Activist highlights horrendous plight of poisoned Roma refugees in Kosovo

Over 500 Roma Gypsies in Kosovo have been left to suffer and die from lead poisoning for nine years by the UN according to a human rights activist, currently visiting Ireland to lobby support for the forgotten people.

Paul Polansky, who was originally appointed by the UN to act as their advisor on Roma matters in Kosovo, said that all the children who have been born there (and there are 210 under 10) have irreversible brain damage. Some die before birth, others before they reach the age of six. He describes the camps as 'death camps.

The children show the symptoms of lead poisoning: lead markings on teeth, walking in disorientated way, vomiting frequently, loss of memory, falling into comas and in adulthood their behaviour becomes aggressive.

While all of the other refugees in Kosovo have been evacuated or rehoused, the two Roma camps at Osterode and Cesmin Lug, built beside toxic slag heaps of the residue from lead mines, 20 storeys high, have been left in place for nine years, in spite of assurances, when they opened, that the camps would only be there for a matter of weeks.

Mr Polansky, who has been living and working for the Roma in Kosovo for years, has twice been hospitalized himself for lead poisoning, as has all his staff. He currently heads a mission paid for by German’s second largest NGO, the Society for Threatened People. 

He is adamant that the only solution is to immediately evacuate the families to a US army base for medical treatment.

Asked by ciNews if the Roma themselves would not prefer to stay in their homeland, rather than being moved, he said that more than anything else, they want medical treatment.

“They want a medical solution. Everyone talks about re-settlement, but what they want is to save their children.  I have lived with them.  Their children are the most important things in their lives. The mothers want no more mentally retarded children.”

Mr Polansky said that the plight of the Roma was being ignored by the UN because of who they are.  If they were Irish, or Albanian, or any other ethnic group, they would be out by now, he said. But the UN has an "ingrained descrimination" against gypsies because they say the Roma gypsies, who are not a homogenous group, but comprise many different ethnic groups, are too difficult to work with.

While the refugees, are allowed to leave the camp, and they do go out to beg and look for material in rubbish bins etc, they “don’t think straight,” and find it very hard to “make any kind of decision,” because of the lead poisoning. This is why they do not run away from the camps.

In August High Commissioner for Human Rights of the UN said they had turned the responsibility of the camps over to the Kosovan government, however when Mr Polansky's organisation approached the Minister for Health, he said they had no money to evacuate the refugees, although it was needed. 

Mr Polansky believes however, that the responsibility for solving this humanitarian disaster lies firmly with the UN.

While in Ireland this week, he addressed a Dáil Joint Foreign Affairs sub-committee on Human Rights, the Human Rights Centre in Galway, showed his acclaimed film ‘Gypsy Blood’ and was interviewed on the Pat Kenny show.  Last week Mr Polansky was in Brussels and London to talk to MPs, MEPs and commissioners on the issue. (The full text of his talk is in the archive section of ciNews.)

He appealed to Irish people to lobby the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Micheál Martin T.D. to save the children.

“I know the Irish people have a big heart for people. I’m relying on them to save these children,” he told ciNews.  “Your foreign minister needs to tell the UN that ‘we are not going to pay our UN dues until this problem is solved,’” he added.

 Picture of shanty hut in camp for displaced Roma in Kosovo. The hillocks behind it are lead tailings of the trepca mining complex which contaiminates the soil,air and water, by kind permission of Daithí Mac An Bhiocáire.