”Bulgaria’s abandoned children” by Ivan Fišer How long will the Bulgarian government remain indifferent in the face of human suffering? On 13 September 2007, BBC 4 television viewers in the United Kingdom had an opportunity to watch ”Bulgaria’s abandoned children”, a documentary film directed by Kate Blewett. I anticipated this broadcast with some trepidation. Between 2001 and 2005, working for Amnesty International and closely collaborating with the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee, I visited over 35 social care homes for children and adults in Bulgaria, some of them several times. It seems to me that I still remember these visits - each and every one - to the smallest detail, while most other memories slowly fade away. In that period I also had many opportunities to speak about my findings to the highest Bulgarian officials and to urge them to implement much needed measures. Mostly, I was disappointed by their reactions and their apparent indifference to the reality my Bulgarian colleagues and I were documenting in our reports. A friend who assisted the BBC film-makers told me that it concerned the home for children with mental disabilities in Mogilino, an institution I had visited in January 2002. I was apprehensive about watching the film because I feared that little had been done to improve the situation. At the same time I desperately hoped to see any sign of the much needed improvements. What I saw on 13 September haunts me like a nightmare. To viewers in Bulgaria who will hopefully have a chance to see this documentary sometime in November, I would like to highly recommend it. A well-made documentary can be so much more powerful than any written account of the same situation or event. Even the best researched human rights reports seem to sanitize reality with numerous (and indispensable) references to international and domestic law - broad, legal standards to protect human rights that often ring hollow in situations of gross human rights violations. Filming intermittently in Mogilino over a period of nine months, Kate Blewett presented its harsh reality with clinical precision. The message - an appeal for recognition and fulfilment of every child’s basic needs, as a fundamental right of every human to be treated with dignity - is delivered with brutal force, unavoidable in the dire situation of this institution. Her film bears witness to the impregnable isolation from the rest of society of the Mogilino children. Without therapies and access to education to fully develop their potentials, they are condemned to lives void of any meaning. Many of the children live in a world of total silence, since no one has ever talked to them, believing them incapable of learning. They can communicate neither with each other nor with any of the carers. Noth1 OBEKTIV
ing in their lives ever changes - no matter what day of the week, month or season. Except for children with more complex health conditions and needs for treatment, who are left to suffer a slow death. Their pain, witnessed at close quarters, is particularly difficult to watch. The film director rightly has little consideration for the comfort of the viewers and these scenes seem interminable. On the other hand, can anything, even the most poignant images, fully convey the suffering these children are subjected to through neglect and deprivation of adequate medical treatment? What the BBC cameras recorded in Mogilino in 2007 is hardly any different to what my Bulgarian colleagues and I documented in 2002 and on subsequent visits. We noted, among other things, that the living conditions were inadequate, dormitories over-crowded, inappropriately decorated, and the children housed according to their physical and not intellectual abilities. We also described the exclusion of the children from the community as unacceptable; expressed concern that Mogilino children were deprived of adequate medical care1; that their rehabilitation and therapy needs had been inappropriately assessed and not regularly and effectively reviewed; and that it was improper to prescribe phenobarbitone for children simply because it was free or very cheap2. The situation of 35 children who spent their entire lives in bed was of particular concern. In our report we noted: ”The visit to the house which contained the most disabled children was distressing. There were, for example, young children with cerebral palsy, leaving some spastic in all four limbs, one blind and deaf child, and a little one with Down’s syndrome who was extremely hypotonic (floppy) with it. All these children were lying horizontally in bed and spent their days perceiving their environment from that position. It was clear that the staff had no idea how to interact with these very impaired children beyond feeding and cleaning them”. Attention was also drawn to a high mortality rate, with six deaths in the year preceding our visit. ”The stated causes of death included disorders which are common for children with severe developmental disabilities and where there are poor resources. A nineyear-old boy died on 6 November 2001 of pneumonia. He was suffering from cerebral palsy which im1 The general practitioner was based 17km away, while the paediatrician and psychiatrist were in the hospital 30km away, and the children had to be taken to them. 2 Paediatric psychiatrist who accompanied me on the visit to Mogilino was concerned that psychotropic medications were openly used to subdue behaviours which may well not have a psychotic basis, but be due to distress and/or anger arising from the environment. Phenobarbitone is a very old-fashioned drug used in the past for epilepsy. It is very sedating and usually extremely depressive in its effect.