Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 21, 1993 TAG: 9307210045
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOHN F. BURNS THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: FOJNICA, BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA LENGTH: Medium
Edin was 2 1/2. It seemed likely that he had succumbed to dehydration in the intense summer heat only a few hours before U.N. troops arrived late Monday afternoon.
For 72 hours before that, Edin and more than 200 other children in the hospital had been abandoned, without doctors, nurses or other staff members, and with nobody to turn to but a handful of adult patients with severe mental handicaps of their own.
Unlike 200,000 others whom the Bosnian government estimates to have died in the war, Edin was not blown apart by heavy artillery, cut down by snipers, tortured or burned alive. He was simply left to fend for himself, an infant who was so severely handicapped that he had spent most of his life at the hospital.
"It's monstrous," said Brig. Gen. Vere Hayes, chief of staff for the U.N. protection force in Bosnia, watching as 30 British, Canadian, Danish and Dutch soldiers hastened to unload food and medical supplies, while others donned paper masks and rubber gloves to begin the work of cleaning up hallways and wards awash with human waste.
The soldiers moved about amid a tableau of naked, excrement-smeared children dashing from room to room, some shrieking, others crying. In the wards, smaller children rocked rhythmically in their cots. Many were sodden with sweat.
Some, terrified, hid beneath their cots. Others, large enough to have found their way to supplies of biscuits, cereal and milk powder in the hospital storeroom, feasted on their contraband. Others simply stared in seeming incomprehension at the men in camouflage uniforms.
Many of the hospital windows had been broken from inside and toys thrown out of upper-story windows, suggesting that there had been fighting among the patients. Some window sills and floors were smeared with blood, as were some of the children.
The Drin Hospital, nestled between lushly forested mountains, was one of the largest of its kind in Yugoslavia. Its patients were drawn from all of the Yugoslav republics. Fojnica (pronounced foy-NEET-sah), the spa town that lies just a mile down the road, has been celebrated for its curative springs since the Middle Ages.
For 15 months, Fojnica's Croatian majority and Muslim minority had prevented ethnic hatred from destroying what most people here agreed was a fine communal life. Gen. Philippe Morillon, then the U.N. military commander in Bosnia, thought Fojnica so exceptional that he came here three weeks ago and declared the town "a haven of peace."
An undertaking to keep Fojnica out of the war was signed by local Croatian and Muslim leaders. Those who drew up the pact included the local commanders of the Croatian nationalist army in Bosnia and the Muslim-led Bosnian army, which have been fighting brutal battles for control of mixed Croatian and Muslim communities all around this region of central Bosnia since the spring. A stamp of approval was added by the local Roman Catholic priest and by the Muslim imam.
The calm ended a little more than two weeks ago, when the Bosnian army drove the Croatian forces from Fojnica in bitter street-to-street fighting, and much of the town was set afire.
On Friday, as the town was being overrun, the commander of the retreating Croatian troops, ordered all staff members to leave the Drin Hospital and a neighboring hospital for adults with severe handicaps. Within an hour, more than 600 people, most of them with severe mental debilities, were left on their own.
For two days, U.N. troops trying to reach the two hospitals were turned back at Bosnian army checkpoints on the main road from Kiseljak, the Croatian-held town north of Sarajevo where the U.N. force has its headquarters. On Sunday afternoon, Canadian troops of the U.N. force tried a mountain road that approaches Fojnica through Croatian-held territory to the south, and reached the children's hospital at dusk.
The Canadians reported that five children were in critical condition. But the Croatian nurses accompanying the Canadians said that they felt unsafe, so the Canadians pulled back, urging that a larger U.N. convoy with medical supplies and food try again.
As the U.N. troops began organizing an evening meal for the patients, it seemed clear that few of the children understood what had happened. But many of the adults did, and applauded happily as the soldiers went about their tasks. Some of the adults took up brooms and mops and joined in the cleanup, shouting out bits of foreign phrases. "Hi, ciao," one woman said. "Danke, danke," said another.
by CNB