing numbers.
	"Until a month ago, we led totally normal lives, no different
from you or anybody else," Ms. Popov said in an interview. "What
is happening to us could one day be happening to you. We never
did anything.
	"I don't want to sit here wondering whether my children will
have something to eat, let alone whether they will be alive next
week. That's too much for me to bear."
	The middle-class Popovs are the kind of people who, in normal
times, would be ideal immigrants to Canada. Ms. Popov speaks a
number of languages -- English, Chinese, Russian and Japanese
fluently -- and her husband, a former hockey player, is a
watchmaker. Until the bombing began, Mr. Popov used to play
pickup hockey with his friends a couple of times a week.
	Well-educated and, up to now, citizens of the world, they are
also entrepreneurial. Even with years of economic sanctions against
Yugoslavia, they managed to open two watch shops. (One of Mr.
Popov's sidelines is putting logos on watches for Western
companies.)
	Although Ms. Popov says she is flattered by the compliment,
she does not want to be the perfect immigrant to Canada.
	"I want to be a perfect tourist. I want to have friends in Canada
who want to come here to have good time. I don't want to be a
perfect immigrant, because that would mean something horrible
happened to me, because I had to go. That is not good. I don't want
that."
	The Popovs live in a two-bedroom apartment in a five-storey
building close to one of the bridges demolished by North Atlantic
Treaty Organization missiles in central Novi Sad. They own a car,
and before March 24, when the NATO campaign began, they were
planning on buying another. They also were building a new home
on the other side of the Danube.
	Until the bombings began, Ms. Popov also worked as a health
department volunteer making film documentaries on subjects such
as childbirth. She is now among a group of volunteers helping
children with psychological distress caused by the military attacks.
	Ms. Popov also worries terribly about the toxic air and water
effects of the destruction of Novi Sad's oil refinery and the
Panchevo petrochemical complex, an hour's drive away.
	All across Serbia, schools have been cancelled, leaving parents
exhausted and stressed from the weight of NATO bombing, unable
to provide home schooling. Ms. Popov said that parents, weary
from lack of sleep and tension, simply cannot enforce any study on
their children, many of whom are experiencing psychological
problems.
	Among younger ones, Ms. Popov said, this includes reversion
to thumb-sucking; among older children there is a tendency to turn
inward or to be aggressive.
	"Shelters are instant proof that something is wrong," Ms. Popov
said. "You get very tired, you don't sleep, it's cold, it's loud."
	Besides comforting her children, she is trying to deal with her
own rising feeling of resentment toward residents of NATO
countries who see "only tragedy on one side," the side of ethnic
Albanians in Kosovo.
	"People are understanding only one tragedy, yet the one that
they're inflicting on us has no meaning to them. The hardest part for
me is that nobody mentions us, nobody cares."
	Accusations that Serbians are responsible for ethnic cleansing of
ethnic-Albanians in Kosovo are especially hurtful, she said.
	"We gave our lives for Jews. Not one Jew died during the
Second World War at Serbians' hands in this country, while in
Europe they had a very big problem. That is my state of mind. No
one here can think in terms of ethnic cleansing. We just think that
this is historically insulting. There may be a problem, but there is no
ethnic cleansing. It's not that kind of war down there."
	Many Novi Sad residents are now forsaking the safety of the
air-raid shelters and stand on their balconies shaking their fists at
NATO's military might, she said.
	"They always run out and swear. They're all mad. Nobody is
crying. They're all mad and very insulted."
	She said the NATO attacks have stirred feelings of patriotism in
her and her friends, who include doctors, lawyers and artists.
	"I'm more of a patriot than I thought I was. I have many friends
who are getting ready to go and fight if they have to. They don't
want to, but they feel it's right. They don't care any more."