La fabbrica di Zastava bombardata

Notizia Televideo:

186 TELEVIDEO Ve 09 Apr 15:19:32 14.05

BOMBE SU FABBRICA, FERITI "SCUDI UMANI"

Nel bombardamento Nato di stanotte sarebbero rimasti feriti 120 operai della fabbrica Zastava, che produce auto e armi leggere.

Secondo la direzione della fabbrica, gli operai feriti si erano schierati come "scudi umani" a protezione degli impianti.

I missili della Nato avrebbero colpito il reparto dove si producono camion, il reparto verniciatura e altre installazioni. Timori per un inquinamento da gas tossici.

Automobile workers tried to disuade bombing

(Gli operai hanno cercato di impedire i bombardamenti)

Dispaccio agenzia cinese Xinhua

09-APR-99

KRAGUJEVAC Yugoslavia, (April 9) XINHUA - Six NATO bombs exploded right in front of thousands of Zastava employees early on Friday wounding hundreds, of whom 126 were hospitalized.

Up in the sky NATO pilots knew there were people inside the automobile factory complex while down on the ground Zastava employees and their families knew that bombs were falling upon them.

It was a combat between steel bombs and human bodies. Ever since the onslaught of NATO bombing against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, employees and their families of the Zastava Automobile Factory have been protecting, day and night, their livelihood with their body.

The 150-year-old factory provides jobs for 38,000 people around Kragujevac and for 60,000 more in 200 other automobile component factories around the country.

Families and relatives included, the six bombs that exploded inside the Kragujevac factory could affect the livelihood of upwards of 300,000 in this country, which has a population of 1.1 million.

The bombs severely damaged the molding workshop, paint workshop, power plant, truck assembly line and car assembly line of the factory. More than half of the 300 hectares of the factory were demolished within seconds right in front of the very eyes of its employees.

Average monthly salary of Zastava employees already plummeted from 875 Deutsch marks before international sanctions to 52 marks at the time being.

"Has the worst already happened to us or not?" asked Milan Beko, a chairman of the board of directors of the enterprise that used to manufacture 235,000 automobiles a year, but now it only managed to produce between 5,000 and 8,000 vehicles a year.

With the assistance of the Serbian government, Zastava planned to turn out 27,000 cars this year to improve the living standards of its employees.

But....What Zastava employees could not understand was that they exported 165, 000 Yugo cars to the United States within two years back in 1985 and 1986.

Their truck production line was a joint venture with Italy's Iveco while their paint workshop used German equipment and then these countries joined hands in bombing the factory.

Beko asked that if Zastava was bombed for the fact that the military and police use its vehicles for transport, then should the Yugoslav farmers, bakers and tailors be bombed for feeding and clothing the servicemen and women?

"What on earth is the world order NATO is using its Tomahawk democracy to create for the next millenium?" he asked.