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2005-11-13 -
International
Poisoned
children
The hated Roma of
Kosovo now face a new enemy in the toxic soil and water of
their squalid camp. Six years after the Kosovo war, the
divided northern town of Mitrovica is a place of desolation
and despair. Here, Albanians and Serbs live in segregated
communities, poisoned by ethnic hatred, poverty and violence.
But for more than 500 Roma people living at the edge of
the derelict Trepca mines, the most deadly poison comes from
the slag heaps that waft clouds of lead-laden dust into the
air, water and soil.
It blankets the makeshift camps where the Roma have
remained since they were burned out of their homes in July
1999.
In three bleak settlements that lack heat or indoor
plumbing, Roma children have high levels of lead in their
bloodstreams, causing stunted growth, mental retardation and
paralysis.
Pregnant women reportedly miscarry at a higher than
normal rate and adult symptoms of disorientation include mood
swings and mental confusion.
Their plight, and the dim outlook for their future,
speaks volumes of the situation in the ethnically riven
province of Kosovo, as it edges toward independence from
Serbia.
"Until recently, nobody has shown much interest in the
Roma people," says Marek Antoni Nowicki, the United
Nations-appointed ombud in the region.
"They have been situated next to a huge toxic waste
dump that was not fit for any human being.
"They were not consulted, and only now is it recognized
that they were at obvious risk."
European nations and the U.N.'s Kosovo administration,
UNMIK, have recently contributed money to relocate the Roma to
a nearby French military camp, where living conditions are
better, and there are plans to move them back to the site of
their former homes.
But the military site is in a highly contaminated area
near their current camps, and the destroyed Roma settlement is
also affected by lead pollution.
There is little hope of a longer-term solution that
would remove them from the poisoned Mitrovica area.
"The Roma can't go south, because they are too afraid,"
explains Patricia Waring, a former Nova Scotia bureaucrat and
now director of the UNMIK civil administration.
"They're not wanted there, and they're not wanted in
many parts of the north. We know Mitrovica is a very serious
environmental problem, and it will take years, and billions of
dollars to mitigate. But we must do the best we can with the
best options available."
The Roma's plight is a product of ethnic hostility in
Kosovo, most dangerously in Mitrovica (pronounced
"Mitroveetsa"), where the former Yugoslavia's largest mineral
deposits and processing plants lie, claimed by both Albanians
and Serbs.
Serbia was defeated in NATO's 1999 bombing campaign,
undertaken to punish now-imprisoned dictator Slobodan
Milosevic for his ethnic cleansing of Kosovar Albanians, and
many local Serbs were driven out of the province by violent
reprisals. But a well-armed group of Serbs later took control
of the northern half of the city and prevented Albanians from
returning to their homes.
Violent clashes followed in north Mitrovica, with many
killings on both sides, and the town was split north and south
of the Ibar River. The returning Albanians vented their anger
on the Roma who had stayed in Kosovo during the war, accusing
them of collaborating with the Serbs.
Some 8,000 Roma people were driven from their homes in
southern Mitrovica, where they had lived for more than 150
years in one of Europe's largest and most prosperous Roma
settlements. Now, fewer than 4,000 Roma remain in the
province.
Shortly after the war ended, the United Nations
resettled more than 500 Roma — also known as gypsies, a term
widely considered pejorative — in Serb-populated north
Mitrovica, an area where they were believed to be safe from
further Albanian reprisals.
But the results were devastating, and the youngest in
the community were the first to fall victim as they played in
the poisoned dust.
According to World Health Organization studies,
"children's lead exposure and poisoning in the camps of north
Mitrovica is one of the most serious environmental health
crises in contemporary Europe."
This month, an independent German expert, Dr.
Klaus-Dietrich Runow of the Institute for Functional and
Environmental Medicine, found that the level of lead in the
soil of the camps was more than 20,000 milligrams per
kilogram, compared with a norm of 100 milligrams.
Sixty-four Roma children had what he called "dangerous
levels" of lead in their blood. The highest, in a 7-year-old
boy named Denis Mustafa, was 1,200 times greater than normal.
His mother died in July, at age 43, along with the baby she
had just delivered.
"We have studied contamination all over the world, and
we have never seen such high levels," Runow said in a phone
interview.
"I can tell you that the hair sample reports are scary
— and this is not just a lead problem but a toxic metal
problem.
"We have also found high levels of the toxic substances
arsenic, antimony, cadmium, mercury and aluminum."
Unless the Roma are moved from the camps, Runow says,
the poisons invading the environment from the derelict mines
and smelter will doom them.
"It's like something you read in a textbook," he said.
"The (pollution) attacks the brain and the neurological
system. I have been told that about 29 people have died in the
last five years, and five of them have died since July.
"Children have been paralyzed, and it's my impression
that some are retarded."
Paul Polansky, an American writer who has dedicated the
last six years to documenting the health effects of pollution
on the Roma of Mitrovica, says lead-induced brain damage is
common in the camps.
Pregnant women suffer frequent miscarriages and "some
of them induce miscarriage because they don't want to give
birth to mentally handicapped children."
Polansky, author of UN-Leaded Blood, which
addresses the poisoning of the Mitrovica Roma, invited Runow
to Kosovo to test the Roma.
He has written to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan
about their plight, which he says the world body has largely
ignored.
The Budapest-based European Roma Rights Centre has also
been frustrated by the long international silence on the
health damage suffered by the Roma.
Its legal director, Dianne Post, wants to prosecute
UNMIK for failing to move them from what were meant to be
temporary camps.
She has filed a request for Annan to lift the agency's
diplomatic immunity, and another asking a local prosecutor to
investigate who is responsible for the damage the Roma have
suffered.
But, says Post, "UNMIK is accountable to nobody. Kosovo
is a black hole when it comes to human rights."
Waring, who has been in Kosovo for 14 months, admits
that the Roma have "fallen badly between the cracks" in a
province where international administrators struggle to
maintain a fragile peace between the Albanian majority and the
beleaguered Serbian minority.
But she says a mainly Canadian U.N. team is working on
high alert to relocate the Roma to the French military camp
before the icy Kosovo winter sets in, an operation that is
still worryingly underfunded.
"We have three initiatives going now. Where there was
no health care, we now have a 24/7 team to do basic medical
care.
"We've brought in food supplements and baskets," she
said in a phone interview.
"We know it doesn't address the lead problem, but we'll
deal with what we can with the small donations we have from
the international community."
The French camp is being prepared, and there the 560
Roma will have adequate heat, indoor plumbing, hot water and
bedding — an improvement over their current conditions in tin
and clapboard shacks.
International charities have been asked to donate shoes
and clothing for the destitute people, who often keep their
children out of school to avoid the ridicule that is attracted
by their ragged garments.
"It's really disgraceful," says Waring. "Imagine seeing
children outdoors in bare feet, playing with balls made with
knotted dirty rags. Canadians would be simply horrified."
The U.N.'s longer-term plan is to rebuild and secure
the old settlement, or mahalla in southern Mitrovica —
an operation that will need more than $6 million (U.S.) in
international funding.
But Waring says many Roma are afraid to return to the
territory where they were violently attacked, and most
mistrust the international administration that has failed
dismally to protect them in the past.
Runow and World Health Organization investigators point
out that, even if physical safety improves, the Roma are in
continuing environmental danger as long as they remain in the
Mitrovica area.
And, Runow adds, treating them for lead poisoning may
be futile under those conditions, because "the whole area is
polluted. The toxic load those people are carrying is so high
that I could only recommend they be moved to a clean place."
That's unlikely to happen soon, if ever.
Kosovo's "elephant in the room" is independence from
Serbia, which some now consider all but inevitable. With no
international presence, the plight of the widely resented Roma
could become even worse. Human rights advocates fear they
would be pushed into Serbia, along with Kosovo's remaining
Serbs.
Equally alarming, says ombud Nowicki, is the threat of
repatriation hanging over the Roma who took refuge in Europe
during the war.
"On one hand, you have Roma who are requesting to go to
the West from Kosovo and are unwelcome. But the real problem
right now is to stop the West from forcibly returning hundreds
of others."
And, he adds, "the outlook is grim. These are people
without any political support, without any country behind
them, and at the mercy of any power in whose territory they
end up. It's a question of collective responsibility. But
nobody is prepared to take it."
Source: Toronto
Star
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2005-11-22 International
