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Mentally Ill in Serbia Are Abused, Report Says

Mental Disability Rights International
The Special Institute for Children and Youth, in Stamnica, in 2006. Children and adults are restrained for years at institutions in Serbia, according to a disability rights advocacy group.
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new_york_times:http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/14/world/europe/14serbia.html

By DAN BILEFSKY
Published: November 14, 2007
BRUSSELS, Nov. 13 — A 21-year-old man with Down syndrome tied to a metal crib for 11 years. Children, naked from the waist down, left to eat and defecate in their beds. A 7-year-old girl with fluid in her brain left untreated “because she will die anyway.”
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Marc Schneider/Mental Disability Rights International
A dehydrated girl is tied to a crib at an institution in Kulina. A group says such problems could have been prevented.
These are some of the allegations of abuse at Serbian state mental institutions and orphanages described in a report to be released Wednesday by Mental Disability Rights International, a group based in Washington that spent four years investigating the treatment of some of the 17,200 children and adults with disabilities in institutions in Serbia.
In the report, which is expected to be read closely by European Union officials who are assessing Serbia’s readiness to join the 27-member bloc, researchers concluded that “filthy conditions, contagious diseases, lack of medical care and rehabilitation and a failure to provide oversight renders placement in a Serbian institution life-threatening.” European Union officials said that such reports would be a basis for their assessments of a country’s record in upholding human rights, and of its readiness to enter the union.
The institutions investigated include the Kolevka, or Institution for Children and Youth, in Subotica; the Institute for Mentally Ill People, in Curug; the Institution for Children and Youth, in Kulina; the Special Institute for Children and Youth, in Stamnica; and psychiatric hospitals in Vrsac and Kovin, east of Belgrade.
Eric Rosenthal, executive director of the rights group, said the use of physical restraints on children for years at a time was the most extreme he had seen during 14 years as a disability rights advocate. He said there were no enforceable laws in Serbia regulating the use of such restraints.
“This is the most horrifying abuse I have seen on powerless children, who are tied to beds and unable to move,” he said. “This constitutes a clear case of torture.”
Vladimir Pesic, a Serbian government official dealing with disability issues, declined to comment, saying he had not seen the report.
Last week, the European Union gave pro-Western forces in Serbia a lift by supporting a deal that would accelerate Serbia’s joining the union by cementing closer economic and political ties. But the allegations of abuses could add to the hurdles Belgrade faces, which include its failure to arrest and turn over war crimes suspects indicted in The Hague and the uncertain future of the breakaway province of Kosovo.
Mr. Rosenthal said the extent of the abuse at mental institutions in Serbia was particularly egregious, given that countries had spent tens of millions of euros to help rebuild institutions in Serbia after the 1999 NATO-led war against the country, when it was led by Slobodan Milosevic.
“The mental institutions have been newly rebuilt with the help of the West, so the abuse is happening in clean, new buildings built with foreign money,” he said. “This tragedy could have been prevented.”
Laurie Ahern, an investigator who toured the Serbian mental institutions with a registered nurse, said she was most alarmed by the case of a man with Down syndrome, who was tied to his bed at Stamnica, an institution southeast of Belgrade.
When Ms. Ahern asked a nurse how long it had been since the patient had left the bed, the nurse replied, “Eleven years,” she said.
“There were rows upon rows of young people with Down syndrome,” Ms. Ahern said. “These children are mobile and can move around. But they are being left in metal coffins to lie there until the day they die.”