Nedeljni Telegraf, Belgrade, Yugoslavia
Issue 246, January
10, 2001
SHOCKING Uranium NATO bombs are taking a terrible toll in
Bratunac in
eastern Bosnia. The most recent victim was only 20 years
old
Someone dies of cancer every third day; there is no more room in
the
cemeteries
by Dubravka Vujanovic
Photo: I. Dobricic
http://www.nedeljnitelegraf.co.yu/novi/uran1.gifThe
cemetery in Bratunac already stretches to the houses
The village is
empty, the cemetery full. Soon there will be no more room
for the dead.
Among refugee families who moved to Bratunac from Hadzici
there is a hardly
a household not cloaked in mourning.
The meadow set aside for the
cemetery, they say, was almost completely
empty five years ago when they
arrived. Today, one next to the other,
separated by a distance of less than
one half meter, grave upon grave.
On them are fresh wreaths, some with
flowers that have not yet wilted.
On the crosses the years of death 1998,
1999, 2000 and the grave of a 20
year-old woman at the end of the rows. She
died a few days ago.
These are the horrific pictures which the casual
visitor will find in
Bratunac because the first stories about this village
will take him
nowhere else but the cemetery. The natives of Bratunac live
while the
natives of Hadzici die. Suddenly, overnight, after a few days'
illness,
in the greatest pain - from cancer. Every attempt to explain what
is
happening to them takes them back to 1995.
Five years ago Hadzici
was a part of something called Serbian Sarajevo.
They survived the double
encirclement of the Muslim army and what was
most probably the most intense
bombing ever seen. In only one day,
planes flew 200 missions to dump more
than 500 bombs on this
municipality. The residents of Hadzici survived.
They survived the war,
that is, but not the peace.
First, they say,
they were betrayed in Dayton in November 1995. Someone
at the top got the
idea that the best thing to do would be to move
Hadzici to Bratunac. There
was no choice and very little time. Almost
the same night, before the peace
delegation returned to the country
still hung over from the signing of the
peace contract, the natives of
Hadzici packed themselves and their
belongings into trucks and tractor
trailers and headed toward Bratunac, a
small town between Zvornik and
Srebrenica.
It was no ordinary move.
During the night the natives of Hadzici
unearthed their dead and loaded
them onto trailers. Not a single "Serb
ear" was left in that part of
Serbian Sarajevo. Even though they
transferred an astonishing 156 graves,
they had no problems
accommodating their dead. An entire tract in the
cemetery was empty and
they buried them next to each other. They raised an
identical marker
over each grave.
No one could even imagine that in
only one or two years the part of the
cemetery set aside for civilians
would be doubly full.
"First the older people began to die. Their
bodies must have been less
resistant to the inexplicable thing which later
began claiming the lives
of younger people as well. It happens often that
one of the natives of
Hadzici will suddenly die. Or they will go to see the
doctor in Belgrade
and when they come back their relatives will tell us
that they are dying
of cancer. And it doesn't happen to the natives of
Bratunac but only to
us," relates Sretko Elez, a sixty year-old man from
Hadzici.
It was believed that it was a question of fate. Then chief
doctor
Slavica Jovanovic asked how it was possible. She conducted
an
investigation and proved that in 1998 the mortality rate far
exceeded
the birth rate. She showed that it wasn't just a question of fate
but
something far more serious. The political leadership was informed but
to
date no one has said a word about it. Foreign television crews
arrive
daily in Bratunac, pathologists are asking about the anonymous
little
town while Banja Luka and Belgrade remain silent.
"Even Zoran
Stankovic, the renowned pathologist from the Military
Medical Academy (VMA)
determined that over 200 of his patients from this
area died of cancer,
most probably due to the effects of depleted
uranium in dropped NATO bombs
five years ago. But someone quickly
silenced the public and everything was
hushed up. No one would know what
is happening to us to this very day if
they themselves had not met with
the same fate, if they had not begun to
die. Only now are they all
asking themselves what will happen if the same
thing befalls Serbia
which befell the Serbs from Hadzici," says Nedeljko
Zelenovic, a
reporter for Radio Bratunac and a refugee from Hadzici,
bitterly.
Zelenovic lost his father a few months ago to cancer of the
lungs.
Approximately 20 people have died in just six months. If one does
the
math, they tell us, he will find that a native of Hadzici dies
every
third or fourth day.
And they start to remember. Ratko Radic,
the former mayor of Hadzici
municipality, died a few months ago. The
diagnosis - cancer of the
lungs. Soon afterward, his wife Ljilja, who was
wounded during the
bombing. She died of leukemia. Then Drago Vujovic, Dejan
Jelicic,
Mihajlo Andric...
"You see, our cemetery is full of fresh
graves while the people from
Vinca [Nuclear Institute] claim that uranium
isn't dangerous. What other
kind of evidence do you need if people are
dying? If they are dying
every day? Go to the cemetery and see for
yourselves. That's where
Vinca's evidence lies," says Elez bitterly. "Today
I am healthy;
tomorrow, who knows... Perhaps my body is stronger and it
won't get
me..."
Are they afraid of what the future may hold for
them, we asked the
natives of Hadzici in closing.
"We have nothing
to be afraid of any more. We survived the war, hunger,
expulsion... We all
have to die anyway, sooner or later..."
* * *
A fire burned for
five days where the bomb
fell and the smoke from it smothered
us
Hadzici was bombed for several reasons. One of them was that it
was
allegedly where Radovan Karadzic was hiding. In this suburb there
were
several factories and barracks with thick concrete floors and
basements
which could not be penetrated. Sretko Elez claims that is why
they used
uranium - because it is heavier than lead and better able to
penetrate
the framework.
"My house was leveled by a NATO bomb. It
took them five days to get it
out, that's how heavy it was. Not far away
there was a completely
unimportant building, a service shop of some kind.
When they hit it, the
flames could not be extinguished for an entire week
and when it was put
out there was still smoke from it that smothered us.
And after every
bomb, even the smallest one, a mushroom-like cloud could be
seen. You
see, that is what we are dying from today."
* *
*
8,000 people disappeared and the state is silent
"In April
1996 as many as 16,000 refugees were relocated to 66
municipalities of the
former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
According to the census
taken in fall of last year, there are 8,200 of
them left. If we know that
approximately 400 people left, mostly to go
abroad, I ask myself what
happened to almost 8,000 people. And why the
state is silent on the
matter," says Nedeljko Zelenovic and adds: "They
are probably going through
something similar as the natives of Hadzici
because all of them were moved
from places which fell after NATO bombing
in September 1995."
The
refugees from Hadzici arrived in Bratunac in a sizeable number.
There were
almost 5,000 of them. There were 1,000 just in the collective
centers. Now,
says Zelenovic, there are about 600 of them left. And they
certainly had
nowhere else to go.
