Kosovo/Kosova As Seen, As Told The OSCE-KVM was denied access to the hospital on 7 March after the Emshirova incident in Pristina (an extensive and violent search operation in which 37 Kosovo Albanians were injured by police, following the killing of two police and the wounding of a third) and after a bomb attack in Podujevo on 5 3 March, as is described in Part V under Pristina city and Podujevo respectively. (For account of similar problems in gaining access to patients under police investigation at Djakovica/ Gjakova hospital see Part V, under the entry for Gjakovica municipality.) The situation after 20 March 1999 After the withdrawal of the OSCE-KVM and start of the NATO bombing of the FRY, refugee statements reveal how the situation in Pristina hospital deteriorated. Snipers positioned themselves on 6 top of the hospital buildings, terrorizing the patients and killing several people outside. Judging by accounts given by refugees, the response to Kosovo Albanians seeking medical assistance became even more arbitrary. One interviewee said that his wife and daughter were only accepted in the hospital on 27 March because he was a medical employee. Otherwise, he said, the only Kosovo Albanians to be treated were those who brought their own medicines. He observed that over the following weeks more and more VJ and police arrived and used the hospital to store ammunition. 7 On 25 March a Kosovo Albanian interviewee who was stabbed by paramilitaries or armed civilians was successfully operated on in Pristina hospital, but the following day a Kosovo Albanian girl was refused treatment. A sniper had shot her in a village outside Pristina. The father took her - with the permission of the police - to Pristina hospital, but a doctor (named in report) refused to operate on the girl. She died two days later at home. At the end of March and beginning of April, the VJ told the remaining Kosovo Albanian employees that they should leave and not come back. Kosovo Albanian patients were also sent out of the hospital and sometimes beaten outside. The free space was used to accommodate Serb families seeking protection from the NATO bombings. Wounded VJ and police were also given 8 priority. Several interviews indicate that staff at the hospital in Gnjilane were rejecting seriously wounded people. Wounded Kosovo Albanians were either rejected with no explanation or told they should seek 9 medical assistance from NATO or that there was "no space available for terrorists". There is a similar account concerning Prizren. An interviewee recounted how his daughter was shot in the hip by police when they attacked the house where she was staying in the village of Sopina/Sopine (Suva Reka/ Suhareke) on 26 March. A local man took her to hospital in Prizren, as she was bleeding badly from the wound, but they were turned away by unidentified people at the hospital who told them "go to NATO". The family set off for Albania, but the injured woman died on the way, on a tractor trailer, from her 10 wound. http://www.osce.org/kosovo/documents/reports/hr/part1/ch11.htm (3 of 4)12/5/2003 11:52:31 AM