Letter from Zastava workers
To the public of all NATO countries
The following letter is from the workers at the Yugo auto
plant in Zastava. NATO planes bombed it even though the workers
had announced their decision to stay in the factory as a human
shield to protect their jobs. More than 120 people were wounded
and 40,000 people have lost the means to feed their families.
Photos and more stories about Yugoslavia can be found at
www.aic.org.yu and
www.barw.org.yu.
This night, the 9th of April, the Zastava factory plants in
Kragujevac were bombed. The live shield is broken through.
This bombardment has inflicted severe damage to factory
equipment and almost completely destroyed the energy supply
complex that served not only Zastava's needs, but also the
heating of the entire city of Kragujevac: its residential
houses, schools, faculties, hospitals. ...
We were horror-stricken 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 among us either could or was willing to assume as
possible did happen: Kragujevac has re-experienced its World
War 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 once
friendly countries which used to send us the ideas of
humanness, freedom, maybe the greatest treasure that we have in
modern civilization? What has happened to all those ideas--and
have they been just an illusion that dispersed at the first
sound of raised arms?
We, the small people, who have looked with admiration at all
the great things coming from you, could not or did not want to
accept that this was so. Haven't we, still, been mistaken? Has
anyone from among you given 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 [is what] 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 560, knowing that
destruction of the factory would call into 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 realization of that decision every day,
not to leave our plants after the expiration of working hours,
not even when the alarms would sound air strikes, thus staying
round the clock at our work places.
By night our family members and citizens of Kragujevac were
visiting us, giving us support and making these moments of
painful suspense easier. In order to prevent a horrendous
catastrophe that might arise due to the insane act of an attack
on our factory, through the media we have addressed the local
and worldwide public, giving the precise coordinates of the
factory, and pointing at the potential losses, spiritual and
material, that might be inflicted by its destruction. In our
addresses we appealed to the public of NATO member countries,
to the conscience of the common people in those countries. 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, April 9, 1999
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
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