Source: "Danas"
Many media have recently reported the news that the National Assembly will appoint a working group with the task to prepare the law which should lay down prerequisites for solving numerous open issues regarding the problem of ''missing babies''. In her announcement of the future appointment of the working group, the President of the National Assembly, has stated that the cause for this action was the Commissioner for Information's pointing out the justified dissatisfaction of a significant number of parents. This justified remark of the President of the National Assembly has been taken as gratification for my efforts to help a group of people affected by this calamity, and it has also reminded me of something which is most probably the worst thing in my job – frequent ‘’encounters’’ with examples of unfathomable human ruthlessness. In addition to the news from the National Assembly, as chance would have it, I have also been reminded of that by the ongoing case on that issue from my practice which has happened at the same time.
This case was supposed to be closed these days by the decision of the Commissioner for Information which ordained the Faculty of Medicine, Institute for Pathology in Belgrade, to ,, inform N.N. person whether it holds the autopsy records, autopsy report, and also the documents which indicate who and when has taken over the body of her newborn child after the autopsy..., and forward the copies of the said documents to her if it does hold them'', not later than 5 days.
The case was supposed to be closed in this manner, but it is not, at least it still is not.
This unusual story began a long time ago when an N.N. person was sent to a prison in the country. She got pregnant in the prison and her delivery time also came while she was in the prison. For that purpose she was transferred from the prison to a local hospital where she gave birth to her son. Unfortunately, her happiness was destroyed with the news that the child's health was bad, and soon she heard that it was very bad. She was told that the child would have to be transferred to Belgrade for this reason. ''Of course'' she could not go with the child and she was returned to prison. Soon she heard that the child had died.
Later she tried to obtain information on the child in various manners. She went to the local hospital, municipality, archival service and who knows where, without any effect. Recently she has come to the logical conclusion, that she should request the abovementioned documents from the Faculty of Medicine in Belgrade, i.e. the Institute for Pathology within the Faculty.
She has filed a complete request, referring to the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance. No reply has been sent, and her request has been ignored. After 15 days, she has submitted a complaint to the Commissioner who has forwarded the complaint to the Faculty in accordance with the Law, and left a possibility for the Faculty to comment the complaint. Silence again. Since the request of N.N. is legitimate from the aspect of the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance and the Law on Personal Data Protection, the above mentioned decision has been adopted. The timeframe for acting upon the decision has passed, and N.N. is still faced with a wall of silence.
What is this really about? From the formal point of view everything is clear. The Faculty is breaking the law, and its (non)action is an offence penalized by law. However, what is the situation from the essential point of view? What is the situation in that context? Is this the concealment of child theft? Or is this ''just'' the fact that, due to the ''proverbial'' order in our archives, the documents have been destroyed or misplaced. If we accept the latter supposition as being more probable, having in mind the passage of time, answers to some unavoidable questions are missing. How is it possible that in all this time none of the responsible persons at the Faculty of Medicine could find it appropriate to write at least one sentence: ‘‘We regret having to inform you that we do not hold the requested documents.'' Is there an acceptable solution to this? How is it not possible to understand that by such (non)action existing doubts are irresponsibly instigated regardless whether they are actually reasonable?
In addition, associations to the lack of consideration for other persons loss, pain, suffering, indifference, lack of empathy, cold, resentful, ruthless and tactless attitude towards people are inevitable. An additional dose of irony in this case is derived from the fact that a lot of people from the Faculty of Medicine, especially those who specialize in psychology, and it is also written in a lot of medical books, would estimate afore mentioned facts as very indicative from the aspect of psychopathy.
How can one estimate the presence of such phenomena in ''communication'' between public bodies and institutions and the citizens independently of (im)proper equalization with the psychological and social phenomena? Whether as something which should not cause worry, something which ''is a natural part of the environment'', something which can be tolerated? Or as something which is very worrying, which should unconditionally be removed from the attitude of public institution towards citizens.
