Kidnapped Babies

Every time I walk around the neighborhood and pass this wall with "Kidnapped Babies" graffiti on it, I remember that I promised to tell you this sad, heartbreaking story of why that graffiti carries so much emotional weight...

Is there a greater love in life than the one we feel for our child?
It is strong, warm and unconditional and in the heart of every mother beats the miniature hearts of her children connected by invisible threads forever, but what happens when someone violently tears it away, leaving a big void that from that moment on is filled only with longing and sadness?
Despite all the appeals and protests, society seems to remain blind and deaf to the fact that in our beloved country there were cases of baby theft, and not in a small number.

In the 70s and 80s of the 20th century, there were many reported cases of theft of newborn children in Yugoslavia.
A healthy, young woman, with a normal pregnancy, goes to the maternity hospital, mostly in a smaller municipality, and after giving birth, when she asks where the baby is, she gets an explanation:
"We are sorry, your baby has passed away".

Those were the common words of those years in Yugoslavia...

The birth, which went smoothly, without complications, ends with the doctor on duty signing the death certificate and forbidding the parents to see the body of their deceased baby.
Allegedly: "It is the rule that after the birth of stillborn children, the burial is carried out according to a quick procedure, when the parents cannot attend...".

There were a lot of situations like this in those years, the 70s, 80s, 90s in these areas.
Then the war happened, the splitting of the country and this topic fell into the background.

Although the parents never forgot their mission and goal. Find out where their child is...

Before the court in Strasbourg in 2013, there were around 100 lawsuits filed by parents from Serbia who suspect that their babies were stolen from hospitals and sold to wealthy couples in Europe and the world after they were declared dead without explanation or medical evidence.
A law was passed (at the request of the EU) to pay 10,000e to parents who submitted a request for the search of abducted children, in case the abduction is not resolved.

At the time, this seemed like "Washing of hands" and a desire to end the court proceedings as soon as possible...

However, the parents remained on their request: "We don't need money, but our children".

I was not familiar with this topic, since I am also a generation of those stolen babies, until I moved into the building, where in the apartment across from ours I met the neighbors,, a couple with two children, who told me about the tragedy of their family .

At the age of 24, at the beginning of the 90s, while the war was raging in this area (and her husband was a policeman, he was constantly on the ground outside the city), she had an uncomplicated pregnancy and worked for up to 7 months.
The birth went OK, a healthy and strong baby was born, with a grade of 5.
But the next day, when they were supposed to bring the baby to her, they brought a report that said the baby did not survive the birth.

She alone, without her husband, after being discharged from the maternity ward, went home sad, accepting the doctor's report without doubt.

She asked about the funeral, who organizes it and how, but she was told that it is handled by the hospital...

When her husband came home from the field after two weeks, they started a story with the hospital about the discharge list, the birth report of the baby, but it was already too late.

They didn't get a birth certificate, death certificate... Nothing.
As if the woman was never pregnant.
An obvious example of stealing a newborn baby...

For years, they tried to find out something about their baby, visited the courts, social services, the policeman husband made connections in the police, but... All in vain.
In a country where doctors are corrupt, the judiciary is also corrupt, as well as social institutions and the police.
There is a saying "A crow does not take out its eyes...".

There is even a suspicion that all these state offices at some point engaged in organized crime - stealing newborn children and selling them to childless families who wanted to adopt a child (and it is always better that it be a small baby, than an already grown child who one can wonder who and where his mother is).

After the work in 1995, an Urdu organization called "Kidnapped Babies" was founded, consisting of parents who had the same tragedy as my neighbors...

In the years that followed, without giving up, they tried to find the truth, whatever it was.
As they failed to fight the laws of our corrupt state, they founded a political party and entered into a coalition with opposition parties.

The elections are scheduled for two weeks, on December 17.

I sincerely hope that these cases of baby abductions will be raised to a higher level in the parliament and in front of the people's deputies in the assembly, and laws will be passed that will criminally punish any attempt at a similar crime, so that something like this never happens again.

Babies who are stolen and given to some families for adoption do not know what their fate is, but God forbid anyone to be in the shoes of parents who lost their newborn child in this way...