The Metropolis

Thanks for nothing: London lawyers seek justice for Roma who finally escape toxic UN death camps in Kosovo

the Demon Blogger of Fleet Street | Tuesday 2 November, 2010 20:28

Jenita Mehmeti (foreground, second from left in the white shirt ) “sacrificed for human studies” at the age of 4

Somewhere in London, a team of lawyers, who, despite all the evidence to the contrary, still believe in justice for all, stare at the ceiling, searching for a chink in a dragon’s armour.

A thousand miles away in Serbia an heroic 69 year-old American expat, parts Ernest Hemmingway, Rocky Marciano and the best bits of Don Quixote, lies awake at night stoically cursing the madness of the world, grinding out reams of poetry and prose and lucidly dreaming of a victorious end to an 11-year battle he never wanted.
To the American’s south, in deeply troubled northern Kosovo, a band of Gypsies, 500— 600 strong (500 – 600 weak, actually), sit atop a mountain of toxic waste, drawing more lead into their blood than has ever before been recorded, slowly dying.

Just a little further south, in Kosovo’s capital city, Pristina, an Italian diplomat, entrusted by the United Nations to keep the peace in the Balkan powder keg, sleeps, perhaps peacefully, safely ensconced in his dragon’s armour, impervious to the darts of legal pygmies, the words of heroic dreamers, and the tears of the world’s most despised race.

WHEN NATO warlords began to plot the liberation of Kosovo from its Serb oppressors in 1999, even a Neanderthal like Ozzy Osbourne could have told you that the generals gathered in their masses, just like witches at black masses, were not contemplating the fate of the Roma. But the ethnic-Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), beneficiaries of NATO’s military largesse, certainly did have the Roma on their minds.

One week after NATO’s 78-day bombing campaign came to an end, members of the KLA told 8000 Roma living in Mitrovica that Kosovo was for Albanians only. The Roma had heard it before. Over the thousand years since they left India, Romas have been told to get the fuck out of wherever they’ve plopped themselves down to sit a spell.

Before, during and after the war, most of Kosovo’s 100,000 + Roma fled to refugee camps in neighbouring Montenegro and Serbia, but 100 or so families remained in Kosovo. The UN assumed control of the still-to-this-day nascent state and appointed Bernard Kouchner (Doctors Without Borders founder and current French Foreign Minister) head of the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK).

French NATO soldiers stood by and watched as the KLA forced the remaining Roma out of their homes. The expat American hero of this tale, representing the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), found the Roma filthy and starving. Kouchner deposited them into camps built on millions of tons of toxic tailings from lead and zinc mines. The apparently-not-so-good-after-all Dr. Kouchner toured the camps in September 1999 with British MEP Baroness Emma Nicholson and assured her the Roma would be moved within 45 days.

In 2000, the World Health Organization (WHO), an arm of the UN, called for the camps to be evacuated immediately. Paul Polansky, our American hero, explains Kouchner’s reaction, “He said that, as a medical doctor, he understood the danger of lead poisoning. He promised to take appropriate measures.” Kouchner’s idea of appropriate measures was to build a jogging track between the camps. “He called it, ‘The Alley of Health,’” Polansky laughs, bitterly. UNMIK also built a football pitch and basketball court, both situated right next to the toxic slag heaps, and encouraged the Roma, especially the children, to exercise vigorously. “Exercise opens the lungs, allowing more poisons in the air to enter the body,” says Polansky, shaking his head. Kouchner was acting on the advice of UNMIK’s head physician, a man commonly referred to by those who have worked to help the Roma as “Dr. Mengele.”

Dr. Rohko Kim, a Harvard-educated, world-renowned expert on toxic poisoning, was sent by WHO to inspect the camps. In a follow-up interview with Polansky, Kim echoed the “Dr. Mengele” sentiment, saying, “People who lived on these toxic wastelands were sacrificed for human studies.”

To date, 11 children under the age of ten have died in the camps. Polansky tells a sickening story: “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, ‘Dr. Mengele’ refused to treat her, saying she was in a UN camp one kilometre out of his jurisdiction.” Polansky took the girl to Belgrade and saved her life.

Eleven years after Kouchner placed the Roma in the toxic death camps for 45 days, the Roma are finally being relocated. Too late for the 85 who have died. Perhaps too late for those who have, so far, survived, if they do not get medical treatment, which has not yet been agreed to.

IN what was called a, “transfer of competencies,” UNMIK attempted to wash its hands of the bloody mess by handing responsibility for the camps over to the Kosovar government in spring 2008. By this stage of the deadly game the boys and girls in baby blue berets had, for four years, been ignoring human rights lawyers attempting to claim compensation for the Roma. Each letter to UNMIK was replied to with the words, “We will revert to you in due course.”

During the UN General Assembly’s first session in 1946 the organization declared itself above the law, “The United Nations, its property and assets wherever located and by whomsoever held, shall enjoy immunity from every form of legal process except insofar as in any particular case it has expressly waived its immunity.” No one has ever managed to wrestle the UN into a courtroom anywhere on the planet
That immunity, however, is only extended in UN member states, which Kosovo is not yet. Although Kosovo is still a UN protectorate, the Kosovar government is responsible for the country’s judicial system and could, theoretically, allow cases against the UN to be tried. Such a gambit would be wildly popular, as UNMIK is widely and openly detested in Kosovo. UNMIK would be forced to veto the decision, surely setting off yet another explosion of street protests by Kosovo’s popular self determination movement which seeks to chase UNMIK, and its some day European Union successor EULEX, back from whence they came. The problem with that recipe for political drama is that the Kosovars hate the Roma just as passionately as they hate UNMIK.

AND so the intrepid London lawyers, who passed on an opportunity to discuss their plans with snipe, find themselves faced with the improbable task of getting justice from the UN itself.

In 1998 the UN General Assembly passed resolution A/RES/52/247, which allows for, “third-party claims against the Organization for personal injury, illness or death… resulting from or attributable to the activities of members of peacekeeping operations…”

The post once held by Kouchner is now held by Lamberto Zannier and the Italian has been less than receptive to requests made by lawyers representing the Roma for discussions as to exactly how a claim can proceed under A/RES/52/247. After more than a year of ducking, Zannier has deigned to meet the Roma’s legal representatives in London on November 12.

Birkbeck College law professor Bill Bowring says A/RES/52/247, “should be the gap in immunity that allows cases like this to get through.” Of Zannier’s attempts to avoid the UN’s responsibilities under A/RES/52/247, Bowring says, “They’re hiding. It’s outrageous.”

toxicwastekills.com
paulpolansky.nstemp.com

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