Pictures from Sanadinovo

2002 news

Sometimes all you have to do is take a glimpse at a photo to know you won't be able to forget it. This is what it feels like when you look at these women from Sanadinovo, Bulgaria, near the country's border with Romania. About a hundred physically and mentally disabled women are living in this social home in deplorable conditions, hungry, filthy, forgotten by the world.

The conditions in which they live became public after Amnesty International and the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee (BHC), two organisations working for the protection of civil rights, carried out a visit to the home.

Building such homes in deserted, isolated locations, out of people's sight was normal for communist times. Ten years later, however, things haven't changed much. "The women here are dying a slow death," said Ivan Fiser from Amnesty International. The daily food allowance for each of them is a mere 0.5 Euro. Only 1,700 km from Berlin, nearer than Majorca, their lives are in the Middle Ages. "Nobody cares about the mentally disabled," says Krassimir Kanev from the BHC. Each year the Germans donate app. 2 billion Euro "mainly for children and in support of disater victims", claims the head of UNICEF Rudi Tarneden. The children attract more donations than disabled women. You can find out how you can help by sending protest letters to the Bulgarian authorities on the website of the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee. And of course: donate. You can find the bank account in the BHC site.

top