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.