ANATOMY OF DECEIT
Copyright© 1997 by
Jerry Blaskovich.
Electronic edition by Studia Croatica,
by permission of the author
Little did I
realize that participating in the Vocin medical
investigation, observing my colleagues' medical heroics at the front lines, and
talking to the survivors of Vukovar would trigger my
personal odyssey to attempt to rectify media distortions.
Over time I began questioning who was committing the greater crime, the
perpetrators of terror or those who ignored it?
Because no forum existed to rebut unsubstantiated statements by media pundits,
I used the only method available to an individual, the media itself. My letters
to editors and Op-Ed pieces as well as my direct letters to politicians have
been moderately successful because they were acknowledged and/or published.
In an attempt
to set the record straight I became a frequently called upon commentator about
the atrocities for various civic clubs, including the Kiwanis and Lions. I
presented my paper, The Hits and Myths of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, at
the plenary session of the XVth International Humanitas Congress of the World Federation of Humanists
held at Arizona State University (Tempe). I gave one of the keynote addresses
and chaired a forum on the subject sponsored by the Rosen Holocaust Center at
the University of California at Irvine.
Acutely aware
of the ramifications of disinformation, the Croatian Physicians For Human Rights and Professor Matko
Marusic, Associate Dean of the University of Zagreb
Medical School, urged me to expand upon my essays and other writings and
publish them before the revisionists take over.
My desire to
uncover the truth prompted me to return to the devastated areas in former
Yugoslavia seven times. During each trip, while visiting the front lines,
inspecting refugee camps, medical facilities, and interviewing rape victims, I
witnessed the human misery increasing exponentially. There was no shortage of
statistics to support my subjective observations. But for me, when the
statistics took on human faces and dimensions, the conflict became personal.
While interviewing victims I was often moved to tears by the victims' appalling
stories. In order to separate my professionalism from sympathy, I'd excuse
myself and leave for a few moments. I'd take a deep breath, occasionally mutter
a silent prayer, and then return to my task.
One such later
mission started on July 13,1992, in Zagreb, when I
escorted Assistant Director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Dr. Thomas
Durant and Attending Physician at John Hopkins Hospital Dr. David A. Bradt, both acknowledged experts in evaluating refugee
problems, to former Yugoslavia. Their primary mission was to evaluate the
health needs in the region. We excluded Serbia and Montenegro because both
regions were undamaged, and nobody had been wounded or lost a life due to war
in those republics.
We met our
Croatian counterparts at the Institute for Mother and Child Health. The
Institute served as the main children's hospital for the Republic of Croatia
and the final triage point in the referral chain. Hospital chief Dr. Ivan Fattorini and his staff eagerly provided us with
information about the medical ramifications pertinent to our mission.
The Serbs
destroyed or damaged a large number of medical facilities in Croatia. Besides
causing a large number of casualties, the Serbian ethnic cleansing program
resulted in hundreds of thousands of displaced persons that severely strained
the remaining medical facilities. But after the Serbian forces unleashed their
attack on Bosnia, Croatia became inundated with an enormous influx of refugees,
many suffering from major physical and mental trauma, and further jeopardizing
an already fragile health care system. Ironically, due to the nature of their
Serbian weaponry, one-third of the treated war injured children were Croatian
Serbs.
War injuries,
amputations and burns, which aren't common in urban hospitals, require
intensive nursing care and prolonged, costly rehabilitation. Besides the war
trauma cases, the hospital was morally and ethically bound to treat Bosnian
children for "normal" illnesses. Sophisticated treatments such as
chemotherapy were prohibitively expensive. So since Croatia's economic status
was precarious, allotments to treat these patients were given low priority. At
the same time American physicians were agonizing over what creature comforts
Clinton's health plan would allow for their patients, such as the size of TV
screens, or whether one or two patients would be comfortable in a hospital
room, Croatian physicians were agonizing over the morality of withholding
certain medications from patients with leukemia in order to treat patients who
were considered more salvageable. Traffic accidents further strained the
medical system; one-half of all traffic accidents in Zagreb involved refugees,
mostly Bosnian children.
On our
fact-finding mission we visited a broad spectrum of medical facilities, from comparatively
tranquil Zagreb and Split to war-ravaged Osijek, Slavonski
Brod, Karlovac, and Mostar. We saw facilities with sophisticated, first class
equipment, and facilities where bandages were removed from the dead, washed and
then reused on the living. We went to "new" medical centers in
basements, bunkers, and warrens created from destroyed buildings that had
forced physicians and patients underground. Major trauma was managed under
unimaginable conditions, occasionally without anesthesia, but always with
caring, skilled hands. Disposable items, which we in more comfortable
situations take for granted, were reused ad infinitum. Despite their
frustrations, the physicians never seemed to lose their compassion and respect
for human life.
Although
practicing medicine under often extremely adverse conditions, the heroics and
expertise of the physicians and treatment protocols remained outstanding.
Medically, Croatia was a first world country whose crude mortality rate was on
a par with the United States.
Operations in
the remaining 20% of Osijek's hospital functioned with an optimism that belies
the destruction. Chief of Urology Dr. Antun Tucak graciously escorted our team around his surreal
domain. The American medical team duly noted that the hospital had few
buildings that were salvageable and would have to be totally rebuilt.
In the Slavonian city of Djakovo we had
an audience with Bishop Cyril Kos. His briefing impressed us more than any
other individuals on our odyssey. He viewed the world's reaction to the Serbian
atrocities and the flood of refugees like cries in the wilderness. The bishop
said Croatia was caring for 350,000 Muslim and 270,000 Catholic refugees from
Bosnia and appealed to the world for assistance.
The tent and
barrack city of Gasinci lay just outside Djakovo. Once a JNA base, at the time of our visit Gasinci housed approximately 3,000 Muslim refugees, mostly
women and children. Those billeted in barracks were going to be the fortunate
ones when winter came. One pediatrician and a couple of paramedical assistants
had the responsibility of caring for all the inmates' medical and social needs.
The clinic had no set closing time; it stayed open as there were people seeking
help. Physicians volunteered from the Institute in Zagreb and rotated
approximately every three weeks.
The high
caliber of medicine practiced in Croatia and the physicians' selfless heroics
had thus far kept morbidity from infectious diseases in check. Upon arrival at
the camps, refugees were immediately immunized.
Of course,
those who brought current immunization records with them were exempt. Despite
the fact that these refugees came from supposedly primitive areas, most were
found to have been previously immunized. In contrast, Los Angeles County public
health records show that only one-third of the county's children has received their necessary vaccinations.
We drove to Slavonski Brod whose 40,000
population had been burdened with 60,000 refugees.
Sandbags
surrounded the hospital, geared for attack. Every day approximately 100
patients were admitted, 95% of who had shrapnel wounds. Chairman of Internal
Medicine Dr. Dragica Bistrovic
oversaw a hospital whose primary function was caring for the refugees in the Brod area. Her dynamic enthusiasm touched everyone with
whom she came into contact.
The Sava River
separates the Croatian city of Slavonski Brod from Bosnia's Bosanski Brod. In order to reach Bosanski Brod we had to be escorted by Croatian militia over a
bridge that had been bombed numerous times by Serbian aircraft. Iron plates
covered the partially destroyed areas so the bridge was still usable. The
military personnel were lightly armed. Most of the houses around the bridge had
been destroyed and all the extant buildings were pockmarked from projectile
hits. So we were surprised to see that the mosque had escaped damage. Standing
like a beacon, it offered a ray of hope for the Muslims. But a death pall still
hung over the city.
We witnessed
incalculable material destruction in all the locales of our tour, but that
destruction was nothing compared to the human toll. A stream of refugees trying
to cross the bridge into Croatia appeared desperate and haggard. The roads were
dense with people fleeing; many packed together in the backs of trucks, or
clinging to the roofs of tractors.
At the refugee
center in Bosanski Brod we
learned that the refugees' stories were documented carefully.
Many knew the
names of those who had committed atrocities in their villages, information that
could prove helpful to eventual war crimes commissions.
Feeling it was
physically and economically unable to cope with more refugees; Croatia began
putting newly arrived refugees on trains and buses and dispatched them to the
nearest borders. Slovenia, Hungary, Italy and Austria reacted by closing their
borders and shifted the refugees to and from countries that didn't want them.
For
humanitarian reasons the Croatian government rescinded their order.
Coincidentally,
about 6,000 men who had been labeled deserters by the Bosnian government fled
across the Sava River to the salvation and safety of Slavonski
Brod, Croatia in July 1992. Sherry Ricchiardi, an American reporter who'd been to Croatia a
number of times, interviewed a great number of them. The troops had fled their
posts when their field commanders read a communiqué to them that was supposed
to have come from central headquarters. It read: "It has become obvious
that the Serbs and Croatians will divide Bosnia ...For all practical purposes,
Bosnia is nonexistent and there is no reason for us (them) to die for a
nonexistent state...We are not deserters, we are not refugees, we are expelled,
there is nothing left to fight for." But evidence
subsequently revealed that the communiqué was disinformation that had emanated
from Serbia. These refugees were simply victims of JNA psychological warfare.
Croatia was
faced with a dilemma since these Bosnians refused to lay down their arms; but
Croatia granted them asylum in Slavonski Brod anyway. The next day Serbian 155-mm artillery rounds,
leaving many of the refugees dead and an extremely large number of them wounded
hit the sports stadium, where the refugees were billeted. Undoubtedly they had
been targeted because a Yugoslav airplane had flown over the area a number of
times that day.
Split, an
ancient Roman city on Croatia’s Adriatic coast, had become a magnet for
refugees. All of the former resort hotels were jammed with Bosnians. These
refugees were fortunate because many others were housed in the sports
complexes, basketball stadiums, and gymnasiums; and were forced to sleep on
mats. A lack of bathrooms made the overwhelming fumes that engulfed these
facilities even worse.
We then drove
to Mostar via Imotski. Mackley showed us the city’s massive destruction and
explained the military aspects. The area around the old bridge and the Muslim
quarter resembled what I imagined Dresden must have looked like following the
allied bombing. Only the facades of the Catholic Church and the bishop's palace
still stood. The destruction was so devastating that the heat had melted most
of the church's marble altar.
The peaceful,
arbor-like city park had become a graveyard because sniper fire wouldn't allow Mostar's inhabitants to bury their dead in the town's true
cemetery. The first body buried in the park was a Croatian soldier who was
buried by his bride-to-be. The park is where they had walked and spent time as
lovers. She was later killed. Fresh graves bearing crescents or crosses and
dates that all ended in 1992 never failed to move even the most hard-nosed
observer.
On the
outskirts of Karlovac lay the suburb of Turinj, which had been an ethnically mixed community of
5,000 people before the war. By the time we arrived, all that was left was
rubble; not one building was salvageable. Only ghosts of the former residents
and a handful of patrolling soldiers remained. Looking toward the Serbian neighborhood,
50 yards away, we saw, as we had in all the villages we visited that their
houses had suffered almost no destruction.
Serbian
military offensives inexorably followed the same pattern. They first pressured
the local Serbian population to evacuate. Once that was accomplished, JNA
armored rifle regiments attack, supported by artillery and MIGs. As the
defenders abandoned their positions, Chetniks moved
in and cleansed the town. The Chetniks didn't
discriminate. They cleansed the town of any Muslims, Croats or even Serbs who
refused to cooperate.
The Serbian
ethnic cleansing program struck terror among Muslims and Croats of
Bosnia-Herzegovina.
They were well
aware of the concerted policy to carry out systematic killing and mayhem. None
of the killings were "clean"; victims were repeatedly found with
their throats cut, eyes gouged out, decapitated and dismembered.
The Bosnians
rightly had reason to fear. For example, America Cares, a nongovernmental
organization, representatives Andrew Hannah and Jonathan Bush, nephew of
President Bush, listened to ham operators from Gorazde
say that many inhabitants were committing suicide rather than fall into Serbian
hands. Bodies were strewn all over the streets; nobody could bury them because
the starving survivors had no strength left. The remaining had taken to eating
roots and grass. The only human sounds the survivors heard were children crying
from hunger. Absolutely no medicine could be found. This scene took place in
1992, when all of the seven major cities in Bosnia, excluding Sarajevo, were
under siege and reported widespread starvation.
Although
Doctors Durant and Bradt had worked in refugee areas
all over the world, they said that the high caliber and sophistication of the
medical community in Croatia left them with an indelible impression.
Durant and Bradt were especially impressed by how the physicians were
able to keep morbidity and mortality rates at tolerable levels despite the
inordinate number of refugees and adverse conditions under which they worked.
The Americans commended the generosity of the Croatian people and noted that
they found Croatia's ability to absorb so many refugees to be without parallel
in their team's previous experiences.
One lesson I
learned from my missions to Croatia and Bosnia was that although every story
told by refugees and survivors of ethic cleansing was
unique, in the aggregate, their stories shared a common theme: terror. The
story of one such survivor, Fadila Zecic, started when Serbian forces instituted genocide in
the northern Bosnian town of Brcko. Even in the
relative security of Paris where I spoke with Fadila
and where she found refuge after being exchanged as a prisoner of war she
continued to be tormented by nightmares and flashbacks of the demonic acts she
had witnessed.
At precisely 5
A.M. on April 30, 1992, after the Serbs deliberately disabled a vehicle on Savski Most, one of two bridges over the Sava River that
connected Bosnia with Croatia, the resultant bottleneck of vehicles, including
busses loaded with at least 150 commuters, were blown to smithereens. Following
the explosions that destroyed both bridges, the Serbs placed barricades at
strategic locations and systematically set out to destroy the 100 or so houses
around the bridges.
For the next
three days and nights the Serbs committed an orgy of looting in non-Serb homes.
A continuous stream of trucks and cars, predominantly with Belgrade
registrations, returned to Serbia to sell their booty on Belgrade's thriving
black market. Following every typical Serbian offensive campaign, Serbs from
Serbia would come to the conquered Bosnian or Croatian areas by the busloads
and ransack houses as if on a
shopping spree.
On the fourth
day, the Serbs placed a large poster of Tito sporting a hand drawn beard on a
warehouse door in the port area called Lucko. The
warehouse became one of the Serbs' most lethal slaughterhouses. The Serbs
rounded up all the intellectuals: physicians, lawyers, teachers, or anyone with
organizational skills. Once accomplished, the Serbs started their systematic
murdering frenzy. Thousands of Croats and Muslims were killed in two days in Brcko. Only women and pensioners survived; all youths and
able-bodied males ultimately disappeared.
An ancient
Roman settlement situated on the Sava River with a picturesque blend of Turkish
and Austrian architectural styles, the pre-war town of Brcko
was a microcosm of ethnicity in Bosnia. Brcko and the
surrounding area, comprised of 75,000 Muslims and Croats, and 13,000 Serbs, had
three mosques, a Roman Catholic, an Orthodox and a Seventh Day Adventist
church. Despite hearing reports that Serbs were committing atrocities in other
parts of Bosnia and the fact that the town was teeming with thousands of
refugees that had fled from ethnic cleansing at Foca,
the citizens of Brcko naively clung to the belief
that they would be spared.
Most of the
Muslims in Bosnia believed in the concept of Yugoslavia. Brcko's
mayor ironically called the town an oasis of peace. It became host to the seven
furies instead.
Fadila had been a
designer and dressmaker of renown. Her creations were often used in the movie
industry in former Yugoslavia. She felt that she was spared the tribulations
other Muslim women were subjected to because the Chetniks
feared reprisals from her husband and brother, both well known to the Chetnik forces.
Before the war
her husband was a policeman, but later he became a commandant in the Bosnian
Army. Even after she was evacuated to Paris, he remained to defend what was left
of Bosnian territory. Her brother was a commandant in the 108th Brigade of the
Bosnian Army who, along with 319 children in his charge, were
killed during a Serbian tank attack. Throughout my interviews with her she
reiterated that what she agonized over most was not knowing
the whereabouts of her son's remains; he was killed by a grenade but never
buried.
Fadila's house was strategically located in the area called Srbski
Varos of Lucko. From her
window she was able to look down on the warehouse and yard where prisoners were
housed and slaughtered nightly.
Isak Gasi, one of the rare survivors of Brcko's
slaughterhouse, in testifying to war crimes investigators from Washington,
confirmed many of Fadila's statements. Fadila had witnessed the atrocities almost nightly.
Like
clockwork, the killings started at 11 P.M. and finished at 3 A.M. The main
supervisor was Monika Simonovic, a prostitute turned Chetnik. Her favorite method of torture was to break the
necks of glass bottles and then gouge the genitals and abdomens of her
prisoners. She also burned them. Fadila recognized
most of the perpetrators as local Serbs. A preamble to the slaughter would
begin with three Serbian songs the prisoners were forced to sing. After "Tko kaze da
je Srbija malo, Tri puta rata, tri puta pobednik" ("Who said Serbia is small, three times
war, three times victors"), then a shout "Tisina"
(silence), the killings commenced. In the mornings, Fadila
saw trucks leave the camps, their beds bulging with body parts.
The rapes and
killings Fadila witnessed were under the direction of
Zoran Pejic, the head Chetnik in Lucko. All the
perpetrators were in uniform, displaying the Red Star of the Yugoslav Army on
their hats. The Chetnik headquarters was the Serbian
Orthodox Church. The glavna rijec
(main orders) came from Pop (Father) Slavko. On
August 3, all the mosques were mined and destroyed. Although the Catholic
Church was mined, it wasn't destroyed because it was located too close to the Skladiste, a military storage facility. All Catholic,
Jewish, and Muslim cemeteries were bulldozed. The destruction of religious
structures and graves was nothing more than a barbaric attempt to erase
evidence of a culture and a people.
In her darkest
hour, after learning about the deaths of her son and brother and witnessing the
human mayhem being committed under her very nose, Fadila
turned toward God. But she was shocked to learn that she didn't know how to
pray. The most often heard expression in Bosnia, "Thank God," is
usually uttered by those who are irreligious. Although Fadila
professed to be a Muslim, she typified the attitude of the overwhelming
majority of the Muslims in Bosnia: she identified with Turkish customs but was
ignorant about Muslim theology. The Muslims' attitude toward their religion
contradicts the Serbian assertion that the threat of Islamic fundamentalism
justified the war.
As a product
of communist secularism, Fadila's only exposure to
religion had come from her Catholic friends. She said she sought and got
religious instruction from a Catholic friend who had some knowledge of Islam.
In what was probably an admixture of Catholicism and Islamic mysticism, using
110 peas as beads, Fadila recited over and over
"God watch over me." On Tuesdays, she fasted, and meditated on a picture
of St. Anthony donated by a Catholic friend. The prayers pulled her out of her
depths of despair and she began to feel invincible. She felt as if a glass dome
enveloped and protected her and her home.
A married
couple took Fadila in for 20 days; the husband, a
Croat, eventually had to witness the gang rape of his wife, a Muslim, before he
was hanged. Fadila had to move 15 times to keep one
step ahead of the terrorism inflicted by her previous neighbors. Once, when she
was hiding, her Serbian neighbors opened the gas jet on her stove. On her
return they assumed she would light a match because there was no electricity
and cause a massive explosion (gas in that area is odorless). Only her strong
sense of survival averted disaster.
Fadila noticed numerous
vehicles with Belgrade registrations bringing people who moved into homes whose
previous inhabitants had disappeared without a trace. She said most of the
events she cited occurred in the presence of UNPROFOR forces. According to Fadila, UNPROFOR's only functions were carousing,
womanizing, and drinking. The Hotel Golub, where they
were billeted, maintained a holiday like atmosphere.
When Fadila received word that she was to be exchanged as a
prisoner of war, she was given an hour's notice. In probable deference to her
status, she was allowed the luxury of one small sack. She took some jewelry
with her, and miraculously it escaped notice though prisoners were normally
stripped and given tattered rags to wear. Aside from humiliating the prisoners,
the process enabled the Serb guards to ransack the clothing for valuables that
may have been sewed into the lining. The only satisfaction Fadila
had during her captivity was knowing that information
that she had relayed to her brother, such as minefield locations, saved many
Bosnian lives.
Would she and
other refugees return to their homes if a guaranteed peace were declared? All
the refugees I interviewed answered, "Yes!" They all felt they could
forgive, but never, never forget. As to living next to
their known tormentors, they all responded, "No." But surprisingly
few said they would seek revenge.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Aviso - - - - - - Advertisement - - - - - Oglas- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Servicios jurídicos – Traducciones – Propiedades inmuebles –
Bienes raíces –Sucesiones – Poderes – Inscripción de propiedades – Contratos –
Testamentos
Legal services: Civil and commercial –
Translations – Real Estate – Probate Proceedings – Powers of Attorney – Property
registration – Contracts – Wills
Pravne usluge – Prijevodi – Nekretnine – Ostavinski postupci – Punomoći – Upis pravo vlasništva – Ugovori– Oporuke
Dra. Adriana Smajic – Abogada y
Traductora pública de idioma croata – Attorney at Law – Odvjetnica – Abogado croata
– Traductor croata www.adrianasmajic.blogspot.com adriana.smajic@gmail.com
Joza Vrljicak
– Master in Economics
(Concordia U, Montreal) joza.vrljicak@gmail.com
(+54-11) 4811-8706 (+54-911) 6564-9585 (+54-911) 5112-0000