by Zoran ZUZA
What is crime: Director of the clinical-hospital center in Serb Sarajevo Dr. Slavko Zdrale presented data that leave one dumbfounded. In that hospital, in the last three years, all together 639 patients with malignant tumors have been registered. Out of them, 211 died in the same period!
"We in the hospital tried to find an answer to the question what could cause such an increase in malignant tumors in the population in the last five years, but we failed to prove any causal link with any of the considered possible causes. The only possible cause of these cancers is the depleted uranium ammunition, since almost all the diseased were either present or lived in the territory exposed to NATO bombing. It is important to mention that the number of cancerous diseases has significantly increased in the last three years and that it hasn't dropped in the January and February of this year," says Dr. Zdrale, a surgeon with 25 years of experience.
He emphasizes that a large group of specialists from Kasin Dol hospital has prepared two scientific studies about the effects of uranium and plutonium on human health and about malignant diseases in the Sarajevo-Romanija region.
Besides horrific statistics, the studies describe "medical rarities", unprecedented in the medical practice. Several patients had double, even triple malignant tumors in different types of tissue, tumors that were independent of each other. "I have never seen such cases in my entire life and all these years of medical work," emphasizes Dr. Zdrale and again stresses that all those patients come from the territory bombed by the depleted uranium ammunition.
Chimneys in the ground: Zeljko Samardzic (1967) had cancer of the large intestine removed in December 1999. In February 2000 he started loosing balance and had to resort to a wheel chair. In April 2000 a malignant tumor size of an apple was removed from his adrenal gland. In may 2000, fingers of his left hand started to deform. Skin was pealing off, nails fell off, and doctors diagnosed gangrene and amputated the small finger on his left hand.
The Samardzic family has been living near Sarajevo for more than a hundred years. They mostly died from natural causes and no one in the family has ever had a malignant tumor. Zaljko's father and mother are in their 70's. He has a wife and three children. He says that before the war he did not have any serious sickness and explains that by the fact that as a forester he spent a lot of time in the wilderness and walked 20 to 30 kilometers daily. He continued with the same work during the war but, depending on the situation, he had to spend some time in the trenches, where he was during the NATO bombardment.
"There were about fifteen of us, some 50 to 100 meters from the spot where the bombs hit. At that time we had no idea what sort of weapon that was, and some of us even picked up pieces of shrapnel as souvenirs," says Samardzic and adds that two other soldiers from that unit have already died from cancer - Desimir Divljan and Dorde Jokic. Jovan Jeftic (1930), whose house was near the bombed spot, also recently died form cancer.
Now, after everything he's been through, Samardzic feels well. He realizes that he is a victim of the "Balkans Syndrome", and when he read the story about Sladjana Sarenac, the girl form Hadzici who played with the soil on the edges of a crater made by a depleted uranium bomb, whose nails also fell off, he recalled that he and his comrades dug soil in craters with their bare hands.
Provocation from Brussels: As a striking example of the effect of the "Balkans Syndrome", in early March Samardzic traveled to Brussels together with two doctors from Srpska. They were invited to a gathering dedicated to the victims of the depleted uranium ammunition by a Belgian non-governmental organization led by a pacifist and publicist Michel Colon. Dr. Dragutin Ilic and Dr. Trifko Guzina, as well as Snezana Pavlovic from the [Nuclear Physics] Institute in Vinca [near Belgrade] were also in Brussels.
"There were invited experts and victims of the 'Balkans syndrome' at the gathering, but there were no NATO representatives. As far as I understood, Colon and his organization are not exactly favorites of the Alliance officials. Besides me there were sick soldiers from different countries, an Englishman who was in the Gulf War, a Frenchman and two Belgians who served in Bosnia-Hercegovina and a journalist from Spain whose fiancé died from cancer. During the gathering they said that NATO is making sure that they have all sorts of assistance and that their families are taken care of, but on the condition that they keep quiet. According to what they said, if any member of the family publicly complains or files a suit for damages, they immediately lose all their benefits. That is how NATO is trying to suppress the information about the 'Balkans syndrome'," says Samardzic.
He adds that already on the first day of the gathering a German journalist, whose name he does not recall, tried to provoke him by asking him whether the Serb Army used depleted uranium in Srebrenica during, as she said, genocide of Muslims. "A similar commentary came at the end of an article of an Independent, London, journalist who interviewed me and who wrote that it should be kept in mind that I was a member of an aggressor army that carried out genocide in Srebrenica. All of that upset me immensely and I decided to stop giving statements for newspapers. I have never seen Srebrenica, except on a map, in my whole life. My comrades from the unit and I defended our houses and land."
"NATO keeps denying the existence of the 'Balkans syndrome'. It should be proven what they did here, and thereby the use of such ammunition elsewhere in the world should be prevented."
Dr. Trifko Guzina, a pre-war director of the kidney disease clinic in Sarajevo and a surgeon who operated on 25,000 patients before the war, also claims that Samardzija is a victim of the depleted uranium ammunition. "Such cases are simply unknown in medical literature; that patient is overwhelmed by illness in such a manner, in good health and without a hereditary factor..."
He warns that one of the conclusions of the gathering was that decontamination of the soil and water should be urgently carried out in this region because, as Dr. Guzina stresses, everyone is in danger, including the inhabitants of the Sarajevo canton.
The Association for the Prevention of Use of Depleted Uranium in War has also been founded and immediately demanded that investigation of the effects of that matter on human body be unified.
To the question regarding his views about the most recent UN expert reports Dr. Zdrale answers that those experts did not deign to come to Kasin Dol hospital, examine the patients and check the data collected by the local medical staff.
Dr. Nemanja Veljkov, specialist for diseases of blood and liver, facing in the Kasin Dol hospital numerous cases of acute leukemia, especially among children, at a press conference a month ago said that the truth about the "Balkans syndrome" is hidden exactly in that hospital and in the territory of Serb Sarajevo. All those who for whatever reason are now trying to suppress that truth should be reminded that crimes do not disappear, and when justice catches up with the culprits, someone will also remember their accomplices.