The Woman’s Hour programme on BBC Radio 4 on March 3rd raised attention on the issue of physically and mentally disabled children suffering in unimaginably horrid conditions in Bulgarian institutions for children with disabilities.
It is a distressful thing to read about. What is even more bizarre is that it has somehow slipped by in the media without the appropriate attention from the public. In 2007, a 90-minute shocking documentary about an institution in Mogilino made by director Kate Blewett aired on BBC 4 and immediately received strong reaction from the UK and many human rights supported organisations. However, the Bulgarian government seems to have made no effort in dealing with the situation.
Kate Blewett’s documentary is here and the radio programme can be downloaded here.
Picture courtesy of True Vision Productions
The three guests on the show were Rosa Monkton, a supporter of the charity for abandoned children, Hristo Momov, the deputy chair of the State Agency for Child Protection in Bulgaria, and Vladimir Bereanu, a Bulgarian investigative journalist.
Ms. Monkton had published an article on The Times telling her story about the visit to eight institutions for children in Bulgaria.
Excerpt:
I asked to go into one of the rooms and picked up the nearest child, a living skeleton. And what was wrong with him? He was blind. Just blind. But now he was starving to death, rocking and banging his head against the side of his cot. On another visit, I asked the director, a paediatrician, about a child with Down’s Syndrome. Why was she here? “She has Down’s Syndrome, she will die.” I told her that this was not true, that these children could live fulfilled lives. Angered, she asked: “Are you a doctor?” No, I replied, but I was the mother of a child with Down’s Syndrome. “But you are not a doctor, so you don’t understand… these children have no use. They should never have been born.”
After Ms. Monkton described what she saw during her visit to the institutions as “indescribably awful”, “utterly horrific” and moreover reported that children with disabilities could be forcefully “removed” from parents, Mr. Bereanu responded with rage.
He said: “This makes me really angry,” and accused some information that Ms. Monkton had said to have gotten from Bulgarian internet chat rooms were “not any realistic, journalistic source.”
He then explained the reason for such situation to still be existed was due to changes in Bulgaria after Communism to “capitalism to the absurdity.”
Later on Mr. Momov was asked about the number of children who are still in these state institutions. The number he raised was 8,019 children, while one of the charities in Bulgaria reported the number of near 24,000. He also claimed a “drastical” improvement has been made recently to such state institutions.
Picture courtesy of True Vision Productions
According to the Bulgarian and South-Eastern Europe newspapers for English-speakers The Sofia Echo, the latest statistics have shown that: “Bulgaria, among all EU countries, had the largest number of abandoned children younger than three.”
It is true that Bulgaria is a late member to join to EU in 2007. It is also a fact that it is still a poor Eastern European country that is still catching up. But it is disturbing that such treatments to children exist in a poor EU country or even anywhere in the world.
Both the EU and the Bulgarian government should take protection of children as one of the top priorities. How “loud” the wakeup call must be before they wake up?
The damage has been done to these children and there is no going back.
