Uranium Polemic or Spreading Fear of Death
AIM Banja Luka, January 6, 2000
On the appearance of deathly diseases which are suspected to be the result of the use of missiles filled with depleted uranium in NATO operations of bombing targets in Bosnia & Herzegovina (B&H), the latter's officials have no data. The entity ministries in charge – of health and defence – made it public that they had neither results of investigation nor official statistics on the results of bombing.
Minister of defence in the government of Republika Srpska (RS) Manojlo Milovanovic says that after bombing with this type of missiles a commission was established in RS by the Army of Republika Srpska and the Ministry of Defence in order to investigate the effects of bombing, but he does not know what was done and at what point they have stopped. To the question what the Ministry would do after all, the minister gave an incredible answer: “We will do nothing. I have fully informed the President of the Republic. This was an international conflict and let them deal with it”.
Although the B&H institutions in charge of the European “uranium polemic” were caught unprepared, the Council of Ministers scheduled on the occasion a special session for January 11. “We look upon the developments with great concern. We will demand collecting of data from the bodies in charge and we will take a stand about it”, says minister for civilian issues and communications Tihomir Gligoric.
In the course of 1994 and 1995 NATO fired thousands of depleted uranium missiles on the positions of the Army of RS. Most of the missiles have fallen on the repair works in Hadzici near Sarajevo. In a single day (September 12, 1995), in more than 200 flights of NATO planes, more than 300 missiles with depleted uranium were dropped on military and manufacturing facilities in Hadzici. In several days of bombing Hadzici, Zurovnica and Usivak military barracks were levelled to the ground as well as more than 20 facilities of technical repair works. To sporadic warnings that depleted uranium affected the health of the civilian population, NATO officials replied that investigations have shown that this was not true. And to the latest warnings of its allies, Pentagon sent the same answer.
An expert in nuclear physics Vladimir Ajdacic from Belgrade claims that depleted uranium was the plague of our time. “This is not depleted uranium at all. It's in fact the remainder of uranium from which Uranium 235 has been removed and the latter is used in atomic bombs. It is depleted in this sense, but it is still highly radioactive uranium”, says Ajdacic warning that its raioactivity is practically eternal. The effect of uranium used in bombing of B&H and in Kosovo begins at the moment the missile hits a solid target. “The uranium bullet at that moment reaches the temperature of 700 degrees Celsius and it melts the tank and other metal armour. This melts 70 per cent of the metal and disperses in the form of carbon dioxide which is radioactive. It is extremely dangerous to be in the vicinity and breathe in the fine uranium powder”, Ajdacic explains.
Were the effects of uranium bombs unknown to the military experts and state officials or were they silent on purpose? All things considered, the latter was the case, because it was expected that revealing of consequences of the bombing would cause panic in army ranks and in public which would lessen the “preparedness for combat”. That is how the soldiers and the civilians were once more used as victims of the war and political objectives.
Belgrade pathologist Zoran Stankovic, who visited RS during the war on various scientific and professional mission, claims that he had scientific documentation on this which he offered the authorities in Pale at the time. “We medical experts, planned to organise a big international investigation of the effects of radiation in contaminated regions. About one thousand experts from the entire world applied to participate in the project, but for unexplained reasons the authorities have not accepted our project”, says Stankovic.
Stankovic is resolutely claiming that bombing has left tragic consequences on the health of the people who were in various ways exposed to radioactivity of uranium missiles. He gives the example of a girl, Sladjana Sarenac, from Hadzici who played in a crater left by a bomb: “First her fingernails and toenails fell off, then problems with breathing appeared. After that she fell into a comma and suffered from inflammation of the brain. At present she suffers from epileptic seizures and she is under constant medical treatment”. Stankovic also describes the case of a journalist from Sarajevo who had happened to be at the site of an explosion and breathed in the content immediately after the explosion.
In its latest issue the Panorama from Bijeljina carried a story about six-year old girl Natasa Arsenijevic who is suffering from leukemia and her mother Nada who has skin cancer. They were both in Kosovo at the time of the bombing. They are living as refugees in Bijeljina now and beg for help in treatment.
Cases of illness and death of the inhabitants from Hadzici who are nowadays mostly living in Bratunac are irrefutable evidence of radioactive effects of bombing. In the population of about five thousand inhabitants of Hadzici who live in Bratunac now, according to the data of the out-patient clinic in Bratunac, 500 have died in the past four years, mostly from various forms of cancerous tumors or heart attacks. A physician in this institution, Dr. Slavica Jovanovic made a study about it. It is stated in her analysis that in the past years every three of four days a former inhabitant of Hadzici dies.
The danger of radiation has not ended. In the bombed regions, experts claim, there are remains of missiles which still emanate radioactive rays and are a threat to civilian population living there. Noone even considers the possibility of decontaminating this territory. An inhabitant of Hadzici claims that soldiers used to fasten to their clothes the remains of uranium missiles because of their specific hardness turning them into some kind of bullet-proof vests. Many soldiers keep remains of uranium missiles as their wartime souvenirs.
Even if it is possible to understand the disinterestedness of Minister Milovanovic (have officers ever been concerned about human lives?) and his gloating that a conflict is about to open among NATO allies concerning uranium caused deaths, it is still inconceivable that dying of the refugees from Bratunac was not a sufficiently strong cause for sounding the alarm in the medical profession, ministry of health and other state institutions. How many people ought to die before some clerk or civil servant, preoccupied with his private business, remembered that it is his professional and moral duty to take care of the health of the citizens?
Will dying of NATO soldiers change anything in the attitude towards civil victims of uranium radiation it remains to be seen. Referring to humaneness and protection of human rights imposes that long-term scientific research be conducted in B&H and Kosovo, and the population given free medical tests and treatment.
If it were not for the cynicism of the powerful, the victims could count on legally founded indemnities. But paying of indemnities is probably the only reason why the “uranium polemic” will probably end with the declaration of those who caused it that depleted uranium has to damaging effects on the health of the people.
Branko Peric
(AIM)