POISONED CHILDREN
DEADLY LEAD The hated Roma of Kosovo now face a new enemy in the toxic soil and water of their squalid camp, writes Olivia Ward
ix 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 Nationsappointed 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 longerterm 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
Sand 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. SecretaryGeneral 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.”