'Why should I live by Gypsies?'

By Helen Grady
Producer, Beyond Westminster

Every year millions of pounds are spent by local councils on evicting Gypsies and travellers from illegal camp sites. The government thinks the answer is to create more authorised sites, but who should decide where they go?

Len Gridley has some problems with his neighbours. The first is that there are 1,000 of them. The second is that they have set up what has become Europe's biggest illegal traveller site next to his back garden.

"All I want is for the council to clear the site," said Mr Gridley as he showed the 8ft fence he has fitted to separate his garden from his neighbours' homes.

"Who wants to live next to a Gypsy and traveller site? My house used to be worth £500,000 and now it's worth £150,000. No one wants to live here. People have sold up at a loss just to get away."

The site is in Cray's Hill, a picturesque village in the Essex countryside, which has become the focus of a planning row that is likely to cost the local council £3m.

Illegal settlement

The site backing onto Mr Gridley's bungalow is known as Dale Farm. It is owned by Gypsies and Irish Travellers, some of whom have been living there since the 1970s.

Grattan Puxon, a spokesman for the Dale Farm Residents, said the site expanded after some families bought an old scrap yard adjoining the original site. "As the families got bigger, they believed it was a quite a reasonable idea to clean up the old scrap yard and move onto it," he explained.

But only half of the Dale Farm site has planning permission and more than 400 people are facing eviction following a ruling by the Law Lords in May.

Basildon District Council, has spent almost £1m on the legal battle to evict the Travellers and set aside another £2m to pay for bailiffs to clear the illegal section of the site.

Council leader Tony Ball said it was worth the cost, adding "It's quite clear - they are living on green belt land without planning permission. UK law says that site has to be restored to green belt. What price upholding the law? The alternative is anarchy."

But families at Dale Farm claim they have nowhere else to go. And, although they are travellers by birth, they say they need a base.

"I don't know how to read or write," said Jean Sheridan, a mother-of-four. "I've been brung up like a proper traveller - travelling from site to site and on the roads constantly, so I never got the chance to go to school and get an education.

"This is somewhere for us to live, plus somewhere for us to get our kids looked after in the lines of doctors and dentists and education and things like that."

"I'd be happy to move if they could find us another site," added a neighbour, who asked not to be named. "But nobody wants us, so where are they going to put us?"

Political dilemma

That is a dilemma politicians have been grappling with for decades. So far, a solution seems elusive. Although most Gypsies and travellers live in authorised sites, it still costs councils in England at least £18m a year to evict people from illegal sites.

The government thinks the best way to cut these costs is to create more authorised sites and is offering councils £32m each year in grants for these sites.

There is some evidence to suggest this approach could work. Kent has 17 council-run sites across the county and has slashed its eviction costs by 80%.

But other local authorities have proved reluctant even to identify Gypsy and traveller sites, never mind creating council-run ones.

In England, each region must agree how many sites each local council will set aside for Gypsies and travellers in a document called the Regional Spatial Strategy.

However, some councils are threatening to take legal action rather than agreeing, even in principle, to provide what they see as "more than their fair share."

Candy Sheridan, a Liberal Democrat councillor in North Norfolk and a member of an Irish Traveller family, said a big part of the problem is that even authorised sites are unpopular with the settled community.

"There is no ideal site," said Ms Sheridan. "I sit on a planning committee and whenever the word Gypsy or traveller comes in, you get hundreds of people coming to public meetings and everybody is goaded up to say no to planning permission.

"Councillors who have signed up to creating new sites have lost their seats. What you have to do is take the responsibility away from local politicians."

At the moment, even though councils must assess the housing needs of Gypsies and travellers and have a strategy for meeting those needs, there is no legal duty to provide sites.

Labour MP Clive Betts, a member of the Communities and Local Government Select Committee, thinks that should change.

He told the BBC: "I think a lot of local authorities would welcome a statutory duty to have to do something because at least then they can go to their residents and say, 'we have to do something, let's find the best sites'."

Extra sites

But shadow local government spokesman Bob Neil said such decisions should be made at a local level and that the Conservatives would scrap the Regional Spatial Strategy.

Meanwhile Basildon District Council is advertising for bailiffs to evict the illegal Dale Farm residents and councillors are resisting calls to provide an extra 60 Gypsy and traveller pitches as part of the Regional Spatial Strategy.

Said Coun Ball: "If every authority in the country took an additional seven pitches that would deal with the demand that's out there at the moment.

"We would take seven extra pitches. But it is inequitable that, while Basildon already provides a 100, some are not providing any."

is broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Saturday 1 August at 1100 BST. Or listen again via the BBC
Or download the programme

Should Gypsies and travellers be housed on official sites funded by the taxpayer? Who should decide where they go - councils or Central Government? Are you a traveller? Do you live near an authorised site for travellers or an illegal camp? Send us your comments by filling in the form below.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8171273.stm

Published: 2009/08/01 01:26:51 GMT

Gypsy vaccination scheme starts

By Guy Dinmore in Rome

Published: March 2 2009 01:32 Last updated: March 2 2009 01:32

Italy’s Red Cross has launched its biggest vaccination programme since the second world war, with the goal of immunising several thousand gypsy children living in camps around Rome.

The operation began at Casilino 900, a camp on the eastern outskirts of the capital that is believed to be one of the largest gypsy settlements in Europe. Some two dozen doctors were among 200 Red Cross volunteers that included clowns to provide entertainment in one of the big tents erected for the exercise.

(MORE)

Addressing race equality in health services for Gypsy, Travellers and other minority ethnic groups

Published by traceybignall for Race Equality Foundation in Health
Tuesday 9th December 2008 - 12:20pm

Gypsies and Travellers form diverse communities with some people living nomadic lives and others settled in authorised sites or within social housing. Both settled and nomadic groups experience difficulties in accessing health services despite research evidence of their poor health outcomes and greater need.

A lack of continuity of care during pregnancy, high levels of suicide and self-harm due to mental distress; and the inability to use palliative care services for those who are highly mobile, are some of the health issues faced. Some resources, such as the Pacesetters Programme, do have specific targets to improve these communities health locally, however, good practice still needs to be embedded within a national programme or a national strategy on Gypsy and Traveller health, according to Zoe Matthews in the Better Health Briefing paper on the health of Gypsies and Travellers in the UK.

This is one of a series of Better Health briefing papers produced by the Race Equality Foundation. Each briefing paper provides an overview of the key messages for practice on a range of topics for health practitioners and includes practice examples, list of resources and further reading.

The papers are part of a programme of work to improve the health; housing and social care provision to black and minority ethnic communities. The programme resources will help primary care providers in addressing health inequalities and developing good practice in catering for the health needs of diverse communities.

Equipping practitioners to embed race equality in practice and service provision is encouraged through national events, such as the forthcoming Mainstreaming Race Equality: using evidence to promote change in health services conference being held on Tuesday 10 March 2008 at the Kings Fund, London. This event will enable delegates to have a better understanding of what it means to ‘mainstream’ race equality and explore evidence of what works in meeting equality requirements and duties.

To register interest contact Tracey Bignall at the Foundation by email tracey@racefound.org.uk

Further information about the project, briefing paper and national conference is available on our website: www.raceequalityfoundation.org.uk

Roma children dying of lead poisoning

By Paul Polansky
Monday, 17 November 2008

This month, Germany's second largest NGO, the "Society for Threatened Peoples" will be sending its Head of Mission for Kosovo, Paul Polansky, to the House of Commons, London and to the EU Headquarters in Brussels in an attempt to save 130 Roma families placed by the United Nations in camps with life-threatening conditions.

Below is a shortened version of the speech delivered by Mr. Polansky in the Brussels hearing.

Two hours from here by plane, in Eastern Europe, are two death camps, mainly for children under the age of six years.

If these children don’t die by the age of six, they will have irreversible brain damage for the rest of their short lives.

These camps have been running for nine years. They were built on the tailing stands of the biggest lead mine in Europe, and next to a toxic slagheap of 100 million tons.

These camps (there used to be four) were built by the UN administration in Kosovo and their implementing partner Action by Churches Working Together. The hurriedly assembled barracks were also built with old lead painted boards.

To date 77 people have died in these camps, mainly due to complications from lead poisoning. More than 50 women have also aborted because of the lead poisoning. One woman and her baby died at childbirth. During her pregnancy she was being treated for lead poisoning. After her death it was discovered by a well-known laboratory in Chicago that two of her surviving nine children has the highest lead levels in medical history.

According to medical experts from Germany and the United States who have visited the camps, every child conceived in these camps will be born with irreversible brain damage.

In November 1999, UNHCR took charge of homeless Gypsies and moved them to four hurriedly built camps on toxic wasteland, the only places the UN said were available. I protested, calling attention to UN officials and especially to the head of UNHCR in Pristina, that these toxic wastelands could be detrimental to the health of these IDPs (internally displaced people). UNHCR assured me that they had signed contracts with the local municipalities that these IDPs would be in these camps for only 45 days. At the end of 45 days, they would either have their homes rebuilt and moved back or would be taken as refugees to another country. Unfortunately, after almost nine years and many deaths, due to lead poisoning, these IDPs are still living on toxic wasteland.

During the summer of 2000, the UN health officer for Mitrovica was asked by the UN administrator Dr. Bernard Kouchner to do a medical survey of Mitrovica because so many UN police and French soldiers were found to have high levels of lead in their blood. In November 2000, the UN health officer Dr. Andrej Andrejew’s report was presented to UNMIK stating that most people living in the city of Mitrovica were suffering from lead poisoning. The report stated that the worst effected were the Gypsies living in the UN camps and recommended that the camps be evacuated and the areas fenced off so that the public could not accidentally wander in.

Instead of closing the Gypsy camps, the UN built a 1.5-kilometer jogging track between two of the camps and the toxic slag heaps. The UN put up signs in four languages calling this jogging track the Alley of Health. The UN also built on land next to 100 million tons of toxic waste a soccer field and a basketball court for the Gypsy children. They were not told that exercise, opening the lungs, would make them more vulnerable to lead poisoning.

Despite repeated appeals to help the Gypsies, especially those living in the three camps in the area of north Mitrovica, the UN did just the opposite. All food aid was suspended in 2002 saying it was time for the Gypsies to find their own supplies. In the Zitkovac camp the running water was cut off for up to six months at a time because the camp administer, Churches Working Together, felt the Gypsies were using too much water. In the end, the Zitkovac Gypsies had to walk four kilometers twice a day to get their drinking water. In all three camps, most of the Gypsies had to go through the local garbage cans to find their food.

In the summer of 2004, WHO made a special investigation of lead poisoning in the three camps after Jenita Mehmeti, a four-year-old girl, died of lead poisoning. She was not the first. Up to that point 28 people (mainly children and young adults) had died in the three camps, but Jenita was the first one to be treated for lead poisoning before she died. New blood samples taken by WHO showed that many children, the most vulnerable to lead poisoning, had lead levels higher than the WHO analyzer could register.

The standard procedure for medical treatment of lead poisoning requires immediate evacuation from the source of poisoning and hospitalization if lead levels are above 40 μg/dL. Irreversible brain damage usually begins at 10 μg/dL especially in children under the age of six whose immune systems have yet to develop. Many of the lead levels of the Gypsy children in these three camps were over 65 μg/dL, the highest level the WHO machine could read. WHO staff suspected that some children (because of their symptoms) had lead levels in the 80s and 90s. As it turned out, two children had a lead level of 120 μg/dL, the highest in medical history.

In November 2004, WHO presented their health report on the Gypsy camps to UNMIK, recommending immediate evacuation. Although there were precedents for the UN evacuating thousands of Albanians and Serbians in Kosovo when they faced life-threatening events, these Gypsies were not evacuated. The only measure that the UN took was to being bi-monthly meetings with UN agencies and other NGOs to study the problem. Although many NGOs including the International Committee for the Red Cross petitioned the UN to immediately evacuate these “death camps” within 24 hours, no action was taken by the UN until 2006.

In January 2006 the UN in Kosovo closed one of the Gypsy camps and moved 35 families to a new location, about 50 meters from their old camp. The new camp was called Osterode. It was formerly a French army NATO base in north Mitrovica but had been abandoned after many soldiers were found to have lead poisoning. In fact, all French soldiers serving there were told by French military doctors not to father a child for nine months after leaving the camp because of the high lead levels in their blood.

Nevertheless, the UN in their wisdom spent more than 500,000 euros (donated by the German government) to refurbish this camp. Feeling that most of the lead poisoning came from the ground, the UN cemented over much of the area and then obtained a certificate from CDC, the Center for Disease Control, a US funded agency, that the camp was “lead safe.” Although all these camps were built on the tailing stands of the Trepca lead mines, most of the lead pollution comes through the air from the 100 million tons of toxic slag heaps in front of the camps.

In September 2006, at his first press conference as head of the UN in Kosovo, Herr Joachim Ruecker proudly announced that the UN was doing something to help these Gypsies dying of lead poisoning. In addition to moving them from their camps to Osterode, which he declared was not lead safe but “lead safer” the UN would begin to treat lead poisoning with a better diet. For the first time in four years food aid would now be given to the Gypsies so that they would no longer have to go through the local garbage cans. The US Office in Pristina donated $1,000,000 for this “better diet.”

It is well known to medical doctors that a proper diet can lower lead leads by about 20%, but only if the affected person is first removed from the source of poisoning. In the case of these infected Gypsies, reducing their lead levels by 20% would still leave them with life-threatening levels. For the first time in four years, the UN also provided a daily medical staff to look after the health of these Gypsies. Unfortunately, lead poisoning can only be treated once the patient is removed from the source of lead poisoning. In any event, the medical staff later resigned because they had not been paid for months.

By spring 2006 two of the Gypsy camps (Zitkovac and Kablare) had been closed with more than 100 families now living in Osterode. After three months, blood samples were taken and according to UNMIK the health of the Gypsies was improving, thanks to their new diet, and lead levels were falling. However, WHO and UNMIK refused to share copies of these blood results with the public or even with the Gypsy families themselves. Later I was given copies of the tests by a disgruntled WHO staffer who was tired of the cover up. The test results showed that the lead levels had not only risen, but that Osterode, the lead free camp now had higher lead levels than the nine-year-old Cesmin Lug camp.

In 2006 the UN announced that the only solution for the Gypsies living on or near the toxic wastelands was to rebuild their homes in their old neighborhood and move them back. Thus the UN enlisted several international donors to rebuild some of the Gypsy homes and several apartment blocks with the promise to move the lead-infected Gypsies back to their old neighborhood. Unfortunately, as soon as these homes and apartments were finished in the summer and fall of 2006, the UN did not give all the apartments to the Gypsies living on toxic wasteland, but mainly to Kosovo Gypsy refugees the UN wanted to bring back from Serbia and Montenegro to show that their return policy of refugees was working.

In April 2007 all food and medical aid at Osterode was stopped because the UN said it was running out of money. Once again the Gypsies were forced to find their only food by going through the local garbage cans. But worst of all was yet to come.

Because many children at Osterode and in the adjoining camp of Cesmin Lug were showing common signs of lead poisoning (lead on their teeth, daily vomiting, and memory loss), the camp leaders insisted on new blood test in April 2008. Random blood tests of 105 children showed staggering results. For many of the children living in the UN “lead safer” camp of Osterode, their lead levels had doubled since moving into the former French base.

Because the UN and UNHCHR refuse to help these citizens of Kosovo, I have appealed directly to the Minister of Health for the newly declared country of Kosovo. Dr. Alush Gashi is not only a medical doctor but also a personal friend of mine for several years. He once lived and worked in San Francisco. I not only appealed to him by email, but also visited him in his office, begging him to help his minority citizens. He understands the problem. He understands the situation. As a medical doctor he knows that these Gypsies need to be evacuated immediately. In a recently filmed interview with Dr. Gashi, he acknowledged that these Gypsies should be evacuated immediately, that they would be better off in prison than in the death camps. He said that USAID was funding a project with Mercy Corps to save these people.

It didn’t take me long to get a copy of the USAID/Mercy Corp project. It called for the resettlement of 50 of the 120 families living in the camps over the next 2.5 years. There was no immediate medical solution for anyone living in the camps. Evacuation was not mentioned. Later I found out that the author of the project has never even visited the camps. Yet USAID is handing over $2.4 million, for this cosmetic solution.

Since 2005 we have tried to force the UN to help these Gypsies. An American lawyer, Dianne Post, has tried to sue the UN on behalf of several hundred Gypsies living in these camps. Her lawsuit against the UN at the court of Human Rights in Strasbourg was turned down because the court declared that only a country, not an organization, could be sued. Although the UN was the sole administrator of Kosovo, the court decided that UN could not be sued.

The UN does have a policy of compensation for such problems. But UN lawyers for three years have refused to cooperate in seeking compensation for these Gypsies or resolving their health problems. The UN does not deny responsibility but refuses to comply with its own rules and standards.

In 2005 the Society for Threatened Peoples, the largest NGO in Germany after the Red Cross, brought to Kosovo the leading German expert on toxic poisoning, Dr. Klaus Runow. Although the UN tried to bar him from the camps, he was able to take about 60 hair samples from the Gypsy children. He sent the hair samples to a well-known laboratory in Chicago. The results showed that not only did many of the children have the highest lead levels in medical history, but that all had toxic poisoning from 36 other heavy metals as well. In trying to defend themselves, UN personnel have often claimed that the Gypsies got their lead poisoning from smelting car batteries. However, Dr. Runow pointed out that none of these other toxic metals are found in car batteries.

Dr. Rohko Kim, a Harvard trained medical doctor employed by WHO in Bonn, Germany, has been advising the UN on the lead poisoning in their camps in Kosovo. Although he is under orders not to give interviews or information about the Gypsy camps, I got him to speak to me. I asked him if the lead poisoning was due to the Gypsies smelting car batteries. He said no. He said most of the lead poisoning came from the toxic dust of the slagheap and from the fact that the camps were built on the tailing stands of the mines. He said that every child conceived in the camps would have irreversible brain damage. He said that we had already lost an entire generation of Gypsy children to lead poisoning. In a speech delivered in 2005 to WHO, UNMIK and the Kosovo Ministry of Health, Dr. Kim said: "The present situation in the Roma community who are now living in the camps is extremely serious. I have personally researched lead poisoning since 1991, but I have never seen in the literature a population with such a high level of lead in their blood. I believe that the lead poisoning in north Mitrovica is unique, which has never been known before in history. This is one of the biggest catastrophes connected with lead in the world and in history."

To date 77 Gypsies have died in the UN camps. Even more miscarriages have occurred. The UN has never investigated one death in the camps or ever made an autopsy. However, from the symptoms described by relatives and neighbors, doctors consulted believe that lead poisoning contributed to most of the deaths and miscarriages.

A few months ago another Gypsy baby died in Osterode. It was one month old and had been born with a large head, swollen belly and miniature legs. It woke at six in the morning, vomiting, and died twenty minutes later in hospital.

Lead poisoning is a hideous and painful death for children. Four-year-old Jenita Mehmeti was attending the camp kindergarten when her teacher noticed she was losing her memory and finding it hard to walk. Jenita was sent back to her barracks where for the next three months she vomited several times a day, before becoming paralyzed and dying.

There are precedents in Kosovo for saving lives, but not 500 Gypsy lives. Thus this appeal to you as MEPs. In Europe today we have a death camp for children. Please do something about it.

Italian doctors refuse to treat a Romanian Gypsy suffering of cancer

de A.C. HotNews.ro
Miercuri, 23 iulie 2008, 13:47 English Regional Europe

A new shocking case in Italy: Italian doctors in Pesaro, East Italy refused on Tuesday morning to treat a Romanian Gypsy suffering of cancer. The main motivation was that she did not have a stable address, an association defending the rights of immigrants announced, quoted by Romanian news television Realitatea TV.

EveryOne association officials declared that Mia Copalea, of Gypsy origin, requested a medical examination and a treatment for her severe headaches. Apparently, her pain was caused by her breast cancer.

The woman's daughter declared that doctors refused to offer the woman medical attention because they do not reside in Pesaro. She added that doctors refused to give them a prescription for some pain killers.

EveryOne association urged the Italian Health minister Maurizio Sacconi to take urgent action so that the woman be treated in the hospital, like any other human being.

Health Emergency persists in UN Gypsy Camps

WHEN MILLIONS OF TOYS manufactured in China were recently recalled because of fears of lead poisoning, Time magazine, CNN and most international news media made it headline news. Doctors around the world were quoted about how lead painted toys could cause brain and organ damage, especially in children under the age of six years whose immune systems had yet to develop. But no news media mentioned at that time one word about the worst case of lead poisoning in medical history: the present-day UN camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in north Kosovo.

Perhaps for most journalists, the UN death camps are not a new story although the deaths keep rising. In April 2005, I wrote about them in the International Herald Tribune. Shortly thereafter, ZDF (German TV) did a short feature program about the camps, as did Aljazeera. Bild Zeitung, Germany’s largest newspaper, not only told the story but took eight children (after their mother and baby brother had died of lead poisoning) to Germany for medical treatment where body scans showed the children had damaged organs and irreversible brain damage.

This is how it happened.

On June 16, 1999, four days after NATO troops arrived, roving bands of extremist Albanians, led by black-uniformed Kosovo Liberation Army officers, attacked almost every Gypsy community in Kosovo. The Gypsies were told to flee or they would be killed. Out of a pre-war population of about 130,000, more than 100,000 Gypsies during the next three months fled Kosovo.

After they left, more than 14,000 Gypsy homes were looted and then destroyed.

NATO troops refused to intervene, saying this was a problem for the local police. But there were no local police at that time. The Serbs had been the local police and they had been forced by NATO to withdraw to Serbia.



I personally witnessed part of this diaspora because in July 1999 the UN asked me to volunteer to go to Kosovo and advise them on their Gypsy problems. For three months I was the only non-Gypsy living 24 hours/day in the UN’s largest camp, by Obilich. During the day I often drove to where Gypsies were being threatened. I especially visited the largest Gypsy community in Kosovo, in south Mitrovica. There a community of more than 8,000 Gypsies (Roma, Ashkali and Egyptians) living in more than 1,000 homes were being forced out while NATO troops stood by and watched.


Most of these Mitrovica Gypsies fled abroad. About 1,000 sought refuge in a Serbian schoolhouse closed for the summer. For the next few months I arranged water and food through several aid agencies for these Gypsies who were camped out in the schoolhouse.

In November 1999, UNHCR took charge of these schoolhouse Gypsies and moved them to four hurriedly built camps on toxic wasteland, the only places the UN said were available. I protested, calling to the attention to UN officials - and especially to the head of UNHCR in Pristina - that these toxic wastelands could be detrimental to the health of these IDPs. UNHCR assured me that they had signed contracts with the local municipalities assuring that the IDPs would be in the camps for only 45 days. At the end of 45 days, they would either have their homes rebuilt and moved back or would be taken as refugees to another country. Unfortunately, after almost nine years and many deaths, due to lead poisoning, the IDPs are still living on toxic wasteland.


During the summer of 2000, the World Health Organization (WHO) did a medical survey of Mitrovica because so many UN police and French soldiers were found to have high levels of lead in their blood. In November 2000, WHO presented a health report to UNMIK stating that most people living in the city of Mitrovica were suffering from lead poisoning. The report stated that the worst effected were the Gypsies living in the UN camps and recommended that the camps be evacuated and the areas fenced off so that the general public could not accidentally wander in. Bernard Kouchner, the present Foreign Minister of France, was head of UNMIK at that time. He told the WHO authors of the health report that he was a medical doctor and understood the danger of lead poisoning. He promised to take appropriate measures. But the only thing he did was to close the smelter at nearby Trepca mines. He did not evacuate and close the Gypsy camps where lead levels were three to four times higher than in the general population.


Instead of closing the Gypsy camps, the UN built a 1.5 kilometer jogging track between two of the camps and the toxic slag heaps. The UN then put up signs in four languages calling this jogging track the Alley of Health. The UN also built on land next to 100 million tons of toxic waste a soccer field and a basketball court for the Gypsy children. They were not told that exercise, opening the lungs, would make them more vulnerable to lead poisoning.

Despite repeated appeals to help the Gypsies, especially those living in the three camps in the area of north Mitrovica, the UN did just the opposite. All food aid was suspended in 2002 saying it was time for the Gypsies to find their own supplies. In the Zitkovac camp the running water was cut off for up to six months at a time because the camp administrator - the UN implementing partner, Churches Working Together - felt the Gypsies were using too much water. In the end, the Zitkovac Gypsies had to walk four kilometers twice a day to get their drinking water. In all three camps most of the Gypsies had to go through the local garbage cans to find their food.


In the summer of 2004, WHO made a special investigation of lead poisoning in the three camps after Jenita Mehmeti, a four year old girl, died of lead poisoning. She was not the first. Up to that point 28 people (mainly children and young adults) had died in the three camps but Jenita was the first one to be treated for lead poisoning before she died. New blood samples taken by WHO showed that many children, the most vulnerable to lead poisoning, had lead levels higher than the WHO machine could register.

Medical treatment for lead poisoning requires immediate evacuation from the source of poisoning and hospitalization if lead levels are above 40 mg/dl. Irreversible brain damage usually begins at 10 mg/dl, especially in children under the age of six whose immune systems have yet to develop. Many of the lead levels of the Gypsy children in these three camps were over 65 mg/dl, the highest level the WHO machine could read. WHO staff suspected that some children (because of their symptoms) had lead levels in the 80s and 90s. As it turned out, one seven year old boy had a lead level of 120 mg/dl, the highest in medical history.


In November 2004, WHO presented their health report on the Gypsy camps to UNMIK, recommending immediate evacuation. Although there were precedents for the UN evacuating thousands of Albanians and Serbs in Kosovo when they faced life threatening events, these Gypsies were not evacuated. The only measure that the UN took was to begin bi-monthly meetings with UN agencies and other NGOs to study the problem. Although many NGOs, including the International Committee for the Red Cross, petitioned the UN to immediately evacuate these “death camps”, no action was taken by the UN until 2006.


In January 2006 the UN in Kosovo closed one of the Gypsy camps and moved 35 families to a new location, about 50 meters from their old camp. The new camp was called Osterode. It was formerly a French army NATO base in north Mitrovica but had been abandoned after many soldiers were found to have lead poisoning. In fact, all French soldiers serving there were told by French military doctors not to father a child for nine months after leaving the camp because of the high lead levels in their blood.

Nevertheless, the UN, in their wisdom, spent more than 500,000 euros (donated by the German government) to refurbish this camp. Feeling that most of the lead poisoning came from the ground, the UN cemented over much of the area and then obtained a certificate from the Center for Disease Control (CDC), a US funded agency, that the camp was “lead safe.” Although all these camps were built on the tailing stands of the Trepca lead mines, most of the lead pollution comes through the air from the 100 million tons of toxic slag heaps in front of the camps.

In September 2006, at his first press conference as head of the UN in Kosovo, Herr Joachim Ruecker proudly announced that the UN was doing something to help these Gypsies dying of lead poisoning. In addition to moving them from their camps to Osterode, which he declared was not lead safe but “lead safer”, the UN would begin to treat lead poisoning with a better diet. For the first time in four years food aid would now be given to the Gypsies so that they would no longer have to go through the local garbage cans. The US office in Pristina donated $1,000,000 for this “better diet.”


It is well known to medical doctors that a proper diet can lower lead levels by about 20%, but only if the affected person is first removed from the source of poisoning. In the case of the infected Gypsies, reducing their lead levels by 20% would still leave them with dangerously high levels. For the first time in four years, the UN also provided a daily medical staff to look after the health of the Gypsies. Unfortunately, lead poisoning can only be treated once the patient is removed from the source of lead poisoning.

By spring 2006 two of the Gypsy camps (Zitkovac and Kablare) had been closed and more than 100 of the families are now living in Osterode. After three months, blood samples were taken and, according to UNMIK, the health of the Gypsies was

improving, thanks to their new diet and lead levels were falling. However, WHO and UNMIK refused to share copies of these blood test results with the public or even with the Gypsy families themselves.

In 2006 the UN announced that the only solution for the Gypsies living on or near the toxic wastelands was to rebuild their homes in their old neighborhood and move them back. Thus the UN enlisted several international donors to rebuild some of the Gypsy homes and several apartment blocks with the promise to move the lead-infected Gypsies back to their old neighborhood. Unfortunately, as soon as these homes and apartments were finished in the summer and fall of 2006, the UN did not give all the apartments to the Gypsies living on toxic wasteland but mainly to Kosovo Gypsy refugees the UN wanted to bring back from Serbia and Montenegro to show that their return policy of refugees was working.



In April 2007 all food and medical aid at Osterode was stopped because the UN said it was running out of money. Once again the Gypsies were forced to find their only food by going through the local garbage cans. But worst of all was yet to come.

Because many children at Osterode and in the adjoining camp of Cesmin Lug were showing common signs of lead poisoning (lead on their teeth, daily vomiting and memory loss), the camp leaders insisted on new blood tests in April 2008. Random blood tests of 105 children showed staggering results. For many of the children living in the UN “lead safer” camp of Osterode, their lead levels had doubled since moving into the former French base.

Because the UN, UNHCR and UNHCHR refuse to help these citizens of Kosovo, I have appealed directly to the Minister of Health for the newly declared country of Kosovo. Dr. Alush Gashi is not only a medical doctor but a personal friend of mine for several years. He once lived and worked in San Francisco. I not only appealed to him by email but visited him in his office, begging him to help his minority

citizens. He understands the problem. He understands the situation. As a medical doctor he knows that these Gypsies need to be evacuated immediately. He says his government wants to help but to date they have offered no concrete plans.

Since 2005 we have tried to force the UN to help these Gypsies. An American lawyer, Dianne Post, has tried to sue the UN on behalf of several hundred Gypsies living in the camps. Her lawsuit against the UN at the court of Human Rights in Strasbourg was turned down because the court declared that only a country, not an organisation, could be sued. Although the UN was the sole administrator of Kosovo, the court decided that it could not be sued. But now that Kosovo is finally an independent country it can be sued for criminal negligence, discrimination and manslaughter.

The UN does have a policy of compensation for such problems. But UN lawyers, for three years, have refused to cooperate in seeking compensation for the Gypsies or resolving their health problems. The UN does not deny responsibility but refuses to comply with its own rules and standards.


In 2005 the Society for Threatened Peoples, the largest NGO in Germany after the Red Cross, brought to Kosovo the leading German expert on toxic poisoning, Dr. Klaus Runow. Although the UN tried to bar him from the camps, he was able to take about 60 hair samples from the Gypsy children. He sent the hair samples to a well-known laboratory in Chicago. The results showed that not only did many of the children have the highest lead levels in medical history but that all had toxic poisoning from 36 other heavy metals as well. In trying to defend themselves, UN personal have often claimed that the Gypsies got their lead poisoning from smelting car batteries. However, Dr. Runow pointed out that none of these other toxic metals are found in car batteries.

Dr. Rohko Kim, a Harvard trained medical doctor employed by WHO in Bonn, Germany, has been advising the UN on the lead poisoning in their camps in Kosovo. Although he is under orders not to give interviews or information about the Gypsy camps, I got him to speak to me. I asked him if the lead poisoning was due to the Gypsies smelting car batteries. He said no. He said most of the lead poisoning came from the toxic dust of the slag heap and from the fact that the camps were built on the tailing stands of the mines. He said that every child conceived in the camps would have irreversible brain damage. He said that we had already lost an entire generation of Gypsy children to lead poisoning. In a speech delivered in 2005 to WHO, UNMIK and the Kosovo Ministry of Health, Dr. Kim said: “The present situation in the Roma community who are now living in the camps is extremely, extremely serious. I have personally researched lead poisoning since 1991, but I have never seen in the literature a population with such a high level of lead in their blood. I believe that the lead poisoning in north Mitrovica is unique, which has never been known before in history. This is one of the biggest In 1999, the US office in Pristina airlifted 7,000 Albanians to Fort Dix, NJ, to protect them from Serbs. In March 2004, the UN police and KFOR evacuated 4,000 Serbs to KFOR bases to save them from Albanians. There are precedents in Kosovo for saving lives, but not 500 Gypsy lives.

Paul Polansky is an American author and head of mission for Society for Threatened Peoples. He has lived in Kosovo since July 1999. In 2005 he published a book about the camps called UN-Leaded Blood. It can be ordered by emailing: pjpusa50401@yahoo.com
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Rukija Mustafa died in April 2005 along with her new born baby son. Rukija was survived by her husband and eight children, all of whom were taken to Germany for medical treatment by Bild Zeitung, Germany’s largest circulation newspaper.

Nikolina Mehmeti, the two-year-old sister of Jenita (front page) who died of lead poisoning. Shortly after Jenita died, Nikolina showed the same symptoms. The UN in Mitrovica refused to authorise treatment for Nikolina in Belgrade, although she was falling in and out of coma. A local Romani NGO took Nikolina to Belgrade and saved her life. Later, an American donor bought the family a piece of land in Priluzje where they had a house built. Doctors in Belgrade said if Nikolina returned to the source of poisoning, she would die just like her sister.

catastrophes connected with lead in the world and in history.”

To date, 77 Gypsies have died in the UN camps. Even more miscarriages have occurred. The UN has never investigated one death in the camps or ever conducted an autopsy. However, from the symptoms described by relatives and neighbors, doctors consulted believe that lead poisoning contributed to most of the deaths and miscarriages.

A few weeks ago a Gypsy baby died in Osterode. It was one month old and had been born with a large head, swollen belly and miniature legs. It woke at six in the morning, vomiting, and died twenty minutes later in hospital.

Lead poisoning means a hideous and painful death for children. Four year old Jenita Mehmeti was attending the camp kindergarten when her teacher noticed she was losing her memory and finding it hard to walk. Jenita was sent back to her barracks, where for the next three months she vomited several times a day, before becoming paralyzed and dying. When her two year old sister came down with the same symptoms, the UN doctor for Mitrovica refused to treat her, saying she was in a UN camp one kilometer out of his jurisdiction. An NGO took her to Belgrade and saved her life.