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Through the initiative of the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) seven children with severe lead poisoning from Kosovo have been invited with their father for treatment in Germany. The family has had to live since 1999 in a UN refugee camp which is contaminated by heavy metals. In the Institute for Functional Medicine and Environmental Medicine (IFU) in Bad Emstal near Kassel the children are now to be decontaminated. The treatment is being financed by the relief campaign „A Heart for Children“ of the Newspaper „Bild“. The children ranging from five to fifteen years old have been accommodated for seven years in one of three camps for 560 displaced Ashkali and Roma. These camps are run by the UN administration in Kosovo (UNMIK) in the immediate vicinity of the refuse heap of a former lead-working plant in Mitrovica in spite of many warnings from the GfbV and recommendations from environmental medical experts that they be evacuated, said the GfbV General Secretary, Tilman Zülch, at a press conference in Bad Emstal on Wednesday. The GfbV calls for the refugees to be moved immediately to an area without health hazards and for them to be treated by an international team of doctors. Zülch criticised sharply in this connection the German government. „It is now contributing to the fact that the refuges will have to remain at least eight months in the contaminated area. So it bears part of the blame for the continuing poisoning of the people.“ The German government has paid 500,000 euros for a former barracks of the Kfor troops to be prepared for the refugees in the sight of the camps. The French Kfor soldiers stationed there were according to one of them sent home with the warning that owing to the high lead concentration they should not in the first few months beget any children. Yet the Roma and Ashkali are to move into the barracks and remain there for a long time – until their houses, which were destroyed by nationalist Albanians have been rebuilt. The first of these are to be ready by the beginning of 2007, if the UNMIK keep their promise this time. „The five-year old Kassandra and her brother Denis belong to the severely contaminated children in the camps“, said Dr Runow. Kassandra is the youngest of the seven children from Kosovo in Bad Emstal. „She has hardly left the hut since the death of her mother in July 2005. She has slept practically all the time and constantly falls into a coma. It was feared that she would die if nothing happened.“ Dr Runjow was in the camps with the GfbV and took 66 hair samples. The reading gave the 200-fold of the reference value. In the case of some children the value was 1,200-fold. Many samples showed also very high values of cadmium and arsenic. „We must assume that at least 37 deaths were the result of lead poisoning in the camps“, said the chief of the GfbV team, Paul Polansky. Many of the other children in the camps showed clear symptoms of serious lead poisoning and loss of memory, coordination difficulties and coma. In the view of environmental medicine they will retain irreversible damage to the nerve and immune systems and disturbances of bone growth and blood formation. „If they are to be saved then they must be brought to a place which is considerably removed from this one“, said Dr Runow.in support of the demand of the GfbV. „It is not enough to concrete over the lead-contaminated soils in the camp next-door as the contact with the heavy metal takes place through the air. Therapy and decontamination are not possible in an area with this degree of contamination.“ „It is disgraceful that the UNMIK has left the main victims of the minority persecution to their own devices since 1999 and only began with first aid measures after an American film was made and the first western newspapers like the „International Herald Tribune“ and the „Bild“ reported in detail on the criticism of the GfbV“, said Zülch. „Serbs and Albanians were brought in their thousands into safety from dangerous situations. So it should also be possible to move at very short notice 560 Roma and Ashkali.“ Approximately 120,000 of the 150,000 Roma and Ashkali were driven out since the Nato intervention by nationalist Albanians. 14,000 of their 19,000 houses were destroyed in the sight of the Kfor without these taking any action. The GfbV has for years worked for the evacuation of the contaminated camps by eMail and postcard campaigns to the Kosovo chief-in-command of the UN, Sören Jessen-Petersen, open letters to the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and the responsible ministers of all the western states, letters to the German members of parliament, leaflet campaigns to all members of the Foreign Office, press releases and conferences, talks with politicians and interviews with many other human rights initiatives.
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