This is a document in Serbian
and English
where you can find various
information concerning
the NATO military action
against Serbia.
Sending you an almost
unique piece of journalism. It tells us that there
is "more than meets
the eye" to the stories about "mass atrocities"
committed by Serbians.
It shows rare critical and skeptical thinking in
a Western journalist.
Read and pass on. Perhaps the tide of scandalously
biased and superficial
journalism is finally turning...
Marjaleena Repo
for the Ad Hoc Committee
to Stop Canada's
Participation in the
War Against Yugoslavia
London Review of Books, Volume 21, Number 11, Cover date 27 May 1999
WHAT'S THE STORY?
(Audrey Gillan tries to find the evidence for mass atrocities in Kosovo)
Ferteze Nimari had lost
two of her brothers and her husband was forced
to bury all the dead
in one grave. Later, packed into a stifling bus
with sixty fellow Kosovars,
the couple held onto each other as he
clutched a strap suspended
from the ceiling. The bus stopped in the
Stankovac I refugee
camp in Macedonia and they told their story. 'The
tank came to our village
of Sllovi. The Serb neighbours said not to
worry - it was just
there to observe us. But by lunchtime the next day a
teenage girl lay dead
in the street. Then another 15 people were killed.
They told us to run
into the woods and they started shooting us.'
I asked them so many
questions about what they had seen. 'What happened
when your brothers were
shot?' 'How many people did you bury?' 'How do
you feel now?' When
they said the Serbs had forced an old woman into a
tent and burned her
alive I looked at them doubtfully and asked how they
knew she had been alive.
Someone from her family had seen it happen,
they said.
The Nimaris had arrived
at what they thought was a safe haven, but I
pursued them, and I
did so unsparingly. I got on the bus when the driver
opened the doors for
air. They had stood for hours on that malodorous
bus. I felt sorry for
them: but not so sorry that I stopped the
questions. They had
yet to step down to the misery of the camp the
British press has taken
to calling 'Brazda'. All they had was a bottle
of water passed to them
through an open window - and my questions.
Ferteze, eight months
pregnant, caught me glancing at the watch on her
wrist when Remzi, her
husband, said all the women in the village had
been robbed of their
jewellery.
Earlier that day, Ron
Redmond, the baseball-capped spokesman for the
United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees, stood at the Blace border
crossing from Kosovo
into Macedonia and said there were new reports of
mass rapes and killings
from three villages in the Lipljan area: Sllovi,
Hallac Evogel and Ribari
Evogel. He spoke to the press of bodies being
desecrated, eyes being
shot out. The way he talked it sounded as if
there had been at least
a hundred murders and dozens of rapes. When I
pressed him on the rapes,
asking him to be more precise, he reduced it a
bit and said he had
heard that five or six teenage girls had been raped
and murdered. He had
not spoken to any witnesses. 'We have no way of
verifying these reports
of rape,' he conceded. 'These are among the
first that we have heard
of at this border.'
Other UNHCR officials
later told stories of women being tied to the
walls of their houses
and burned, 24 bodies buried in Kosovo Polje.
Another report, again
from Sllovi, put the dead at a hundred. Mr and Mrs
Nimari were adamant
that it was 16. Truth can be scarce at the Blace
border and in the camps
dotted around Macedonia, but you are not allowed
to say that during a
war like this, where it may be that bad things are
being done on both sides,
just as you are not allowed to doubt atrocity.
It's as if Nato and
its entourage were trying to make up for the
witlessness of the past:
trying to show that whatever we do, we won't be
turning a blind eye.
But the simple-minded reporter in me wants to ask a
question: is there any
real evidence for what is being said?
In Macedonia, listening
to the stories and the UNHCR accounts, you would
find it hard to tell
what was hearsay and what was fact. When you looked
at the people clinging
onto the carrier bags that now held the remnants
of their lives, it seemed
evident that terrible things had happened to
them, that people had
been forced to flee their homes and drag
themselves to a non-life
in another country. Each person arriving at the
camps had experienced
some kind of trauma, and most are still living it.
Many have seen death
and other horrors. It is just that there is little
to suggest that they
have seen it in the ways, and on the scale, that
people want to say they
have. Most of those who have seen killing have
seen one or two shot
and the bodies of others. Eye-witnesses to multiple
atrocities are very
rare and the simple - and not at all simple - truth
is that it can often
be hard to establish the veracity of the
information. One afternoon,
the people in charge said there were
refugees arriving who
talked of sixty or more being killed in one
village, fifty in another,
but I could not find one eye-witness who
actually saw these things
happening.
Now, they may have happened.
But what we have is a situation where
Western journalists
accept details without question. Almost every day,
the world's media, jostling
for stories in Macedonia, strain to find
figures that may well
not exist. In the absence of any testimony, many
just report what some
agency or other has told them. I stood by as a
reporter from BBC World
reeled off what Ron Redmond had said, using the
words 'hundreds', 'rape'
and 'murder' in the same breath. By way of
qualification (a fairly
meaningless one in the circumstances), he added
that the stories had
yet to be substantiated. Why, then, had he reported
them so keenly in the
first place?
I found myself wanting
to discover the evidence. I was also impatient to
find a 'good' story
- i.e. a mass atrocity. As each new bus trundled
over the border, I told
my interpreter to shout through the windows
asking if anyone was
from the three villages Redmond had mentioned. Did
they know anyone, had
they seen anything? We went along twenty buses
before we found Mr and
Mrs Nimari. A transit camp had been set up in the
no man's land between
the river and the frontier road at Blace. This was
where the tens of thousands
were trapped in fetid misery before
Macedonian officials
dispersed them one night to the newly-built camps.
Now the place is used
to give a night's rest to some of the great many
who wait patiently at
this border for entry to a country that doesn't
want them and to which
they really don't want to go. Every 20 minutes,
the Macedonian police
let around two hundred people clamber down a dirt
path to be processed
before being admitted into the camp. As they stood
in line, I asked whether
anyone was from those villages and whether
they'd seen anything
they wanted to talk about. No one was and no one
did. Or at least they
didn't want to tell us about it.
It seemed that the Nimaris
were the only people from Sllovi. I was moved
by their fear and passion
to believe everything they said. Remzi told me
he'd buried the dead
in a grave in the woods at Lugi i Demes. It will
take the verifiers from
the International Criminal Tribunal for the
Former Yugoslavia in
The Hague to put our agitated, agitating minds at
rest.
The officers from ICTY,
the verifiers from the Organisation for Security
and Co-operation in
Europe and researchers from Human Rights Watch are
compiling reports of
war crimes, which will be used at a later date for
any trial at The Hague.
Speaking to these people, I found them to be
wary of using the hyperbole
favoured by reporters and by the UNHCR. They
say they have yet to
see evidence of atrocities on the scale that they
witnessed while working
in Bosnia. When I went to see Benedicte Giaever,
the co-ordinator for
OSCE's field office in Skopje, I saw that she was
angered by the behaviour
of the media. I squirmed when she said she had
heard of a female journalist
getting onto a bus to question some
refugees. She said almost
every journalist who came to see her asked one
thing: could she give
them a rape victim to interview. She spoke of one
woman being 'hunted
down' by journalists and having to have her tent
moved to shelter her
from their intrusions: she had had a breakdown.
I wanted at the same
time to test the validity of the truths being
offered us and to behave
decently in the face of what could not be known
for sure, and I knew
it wasn't possible to do both. Yet I could see that
much of this rough treatment
of female refugees was a direct consequence
of Robin Cook telling
the world that there was evidence of rape camps
inside Kosovo. 'Young
women are being separated from the refugee
columns,' he said, 'and
forced to undergo systematic rape in an army
camp. We have evidence
from many refugees who have managed to escape
that others were taken
to rape camps.'
I know of several tabloid
reporters who were despatched to Macedonia and
Albania with the sole
purpose of finding a rape victim. Talking to each
other in the bar of
Skopje's Hotel Continental we rehearsed the question
which has now become
notorious: 'Is there anyone here who's been raped
and speaks English?'
We were aware of the implications of some of our
more despicable behaviour.
We knew that one woman, raped by Serbian
soldiers then forced
to leave her country, was traumatised all over
again by a journalist
looking for a good story.
The things you come to
know as a journalist do not march in single file.
Facts are often renegade.
But among the rape victims arriving in
Macedonia nobody spoke
of anything like the camps the British Foreign
Secretary referred to.
Benedicte Giaever told me there had been rape,
but not systematic and
not on a grand scale. The same was true of the
killing. 'We don't have
big numbers,' she said. 'What we have are
consistent small numbers
- two here, five there, ten here, seven there.'
Unlike the media and
the UNHCR, the OSCE works in a slow, methodical
way, waiting a few days
till the refugees have settled in before they
begin to ask questions.
'These people have just arrived and I would say
they are still under
a lot of stress and tension,' Giaever says. 'In
that situation, 5 people
can easily turn into 75. It's not that they
want to lie but often
they are confused. It's not to say it didn't
happen. But a story
could have moved around from village to village and
everyone from that village
tells it as if it happened to them.'
Another senior OSCE source
spoke even more clearly than any of us were
inclined to do. He told
me he suspected that the Kosovo Liberation Army
had been persuading
people to talk in bigger numbers, to crank up the
horror so that Nato
might be persuaded to send ground troops in faster.
Robin Cook's rape camp
was the same thing, he said: an attempt to get
the British public behind
the bombing. And wasn't all this a lesson in
how propaganda works
in modern war?
When I came back to London,
I went to see the KLA's spokesman and
recruiting officer in
Golders Green. Dr Pleurat Sejdiu, sitting beside
the KLA flag and busts
of the Albanian national hero Skenderbeg, said
there were indeed rape
camps, and that the evidence of mass atrocities
was to be found among
the refugees in Albania, not in Macedonia. He is
in daily contact with
the KLA frontline command by satellite phone and
has been told of rape
camps in Gjakova, Rahovec, Suhareka, Prizren and
Skenderaj. 'We know
there are concentration camps and women are kept and
raped there,' he said.
'I don't think we will get the evidence until we
go in with the ground
troops. There are a lot of stories confirming it.
There are mass executions
and mass graves are appearing now. We have
reports from our special
units moving around Kosovo. And the pertinent
question is: where are
the young men who have been taken from the
refugee columns? I think
everything will be proved when Nato troops go
in.'
In Skopje I had been
to see Ben Ward, a researcher for Human Rights
Watch, in the flat he
is renting (he had found the Hotel Continental too
expensive and the behaviour
of the reporters too disconcerting): he
pored over maps of Kosovo
and pointed to villages where he knows
incidents have taken
place. His information comes from eye-witnesses and
is corroborated by the
testimony of others. He has noted a very definite
scorched-earth policy.
But while his latest report details killings and
the mutilation of corpses
in the villages of Bajnica and Cakaj, he
doesn't think there
is evidence of mass executions. 'It is very rare for
people not to know someone
who knows about people being killed. But
there doesn't appear
to be anything to support allegations of mass
killings,' he said.
'It is generally paramilitaries who are responsible.
It doesn't seem organised.
There appear to be individual acts of sadism
rather than anything
else. There seems not to be any policy or
instruction, but that
isn't to say that people have not been given the
latitude to kill. However,
I don't think at this stage we have anything
that adds up to the
systematic killing of civilians.' Ward believes that
those who stayed longer
in Kosovo have been subjected to more violence,
that many have been
terrorised because they have stayed so long. Many
have fled terror but
some of those Ward spoke to said they were fleeing
the Nato bombs. 'The
Serbs didn't touch us until Nato attacked,' a
Kosovar told him.
One morning I made a
two-year-old girl hysterical. I had asked her
parents to show me the
wound the child suffered when the bullet that
killed her grandmother
entered her shoulder. I was getting desperate for
some kind of truth to
hold onto. They pulled up Marigona Azemi's dress
and her pink T-shirt
and pointed to a worn bandage. She squealed and
said it was the 'licia'
who shot her, unable to get her small tongue
round the Albanian word
milicia. Like the majority of those killed or
wounded or abused by
the Serbs, Marigona was attacked by paramilitaries,
a vicious, marauding
band. Seven people in her village of Lovc -
including her grandmother
Nexhmije - were killed. Some villagers claimed
that a local teacher
and his cousin were skinned alive before they were
burned, others said
they were burned alive. No one actually saw this but
the rest of what they
had to say tallied when they told their stories
independently. The Azemi
family had been trying to escape on its tractor
when the paramilitaries
opened fire: what they did was sadistic and it
was a horrendous tale,
but it couldn't be turned into a story of mass
atrocity. Some people
tell me that evil is evil; that there's no point
in quantifying it. Does
that mean I am to accept Robin Cook's unchecked
facts because they align
with my hunches?
I feel bad for having
made Marigona cry in order to prove to myself that
there was truth in her
story. (For days, I went to her - pathetically -
with dolls and hair
bobbles and sweets and orange juice.) But that is
not all I feel. Watching
the television images and listening to the
newscasters thunder
about further reports of Serb massacres and of
genocide, I feel uneasy
about saying that they have very little to go
on. Yet almost every
newspaper journalist I spoke to privately in
Macedonia felt the same
way. The story being seen at home is different
from the one that appeared
to be happening on the ground.
Maybe the truth here
is not one thing: but I don't want to be an
accomplice to a lie.
I don't want to bellow for my life or for theirs,
yet there's something
not right in this easy way with detail. It is a
surreal place, Macedonia,
and it was this aspect to which a friend drew
my attention when I
got home. Nobody much wants to return to Jean
Cocteau, but there was
something soothing in the words my friend quoted.
'History is a combination
of reality and lies,' he said. 'The reality of
history becomes a lie.
The reality of the fable becomes the truth.'
Audrey Gillan is a reporter
on the Guardian, for whom she went to Macedonia.
Spasovdan?
Zdravo!
Danas je SPASOVDAN, krsna slava Beograda.
Taman smo se uziveli
u bednu ideju da je, posle Generalstaba i Kineske
ambasade, Beograd postedjen,
kad nam nocas, na krvavi jubilej od osam
nedelja bombardovanja,
vampiri priredise besanu noc... Nismo ni culi
Sizelu, negde oko 9.30,
pa se zacudismo na vest u dnevniku da je u
Beogradu na snazi vazdusna
opasnost. Krenuse avioni u nisko senlucenje,
PVO otkida... Mi stidljivo
provirismo na terasu (vise ne izlazimo od kad
su geleri od raketa
PVO poceli da padaju u nas kraj - Milovana
Marinkovica i Lepenicka
ulica). Na nebu orgije: krstarece rakete, 4 -5,
koliko prebrojah i bezbroj
crvenih projektila PVO. Znaci, bice svasta!
Onda, nesto posle ponoci,
grunu vrlo blizu prva jaka detonacija. Sidjemo
dole. Do 1.00, bilo
ih je jos jedno cetiri... Komsija preko puta
saopstava nam sa prozora
da gadjaju nesto iza Dedinjskog brda. Meni se,
u jednom trenutku ucinilo
da sam iza bolnice Dragise Misovica videla
neki bljesak. Gaga nam
javlja sa Crvenog Krsta da je videla da je to
nesto blizu nas, mozda
Banjica.
Na vestima studija B,
cujemo da je verovatno pogodjena benzinska pumpa
iza Zeleznicke bolnice,
kao i da su gadjali Baric (hemijska industrija
za koju bas i ne znamo
da li je stvarno ispraznjena) i naravno, obaveznu
Batajnicu. Avioni ne
posustaju, u korak ih prati zustra paljba PVO.
Mislimo na Nadu B. koja
je juce ujutru preuzela iz bolnice Sveti Sava
svoju slogiranu majku
i od veceras vise ne spava kod mene. Sada je sama
sa njom u kuci, a ja
sam joj sve vreme pricala kako je srecna sto nece
imati uspomene iz nocnog
bombardovanja Beograda, pa i nece imati sta da
prica uzbudljivo kada
se vrati u Englesku. Telefonirali smo joj - vrlo
je zabrinuta... Danas
smesta majku u Bezanijsku Kosu.
Ja popih moj Nobritem
oko 2.00 i legoh obucena posle jedno desetak dana
pravog nocnog spavanja
u namestenom krevetu.
Malocas cujem na vestima
da je sinoc pogodjena Zeleznicka bolnica,
Neurolosko odeljenje
je razoreno, bar 3 mrtva i dosta ranjenih
bolesnika, zatim porodiliste
- bilo cetiri porodjaja, ranjena i neka
deca. Slike uzasne...
Opet jos jedna kolateralna steta!
Naravno, sve to ide kao
obavezan refren intenzivne diplomatske
aktivnosti - Cernomirdin
u Beogradu, itd., a, kao sto znate, kazu da
jedno ne iskljucuje
drugo, vec da "vazdusna kampanja" (cuj, kampanja)
odprilike podrzava diplomate!
Glupa sam, brate, za neke stvari! Ne
razumem!
Idem sada u skolu na
neke konsultacije. Sta da savetujem (?!?) ono
nekoliko studenata koji
ce da dodju. Danasnja tema je kontinualno
upravljanje. Ovo sto
dozivljavamo je kontinualno ubijanje... Dodajte
ovde nekoliko psovki,
najruznijih, koje znate...
Voli vas
Dusa
Part A. Health effects
1. Civilian Casualties
The most prominent effect
of NATO bombing is killing of civilians,
so-called and explained
as "collateral damage". During the last
fifty-seven days of
bombing, over more than 1,000 civilians have been
killed and several times
more severely wounded.
a) Three bedriden patients killed in Belgrade
Early morning on May
20, 1999 (01:00 AM), Clinic for Neurology of
Hospital Centre "Dragisa
Misovic" in Belgrade was directly hit by two
bombs and burned to
the ashes. Three patients have been killed in their
hospital beds. Maternity
hose and Surgery Clinik in near vicinity has
been seriously damaged
(Glas Javnosti, May 20, 1999). Four women had
been evacuated during
their induced labor (RT Politika, Morning News,
May 20, 9:00).
b) Korisa
The most horrible event
had happened on May 13, 1999, when NATO jets hit
Albanian refugee's line
in village Koris, near Prizren town. NATO has
said that it attacked
the village in southern Kosovo where up to 100
civilians died on Friday.
The Alliance statement went on to say that the
village was a "legitimate
military target" and that NATO deeply
regretted any accidental
civilian casualties that were caused by the
attack.. NATO said that
the village of Korisa was being used as a
military camp. Speaking
on the BBC, NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said: "We
have reports that soldiers
were also involved in the casualties, not
simply civilians." BBC
Correspondent Jacky Rowland, who visited the
village some 24 hours
after the attack, said she saw no evidence of any
military equipment in
the area (BBC-Brussels, May 15, 1999). Many other
"collateral damages"
in towns all around Yugoslavia are well documented,
as follows.
c) Towns in Kosovo and Metohija:
More than four hundred
civilians were killed in the bombing of Pristina,
Djakovica, Prizren,
Kosovo Polje, Urosevac, Kosovska Mitrovica, refugee
centers in Orahovac
and Srbica, Vitina, etc.
d) Belgrade
Several dozen civilians
were killed and more than one hundred wounded in
the bombing of various
parts of the city, including its very center: the
building of Radio and
Television of Serbia (16 killed and 19 wounded
professional journalists
and technical staff), Embassy of the People s
Republic of China (3
employees killed and more than 50 wounded), the
buildings of the federal
and republican ministries, business center
"Usce", etc.
On 23 April 1999, NATO
aggressors demolished the building of the Radio
and Television of Serbia
in Belgrade, the largest radio and TV company
in the Balkans
with 7000 employees and the state-of-the-art
infrastructure which
was made available to seven hundred foreign
correspondents. On that
occasion 16 employees of the Radio and
Television of Serbia
lost their lives while 19 sustained severe
injuries.
On April 30, 1999, Veselin
Toshkov for The Associated Press had
reported: "Fire and
thick smoke rose from the heart of Belgrade today
after NATO jets blasted
the headquarters of the Yugoslav army, the
interior ministry and
a residential area. NATO acknowledged one of its
missiles missed its
target (The Associated Press, April 30, 1999).
In the most fierce bombing
of Belgrade so far, in the night between 7
and 8 May 1999, NATO
aircraft hit with three missiles the building of
the Embassy of the People
s Republic of China in New Belgrade, a new
structure of exceptional
architectural value. According to BBC Online,
Nato has admitted it
made a tragic mistake in firing missiles at the
Chinese embassy in the
Yugoslav capital, Belgrade, while statement on
Chinese television said
Beijing severely condemned a "barbaric attack
and a gross violation
of Chinese sovereignty" (BBC Online, May 8, 1999).
e) Surdulica
Twenty civilians were
killed (including 12 children) and over 100
wounded (including 24
seriously) during the bombing on 27 April 1999.
BBC Online promptly
reported that "The death toll in Surdulica, 200
miles south of Belgrade,
remained unclear several hours after the air
strike. Local officials
said more than 17 people were killed, national
television put the figure
at 20, while a journalist for Cable News
Network counted 16 bodies
at a local morgue, 11 of them children.
Officials said about
50 houses were destroyed in the attack, at midday
on Tuesday, and 600
others were damaged. Nato issued a statement saying
its aircraft carried
out a "successful attack against an army barracks
in Surdulica."
It added: "Nato does not target civilians, but we cannot
exclude harm to civilians
or civilian property during our air operations
over Yugoslavia.". Sources
at the Pentagon said a bomb may have lost its
laser guidance in the
smoke put up by earlier explosions (BBC Online,
April 28, 1999).
f) Nis
Fifteen citizens were
killed and more than 60 wounded in the bombing of
the center of the town
by cluster bombs on 7 May 1999.
g) Kursumlija
Thirteen civilians were
killed and twenty five wounded in an attack on
this town.
h) Aleksinac
Twelve civilians were
killed and forty wounded in the bombing of 5 April
1999.
i) Murino near Rozaje
Five civilians were killed
and eight children wounded in the bombing of
this village.
2. Children as victims
NATO bombing is forced
children to live in shelters and deprived of
elementary, health and
social care. They are exposed to stresses which
will permanently affect
their development. Furthermore, according FRY
Ministry of Foreign
Affairs (b) many children were killed or wounded in
the bombing of civilian
structures and residential areas which can be
illustrated by following
examples:
* the killing of several
dozen of children during the bombing of the
train in Grdelica gorge
on 12 April, the buss in Luzani on 1 May and
buss on the Pec-Rozaje
road on 3 May 1999
* the killing of nineteen
children in the refugee column near Djakovica
on 14 April 1999
* the killing of twelve
children during the bombing of Surdulica on 27
April 1999
* the killing of nine children in the bombing of Kursumlija
* the killing of seven children in Srbica from cluster bombs
* the killing of six
children in the bombing of a refugee center in
Djakovica
* the killing of five
children from the Koxa family in the village of
Doganovici near Urosevac
when six children were wounded by cluster bombs
* three children and
two adults killed by a cluster bomb in the village
of Velika Jablanica
near Pec on 2 May 1999
* two children killed in Aleksinac on 5 April 1999
* the killing of a three-year
old girl in the Belgrade suburb of
Batajnica, and many
other cases
3. Refugees as Victims
* On 14 April 1999, 75
citizens of the FR of Yugoslavia were killed and
over 40 of them sustained
serious injuries in the bombing of a large
group of refugees on
the Djakovica-Prizren road
4. Passengers in Vehicles of Public Transportation as Victims
* Fifty-five passengers
were killed and twenty-six wounded in the
Grdelica gorge during
the attack on the international passenger train on
the Belgrade-Thessaloniki
line on 12 April 1999
* Sixty passengers lost
their lives and four were wounded during the
bombing of the "Nis
express" coach near the village of Luzani. On that
occasion NATO warplanes
bombed also the ambulance which came to help the
victims when one doctor
was injured on 1 May 1999
* At least twenty people
were killed and twenty were injured during the
attack on the coach
on the Pec-Rozaje line on 3 May 1999
5. New Types of Injuries
NATO amply use weapons
banned by the Geneva Convention, such as cluster
bombs. In the period
between 25 March and 15 May 1999, over 60
containers each with
240 cluster bombs (i.e. over 15,000 bombs), as well
as more than 400 cluster
bombs, have been dropped over the territory of
the Federal Republic
of Yugoslavia. About 40 containers and over 250
cluster bombs have been
dropped over Kosovo and Metohija, killing about
200 and wounding over
450 people. Material damage has been enormous:
entire housing estates
have been destroyed, as well as schools and
hospitals, industrial
plants and communication infrastructure. Dozens of
people, primarily children,
have been killed and wounded as a
consequences of the
delayed effect of the cluster bombs and new human
casualties and destruction
can be expected from the remaining unexploded
bombs (Yugoslav Foreign
Ministry, Aide Memoire, Belgrade, May 17, 1999).
Cluster bombs couse
new type of injuries. According to Professor Dr
Antonije Skokljev, General
Major in Retire, Ex-Head of the
Maxillo-Facial Surgery
Clinic VMA (Military Hospital) Belgrade "This
kind wounds was new
even for the two experienced surgeons, Dr Lazar
Davidovic and Dr Dragan
Markovic. They have operated for three weeks on
Kosovo, Pristina under
extremely difficult conditions: no water, no
electricity. These two
cardio-vascular surgeons have treated the
injuries of small Sadrina,
Albanian girl whose arm was saved in spite of
the difficult injury
from the cluster bomb. Dr Davidovic and Dr Markovic
reports are full of
previously unwitnessed injuries, such as victims'
bones crashed to such
an extent so that they were pulverized by cluster
bombs" (TiM, May 5,
1999).
6. Acute Health Effects
Releasing of above described
toxic compounds (see Chapter III) caused
slightly intoxication
of affected civilians. For example, more than
100,000 citizens of
Pancevo region (Belgrade's northern suberb) were
endangered after bobming
of petrochemical complex on April 15th and
18th. However, there
are no reports about lethal effects caused by
intoxication.
The use of graphite bombs
which have caused short circuits on
long-distance power
lines and collapse of the electric power system of
Serbia had produced
severe problems in obtaining elementary needs
(health, hygiene, etc)
of entire population. The most severely affected
are hospitals
(particularly maternity hospitals - incubators, etc),
including all patients
(especially emergency cases and those in
intensive care units),
as well as the residents in cities who live in
the high-rises and others.
7. Chronic Health Effects
Several of above described
toxic compounds (see Chapter III), released
after NATO bombing,
could cause chronic health effects. First of all is
depleted uranium, but
also other carcinogenic and toxic substances (e.g.
VCM).
There is large evidence
of using DU ammunition. On 30 March 1999, A-10
planes bombed the region
of Greater Prizren. On 18 April 1999 A-10
planes used radio-active
ammunition in the region of Greater Bujanovac.
On the basis of spectrometric
tests and identification of
radio-nucleides it can
be positively averred that the sample - the
bullet for the 30-millimetre
cannon of the A-10 plane - contains
depleted uranium. The
diameter of the core is 16 mm, length 95 mm, mass
292 gramme and the calculated
density about 18 g/cm. The tested sample
has been appropriately
deposited and may be offered as evidence material
(Yugoslav Foreign Ministry,
Aide Memoire, Belgrade, May 17, 1999).
Such effects could be
only monitored at long-term scale.
Ass. Prof. Dr. Radoje
Lausevic
Serbian Ecological Society
Univ. Belgrade, Fac.
Biol.
Inst. Bot. & Bot.
Garden "Jevremovac"
Takovska 43, 11000 Belgrade,
Yugoslavia
Tel: +381 11 767-988
Fax: +381 11 769-903
rlausevi@EUnet.yu