Toxic Slag Heaps Poison Children of Kosovo. An Abuse of Fundamental Human Rights of an Ethnic Minority. Death Camps in Europe Today.

In March 2009, ten years after the war and the NATO intervention in Kosovo, 160 Roma refugee families, including 200 children under ten years old, are still living in two displaced persons' camps built for them by the United Nations on the most toxic waste tip in Europe.

Despite promises that they would be moved from their "temporary" accommodation on waste tailings at the Trepca mine complex within 45 days, they have been left there to survive in poverty and a poisoned environment for the last ten years.

The children have some of the highest measured levels of lead, arsenic, & cadmium in their blood ever recorded. They show symptoms of severe neurological and physiological damage.

There are 112 families living in Osterode Camp and 48 families in Cesmin Lug/ Çesmin Llug. (Another 38 families in a third contaminated camp, Leposavic/ Leposaviq, are also affected.)

The camps are located in North Mitrovicë/Mitrovica, a city divided between Albanians on one side and Serbs on the other. These children and their families, members of the second largest ethnic minority in Kosovo, are trapped in a polluted no-man's-land of ethnic conflict.

Despite warnings from international human rights organisations and agencies including the World Health Organisation and the International Committee of the Red Cross the United Nations Mission in Kosovo has failed to take any effective steps to protect the lives of these desperately vulnerable children.

THESE CHILDREN HAVE BEEN BETRAYED BY THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY. THE KOSOVO MEDICAL EMERGENCY GROUP AND SOCIETY FOR THREATENED PEOPLES DEMAND THEIR IMMEDIATE EVACUATION AND APPROPRIATE EMERGENCY MEDICAL TREATMENT.

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