Germany must ensure detox measures for Roma refugees from camp "Osterode"

On Friday, the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) demanded that the German Federal Government should provide immediate medical treatment for the former inmates of the last lead-contaminated refugee camp in northern Kosovo, which was closed down recently. "A medical team must be sent out immediately to check if the refugees are poisoned with heavy metals and if they could be treated in German hospitals" said the STP’s General Secretary, Tilman Zülch in Göttingen on Friday. Also, he criticized: "It is an awful scandal that hundreds of people and their children have been living on contaminated land for years, without knowing about the risk of being poisoned. If the refugees had been Jewish – and not members of the Roma or the Ashkali – they would not have been treated with indifference or exposed to such danger. "As the German Bundeswehr had an important role in the NATO intervention in Kosovo in 1999, Germany should also show responsibility for the Roma minority living there."

The last six Roma and Ashkali families – there were once about 150 – were now able to move from the camp "Osterode" in North Mitrovica to their newly built homes in the north of the city. From 1999 onwards, there were four refugee camps on the contaminated site of a former lead smelter, with about 1,400 Roma and Ashkali living there. Since 2001, the Society for Threatened Peoples had called for an evacuation of the camps because of the pollution in the area. Many refugees had complained about health problems back then already. In 2005, following an initiative by the STP, the environmental physician Dr. Klaus-Dietrich Runow had taken hair and blood samples from the affected people. The startling results: The lead concentration levels exceeded the limits by at least 20 times, for some children even up to 1200 times. High concentrations of heavy metals can cause irreversible damage to the nervous system and the immune system and can also interfere with bone growth and blood formation. Women often suffer miscarriages.

Before the NATO-intervention, there were about 8,000 Roma, Ashkali and "Kosovo Egyptians" living in the south of Mitrovica, before their homes were destroyed by Albanian nationalists before the eyes of the NATO troops. Members of the Roma minority are being discriminated and marginalized in Kosovo until today. They have little chances regarding employment, education and healthcare. Only about 3,000 of the approximately 14,000 homes that were destroyed have been rebuilt.