Bosnian Orphans: No Dads, No Moms And No Adoptions

Bosnian Orphans: No Dads, No Moms And No AdoptionsTheir Dads Were Serbs. Their Moms Were Raped. They've Been Abandoned, And Their Government Won't Let Them Be Adopted.July 25, 1993|By Los Angeles TimesZAGREB, CROATIA — Five-month-old Muhammed smiles at the caress of his day-shift nanny, exposing two little bottom teeth and an innocence of the horror that gave him life and the stigma that stalks his future.Muhammed is one of the hundreds of infants born to Bosnian women who were raped, children of wartime atrocity who will never know a normal family life as long as their country remains mired in deadly turmoil.

");document.close();})();' frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="649" height="160">''This is the most terrible thing the war has produced,'' Aida Cicic, a Sarajevo pediatrician, said of the ritualized rapes that produced the five infants she helps care for at a Zagreb ''safe house.''''The mother of one boy was raped by 20 Chetniks (Serb gunmen) at a time, not one day but for weeks and months, until her pregnancy was so far advanced she couldn't terminate it. These women are not normal now, and they cannot make decisions about their lives.''Rejected by their mothers, unknown by their fathers and orphaned by a government policy that some see as tainted with nationalism, Muhammed and his institutional siblings face a future as permanent war victims and a lifetime of being marked as the result of rape.By Sarajevo government order, these youngest citizens of Bosnia-Herzegovina are growing up in institutions generously supplied by foreign charities with everything the babies need - with the exception of parents.The Bosnian government has prohibited adoption of the children of rape in hopes that their natural mothers will someday learn to accept them or that the war will end soon, enabling the government to place the babies in other Bosnian homes.But the decision to hold out for a reunion of the mothers and the spurned babies - or the equally unlikely scenario of a swift resolution of the savage Bosnian conflict - has trapped the abandoned children in the middle of a passionate debate.Cicic, 30, and officials of the Egyptian Agency for Humanitarian Aid, which opened the children's home three months ago, think some of the mothers may eventually realize that their babies are innocent victims and choose to take them back.''That is what would be best for the babies,'' Cicic said. ''In my opinion, adoption would be a good solution, but only after time, maybe two years, and only to Bosnian couples.''A Muslim psychologist who assists rape victims and their children in the strife-torn city of Mostar insists that the babies must be brought up as citizens of Bosnia.''My view is that for the children, it is better if they stay here in Bosnia-Herzegovina or at least in temporary shelter in Zagreb,'' said Selimovic el-Harun. ''I believe these women will eventually give the children up for adoption, but conditions in Bosnia-Herzegovina are not suitable for that now.''

");document.close();})();' frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="649" height="110">Under a contract with the Bosnian government, the Egyptian agency has hired Cicic and nine other Bosnian women health-care workers to look after the children conceived in rape and abandoned at birth in Zagreb hospitals.Doctors, psychologists and social workers involved in counseling the rape victims criticize the Bosnian government's approach as likely to prolong the assaulted women's agony in order to keep open an option few are expected to take.They also object to housing the children of rape together in a separate institution, fearing that will mark them in the community and expose them to potential danger from other war victims sick with vengeance or grief.''Not one of the women I spoke with, and I spoke with them for hours, had even a minimal wish to take their babies. We had to put blindfolds on them for the deliveries,'' said Asim Kurjak, head of obstetrics and gynecology at Zagreb's Holy Spirit Hospital.''The babies are innocent third parties, but I personally do not believe any of these women will ever change their minds. They tell me they don't consider that these are their babies. They are like foreign objects to them.''Kurjak told of one 17-year-old so consumed with shame and fear that she threatened to kill herself if the hospital staff made any record of her having given birth. For the benefit of her tradition-bound family, the teen-ager's delivery after a rape-induced pregnancy was noted in her medical charts as surgery to remove a kidney stone.Given the revulsion the rape victims show toward any reminder of their ordeal, Kurjak said he thinks both mother and child would be better off if the children were made available for foreign adoption.''Babies will accept any parents who love them,'' the doctor said.Besides the Sarajevo government's desire to see that the abandoned children of rape victims remain citizens of Bosnia, it also fears provoking the kind of unscrupulous baby trade that resulted when Westerners learned of the plight of Romanian orphans more than three years ago.Kurjak said he already has received numerous letters from desperate childless couples seeking to adopt.Those working with the rape victims contend that foreign adoptions are a risk the government will have to take.''Our policy would be to support the mother, whatever her decision. But I think the best solution would be to allow adoption abroad,'' said Vesna Kesic, head of the Zagreb Center for Women Victims of War. ''These children would have a horrible destiny here. They would always be known among some people as the 'Little Chetniks.' ''