Kosovo: Not with German money! Human rights organisation against compulsory move of Roma refugees to lead-contaminated land - 218 children are being poisoned

"The UNMIK allows 218 refugee children to die” stood on one of the banners with which the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) protested on Thursday during its silent vigil in front of the Foreign Office in Berlin against the planned compulsory move of 560 Roma and Ashkali to a former barracks of the Kfor in Kosovo onto land contaminated with lead. The human rights organisation demanded of Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who had a talk on Thursday morning with the UN special envoy for Kosovo, the Dane Sören Jessen-Petersen, that this move be not financed. "Otherwise the German government will make itself a party to the guilt of the creeping poisoning of the refugees and their children”, warned the GfbV General Secretary Tilman Zülch. "The Roma, who since being driven out by extremist Albanians in 1999 have been accommodated in the contaminated three refugee camps of Cesmin Lug, Kablare and Zitkovac, must at last be brought to safety on land which is not contaminated and be given proper medical treatment for decontamination.” The Foreign Office has set aside 500,000 euros for the move of the Roma.

"The plan of the temporary administration of the United Nations in Kosovo UNMIK to move the people who are already seriously damaged in their health by the exposure to heavy metals over a period of many years to a barracks only a few metres away is an unbelievable plan”, criticised Zülch sharply. "French Kfor soldiers who were stationed at these barracks for only a few months have informed us confidentially that they should on their return home on account of the lead concentration not produce any children during the first few months.”

The GfbV charges the UNMIK with treating the refugees seeking refuge as second-class citizens and with knowingly exposing them for six years to the deadly poisonous heavy metals. "All warnings and appeals to accommodate the Roma and Ashkali elsewhere have been ignored”, reports Zülch. The GfbV has on many occasions called for the evacuation of the camps, which were set up next to a poisonous refuse dump immediately after the Nato intervention. It was at this time that extremist Albanians began to drive out of Kosovo by force at least 120,000 of the approximately 150,000 Roma and Ashkali who had previously lived there.

Last October the renowned expert on environmental medicine, Klaus-Dietrich Runow visited the camps with a delegation from the GfbV. The results of his investigations were horrifying. He found not only "the highest lead concentration ever recorded in human hair”. He prognosticated also that particularly those Roma children born in the camp would suffer irreversible damage to their nerve and immune systems and impairment to bone growth and the blood.system. Above all the children born in the camp sometimes show severe symptoms of lead poisoning, such as deficiencies in coordination, loss of memory and indeed comatose conditions. The permanent team of the GfbV in Kosovo has long registered an unusual number of deaths and miscarriages.