Just under two months ago, I returned from a visit to Kosovo.
I had intended to write about my experiences and impressions of the province but every time I put pen to paper, no words were forthcoming.
As with every conflict zone – especially ethnic conflicts of the type seen in Kosovo – the views you hear from local people are too polarised, the emotions expressed too strong and the very human symbols of destruction illustrated by the burned out homes; and piles of rubble which still line roads in the north of the country are still too evident to draw a fair conclusion as to the “rights” and “wrongs” of any situation.
I won’t touch on the ongoing politick regarding the future of Kosovo as a country, nor will I discuss the ongoing intimidation and wretched living conditions of the province’s minorities. I do, however, want to highlight one significant wrong the international community has a duty to right: the treatment and living conditions of Roma refugees in the country.
This problem stems back to the height of the Kosovo conflict between 1998 and 1999, when the Kosovo Liberation Army expelled 90,000 ethnic Roma citizens from their homes on the basis of Albanian nationalist fears that the community were stooges of Slobodan Milosevic.
Among these were the Roma community of Mitrovica, an ethnically divided town in the north of the province divided between a majority-Serb settlement north of the River Ibar and larger Albanian town to the south. Previously home to one of the largest Roma communities in the Balkans, the 8,000 person Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian ‘Mahalla’ (community) on the banks of the Ibar was burned to the ground by KLA forces in June 1999 following the retreat of the Serbian army.
Fearing for their lives, the Roma citizens of Mitrovica were numerous among the hundreds of thousands of refugees – Albanian, Serb, Gorani, Turks and Bosniak - who fled Kosovo in fear of their lives.
Since 1999, the majority of the 90,000 expelled Roma have returned to Kosovo, yet more than 30,000 have never returned to their homes. The majority of this diaspora, seeing no future for them under the rule of a quasi-Albanian nationalist administration, chose either to remain in the Serbian Republic or opted to remain close to their former homes in the grotesque refugee camps just to the north of Serb-controlled North Mitrovica.
Welcome to the Trepça mining complex; home to 650 men, women and children living in conditions one would not even keep a pig.
I visited one of the camps, Cesmin Lug, on a cloudy Sunday afternoon.
Against a backdrop of rust-stained concrete, abandoned machinery and swimming pool-sized lakes of stagnant water, it’s hard to believe that the mines once accounted for 70% of Yugoslavia's mineral production and employed almost 25,000 local people in forty different pits. It has been more than twenty years since Trepça has been fully operational but a faint smell of sulphur still hangs in the air. Graffiti covers every inch of the abandoned plant buildings and dilapidated smoke stacks crowd the skyline. Aside from the occasional shrub whose exposed roots stubbornly cling to the soil, vegetation is eerily sparse.
According to my guide, a middle-aged Serbian woman called Jasna, occasional efforts are made to reactivate parts of complex, yet these invariably fail at the first hurdle. Electricity is in short supply (the entire province of Kosovo draws its power from one power station just outside of Pristina) and more than a decade of neglect means that large parts of the mine complex have now been irreversibly flooded.
While macabre mementoes of Trepça’s industrial past can be seen all around, the only signs of life today are the homes of ethnic Roma residents.
On entering Cesmin Lug, I was immediately struck by the number Roma homes standing closely packed up against one another, their vibrantly colourful walls almost entirely camouflaged by a mixture of mud and piled-up rubbish.
Prior to my visit I had heard about the severe health problems suffered by many of the residents but was shocked to see children who couldn’t have been any older than four or five splashing around in discoloured water and clambering over abandoned mining equipment as if it were a local playground.
No more than a few hundred metres from the Cesmin Lug is a small shaft which appeared to be some form of oxygen inlet for a mine. It is rumoured locally that these inlets have been belching toxic gases from mines condemned as unsafe for human exploration for years.
I didn’t speak to any of the camp’s residents and left Cesmin Lug as quickly as I arrived, uncomfortable at my ghoulish observation of very real human suffering.
Returning to Pristina, even the most briefest of conversations with locals revealed widespread knowledge of the health problems suffered by the Roma. Most commonly mentioned were reports and rumours of lead poisoning, kidney failure and deformities among those living in the camps. While the scandal of the Trepça mines may be virtually unknown outside Kosovo, sadly it is common parlance in the province.
The environmental group Mines and Communities, which has campaigned around the world to raise awareness of the environmental damage posed by the mining sector, offered the following observations about the types of health risks posed to those living in close proximity of mines like Trepça:
"Lead can enter the body through the following means: inhalation, ingestion of the soil itself or food grown where the soil is contaminated, and through the placenta of the foetus in the womb. Nutrition, hygiene, ratio of body fat, fiber intake, age and overall physiological makeup all affect the speed at which the body absorbs lead. Children between birth and six years old are the most vulnerable as they are in the primary stages of growth and development. Lead poisoning affects the entire body and has severe and permanent health consequences. Potential symptoms of exposure to lead, even at low levels, include loss of appetite, lethargy, high blood pressure, fertility problems for men and women, premature birth, stunted growth, hearing damage, neurological damage, seizures, pain and/or paralysis in the legs, dropping in and out of consciousness, anaemia, increased aggression, stomach cramps, and vomiting... The most significant and irreversible effect is on IQ levels. An increase in blood lead level from 10 to 20 micrograms per decilitre has been associated with a decrease of 2.6 IQ points, but any incremental increase above 20 further reduces IQ levels"
To a varying extent, each and every one of these symptoms has been observed in the Roma refugee camps of Northern Kosovo.
Nobody could agree such a place is a desirable or appropriate place in which to house people in the long-term. Indeed, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) ruled that such refugee camps were simply to be a temporary measure so as to guarantee the safety of Roma residents in South Mitrovica in the short term.
Despite limited efforts by the international community to rehouse Roma refugees, the camps remain open more than decade on. The Roma people, who remain deeply scarred by their experiences in the 1999 conflict, have repeatedly declined the opportunity to be rehoused in Albanian South Mitrovica.
It ought to be a matter of shame to the European Union and wider international community that the Trepça Roma camps remain operative barely 300 miles from Budapest and 75 miles from the Skopje – the capital of an aspiring EU member state.
The Roma refugee camps located adjacent to the Trepça mines complex must be closed at the first possible opportunity following the identification of an appropriate site upon which to house the Roma community. Regrettably, the laudable wish of the international community to bring about mixed-ethnicity communities in the Albanian sector to the south of the River Ibar will remain impractical for decades. Emotions are still too raw and memories are too long.
As such, an appropriate site must be found in areas under the control of Serbia in the northern province of Kosovska Mitrovica. While many governments – including that of the United Kingdom – solely recognise the sovereignty of the Republic of Kosovo over even Serb-controlled areas, the acquisition of such a site will require constructive cooperation with both the Republic of Serbia and Serbian Community Assembly of Kosovo and Metohija. Practically-speaking, this will require the offer of a significant financial inducement to the Serb authorities.
The international community must also recognise that, through its lack of affirmative action, hundreds of people are now suffering with severe health problems which are likely to claim scores of lives in the coming years. Medical attention must immediately be provided to those who have been housed in the Trepça camps. Such specialist treatment is simply not available either in Serbia or Kosovo at present and will therefore need to be provided in an appropriate third country; the most obvious candidate being Romania or Bulgaria.
History is littered with tragic examples of the ill-treatment of the Roma community; from their slaughter of 25% of their people in Nazi gas chambers during World War Two to an ever-increasing wave of racist attacks on their number in Central Europe.
Let us not contribute further to another tragic chapter in their history and act today to solve this humanitarian crisis.