AB9H

YUDXC SCAM !

YUDXC SCAM - FOR HOW LONG IT WILL BE TOLERATED ??

After reviewing published results of a 2005 YUDXC, I have found again that organizers with their actions, are continuing with indecent practices of misleading International Amateur Radio Community, and their colleagues contesters at first! Namely, they are organizing a contest called YUDXC, with effort to present and popularize stations from Yugoslavia (today Serbia & Montenegro) to the World HAM-Radio Community , which would mean that prefixes with YU, YZ etc, that belong to their territory would be seen as stations organizers and multiplier during a contest. But that is not the case! As widely known, Bosnia - Herzegovina, before yr.1992. used to be a part of former Yugoslavia with a legal prefix YU4, YZ4, YT4, etc,. and after Independence was declared, in 1992, Bosnia-Herzegovina was widely recognized by the International Community, and within IARU assigned T9 prefix for its entire territory. So, knowing this, one would assume that stations with prefix YU4, today would be located at a territory of Serbia & Montenegro (so called Yugoslavia), but they are not, and there is a problem! Organizers of a YUDXC are continuing to include stations with YU4 prefix, physically located at the territory of Bosnia - Herzegovina, what means foreign territory, as their own! And that is not the only problem! Again, they do everything knowingly - just last year, when contest rules were released , on the BDX forum, some ham-s have raised questions about the YU4 prefix in the contest rules! And this, was an answer posted by VA3TTN ,on April 12.2005, who is known as one of the organizers :

 “ Fellows, be practical - there is no positive use of complications. It is clear that to so called “foreign” participants any prefix which begin with YU4, YT4, etc. seems as any other which begins with those letters. So, because of that, leave them (other contesters) to their appeasing goofs! “

 Disgrace, my fellow HAM-s! Instead of being honest and, if no other, at least exclude YU4 from their contest rules, organizers are continuing their expansionistic politics toward Bosnia Herzegovina, this time thru HAM-radio! And, today, two weeks before another YUDXC is scheduled, I am asking you if this behavior should be tolerated , or if this problem should be addressed at all ??

 73, Joe AB9H

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'Prefix Problem' in Bosnia-Herzegovina:

President of HRS (Croatian Ham-Radio Association) and president of SRSCG (Serbia-Montenegro Ham-Radio-Assoc.) meet to discuss "prefix problem" in Bosnia

Well, well, well here they are , now and again!! President of Serbia's ham-radio assoc. Hrane Milosevic YT1AD and president of Croatian ham-radio assoc. Petar Milicic 9A6A, again feel they have some right to regulate internal affairs of Bosnia-Herzegovina! By their own words there is a "problem with prefix" T9 in Bosnia, which is, by the way, legally assigned to Internationally recognized Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and recognized by IARU.

Real issue behind their effort to "try to fix a problem with prefix", actually, is another attempt to legalize their ethnically clean regions in Bosnia-Herzegovina, what were created during a bloody aggression and ethnic cleansing in 92 to 95 war. Same those "region of interests", by the way, thru all this years after 1992 recognition of Independence of Bosnia-Herzegovina, have used illegal prefixes and call-signs, which were in direct breach of International law, and IARU regulations!

Today those gentlemen's are not talking to people within their "regions of interests", that their use of a prefixes like YU4 for republika srpska, and 9A11, for herzeg-Bosna are illegal, but they are encouraging their wrongdoing, trying again to partition Bosnia, and at a same time to misinform International ham-radio community, and pursue their goal - to get a new prefixes assigned within Bosnia-Herzegovina which will be representing, not a ham-radio, but ethnically clean territory's formed by war and genocide. Sad day for ham-radio community my fellow ham's!

73 Joe M. Habibovic AB9H

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'Postcard from the Grave'            

The following article was written by Mr. Emir Suljagic, writer, survivor of a Srebrenica Massacre, July 11, 1995 in Eastern Bosnia, depicting the role of Radio-Amateurs during aggression over Bosnia. Unfortunately, today, 10 years after, those HAM's are being forgotten by all of the ruling authorities in Bosnia, local and International! I am posting this article to pay homage to all the HAM's fallen during aggression over Bosnia! 73, Joe, AB9H

Postcard From The Grave
By: Emir Suljagic
Memories of Sead and Senad

Them two were, at least in my eyes, the soul of the city when it was sentenced to pitilessness, and when everything around us was in deadly silence. Sead and Senad Dautbasic were, as I thought, we all should have been. Serious, and strict to others, but even more strict to themselves. They were the greatest fanatics among radio amateurs that I had ever met. I saw them everyday for more than two years and it continued to amuse me how people confused one with the other. Of course only after I could tell them apart.

They were those rare type of people that war couldn’t ruin. Their honesty was frightening, sense for duties rare, as the way they completed their job. More than once I watched as they almost with disgust -- during a time when every crumb of food was precious -- refused gifts from the villagers in exchange for speaking with their families. Both quiet, I had a feeling that they could only confess to each other; we, the others, were strangers, and they were mysterious to me as they were the first time I met them.

The next two years I watched them making plans, wish they had this and that -- to me this was all the same strange -- so that in the summer of 1994 they could keenly begin to work. I don’t know how it was possible to do that, but day after day they stretched the wire from hilltop to hilltop above the narrow Srebrenica valley, rise some strange metal poles on the roof of the post office, and at the end, again they were disappointed, because the signal, or whatever, wasn’t as “strong” as they wished. But that antenna was, for sure, the biggest one in the country at the moment.

Thanks only to them, during all those years I was able to speak to the rest of my family; and I wasn’t the only one. Sead and Senad never looked for a reward. Patiently they waited, when it was available, the end of the month and their “pay”: a few kilograms of flour and something of some orange powder, for which, until it was mixed in water it wasn’t clear that it was juice. All that time they were in the same faded pants, and shoes they got from the Humanitarian Aid. They never drank coffee or smoked, but every pack of coffee they ever got from me or Mr. Nuhanovic they took to Nasir Sulejmanovic, our electrician, whom for close friends would say, that “together with a soldering iron he weighed 10 kilograms”.

Sometime after the “fiasco” with the antenna, someone discovered in one of the storage rooms a whole pile of Energoinvest’s computers type Iris 8.1, which was some ancient version of Tetris. We all franticly had played the game in which yellowish figures spun around, too fast for the naked eye to keep up with, on a black background. Twins, but we all saw them as one, soon became the undefeated champions of this strange sport, a sport which took us to some type of normality.

When the Serbs attacked Srebrenica for the last time, they moved the station from room to room, trying to move away from the shelling. The last time I saw them they were in a small room up under the stairwell, where with great hardship they managed to turn the radio on. Nihad Catic, the only reporter left, read his last report from Srebrenica. Sead and Senad were sitting next to him. I am sure that, one or the other, as always, after Nihad had finished his report, reached for some button on the radio, and said: “E, dobro!” (O.K.), looked at each other, satisfied that they had successfully finished the report.  For the last time.

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BOSNIA 1995

The genocide

Srebrenica is situated in what had become, and still is, Republika Srpska. The town, declared a UN safe area in 1992, was now a Bosniak enclave in the care of the French and Dutch governments. In July 1995 Serb troops and paramilitaries led by Ratko Mladic descended on Srebrenica and began shelling it. They had already dealt with Muslim soldiers in the countryside villages. Now they were besieging Srebrenica's thousands of Muslim civilians. Food supplies and water began to dwindle, buildings were damaged, people were injured. Soon Serb troops were able to take up positions close the town's outskirts. In Bosnia's capital, Sarajevo, a radio message from an amateur operator in Srebrenica was heard: 'Please do something. Whatever you can. In the name of God, do something.'

The contingent of Dutch soldiers who made up the UN military presence safeguarding the town (from their HQ in a suburban factory complex) could do little. They were poorly equipped and had no back-up. In any case, over two dozen of them had been taken prisoner by the Serbs and no-one wanted to take action that might endanger the hostages' lives.

However, the Dutch commander did repeatedly ask the French (their military colleagues in this operation) to provide immediate deterrent air strikes; but his requests were repeatedly stalled. (The story goes that one request was rejected because it was on the wrong fax form.) Still hoping for French assistance, the Dutch commander warned Serb officials that there would be air strikes at 6.00 a.m. on the morning of July 11 unless Serbian troops moved away from the town's borders.

But there were no air strikes that dawn (though two jets flew over later). Instead, the Serbs' bombardment intensified. Thousands of Muslims made for the Dutch compound - some killed by shells as they fled. Throughout the day a stream of refugees was slowly admitted inside: up to 6,000 by nightfall. 20,000 more were left waiting outside. There was no food, little water, and a lot of fear.

The following morning representatives of the Dutch battalion and of the Muslims heard that Mladic had made a promise: everyone would be allowed to cross out of Serb territory, but the men would have to be screened first, so that war criminals could be detected, before rejoining their families. Meanwhile, Serb troops quietly surrounded the Dutch HQ.

Soon afterwards Mladic himself appeared, caught on film in genial mode and reassuring a group of women that all would be well. ('Thank you,' they cried.) After him came large numbers of trucks and buses. Serb troops at once began separating off the men from women and children among the civilians outside the UN compound. Women and children were forced on to the trucks and buses. As they were deported, they could hear gunfire echoing round the hills; and they saw corpses lying by the road.

The following day the transports returned to fetch more women and children. There were

now no men to be seen among the people in the street, and soon no women and children either. By noon the Serbs were ready to deal with the remaining thousands inside the camp. The Dutch gave the order: 'Leave the camp in groups of 5'. The Serbs stood at the entrance, once again isolating the men and boys.

The deportation of Srebrenica's population took 4 days, and the UN assisted in a way it didn't foresee and couldn't prevent: the Serbs removed the Dutch soldiers' blue peacekeeping helmets and later wore them themselves to trick escapees into handing themselves over.

Up to 7,500 men, and boys over 13 years old, were killed. They were trucked or marched to their places of death. Up to 3,000, many in the act of trying to escape, were shot or decapitated in the fields. (Mladic had sent out his written order to 'block, crush and destroy the straggling parts of the Muslim group'; it was carried out.) 1,500 were locked in a warehouse and sprayed with machine gun fire and grenades. Others died in their thousands on farms, football fields, school playgrounds. The whole action was carried out with military efficiency. (It is said that the transport drivers were each forced to kill one man, to deter them from testifying against the Serb troops later.)

Thousands of the bodies were buried in mass graves. US aerial reconnaissance film shows the signs of a mass grave being covered by earth-moving equipment. Later many bodies were dug up and moved to more secret burial places