Roots
AdvocacyNet.org describes its formation during the turmoil in the former Yugoslavia. It says, "Electronic information became an instrument of war and peace during the collapse of Yugoslavia." Amidst the "worst crimes committed in Europe this century" the first major experiment in email was launched in June 1992 in Zagreb and Belgrade, almost exactly a year after Croatia seceded from Yugoslavia, triggering a brutal response from Serbia.
This venture got the support of the George Soros-funded Open Society Institute, and US peace activist Eric Bachman, living in Europe since 1969, together with the Dutch peace activist Wam Kat (who wrote his daily "Zagreb Dairy" on Zamir), set up an electronic network between peace groups in the region. Eric Bachman enlisted the help of FoeBuD (now digitalcourage), an organisation promoting digital communications and privacy and based in Bielefeld, Germany. In the early years, bulletin board systems in London, Austria and Bielefeld provided the shortest routes for electronic messages across the borders of the emerging Balkan states. The network was named ZaMir ("For Peace") Transnational Net.
A research work titled Documenting the impact of the community peacebuilding practices in the post-Yugoslav region as a basis for policy framework development conducted by Ms. Marina Škrabalo, an activist of the Centre for Peace Studies, Croatia, provides some details.
It says: "(The) initial steps to enable communication among emerging peace groups separated by the lines of conflict took place in October 1991, when an improvised fax relay system was set up, with the help of international solidarity organizations such as War Resisters International (WRI) and the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR) that acted as intermediaries and dispatchers of messages. A turning point was early 1992 when the Communications Aid project for the people in former Yugoslavia was launched by foreign peace groups together with the Center for the Culture of Peace and Nonviolence in Ljubljana, the Anti-War Campaign of Zagreb and the Center for Anti-war Action in Belgrade, with the objective of setting up an alternative electronic mail system (bulletin board system or BBS) that could work on poor quality telephone lines and simple computers, the only available ICT resources at that time in the war-stricken post-Yugoslav region.
Read more about this topic: Za Mir NET
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