Etter at seks italienske soldatar hadde døydd av kreft etter
okkupasjonsteneste i Bosnia og Kosovo, innrømte NATO for første gong at
dei hadde brukt Uran-prosjektil i Bosnia. Det var i 2000. Etter den tid
har talet klatra opp til minst 27 og sannsynligvis over 30. Og i juli i år
vann dei etterlatne etter ein av desse ei rettssak der dei vart tilkjent
500 000 Euro i erstatning frå forsvaret. Utarma uran vart nemnt i dommen.
I motsetning til NATO-okkupantane som sveipar innom området for relativt
korte perioder, så lever lokalbefolkninga der året rundt, år etter år. Alt
tyder på at kreft-raten har auka dramatisk i dei humanitært velsigna
områda, men ingen ser ut til å ta seg bryet med å kartlegge det eller å
rydde opp i forurensinga.
I Bosnia har NATO innrømt å ha dumpa i underkant av 6000 prosjektil med
utarma uran. I Kosovo har dei innrømt omlag 10 tonn utarma uran, fordelt
på 30 000 prosjektil.
<http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?archive/bcr3/bcr3_200411_526_1_eng.txt>
BOSNIANS SAY NATO BOMBS BROUGHT “ANGEL OF DEATH”
Many Bosnians blame high cancer rates on NATO’s use of depleted uranium
munitions in
1995, but scientists remain divided over the alleged link.
By Ekrem Tinjak, Faruk Boric and Hugh Griffiths in Han Pijesak and Sarajevo
In the Sarajevo suburb of Hadzici, the local imam, Hazim Effendi Emso,
looks out
over an overflowing cemetery. The field in the middle of this grimy
industrial
suburb of Sarajevo is dotted with new graves.
”It is only recently that the number of funerals has increased. Almost
every day, a funeral,” he said sadly.
The birth and death dates etched onto recent gravestones show a number of
those buried here died in middle age. Many are from the Hadzici district
of Grivici.
“A large number of the people from Grivici died of cancer but it was only
this year that we started keeping records on deceased people,” the Imam
continued.
In the remote Romanija mountains, 64 kilometres north of Grivici, some
1,000 metres above sea level, a different local religious leader faces the
same problem.
Branko, a Serb Orthodox cleric in Han Pijesak, in Republika Srpska, RS,
points to a map on the wall of the head teacher’s office.
"This is the village of Japaga. Around 100 people live here but in 1996
many people died from cancer,” he told IWPR.
“The first was the army base cook, Mrs Ljeposava, who died aged 45, as did
Mrs Todic. Then it was Budimir Bojat, who died aged 60, and Goran Basteh
who died at 45, all from cancer.”
The priest turned from the map to papers on the table. “Every year in
Japaga at least one young man dies of cancer,” he continued. “This is not
normal in such a small village.”
At first glance, the communities of Hadzici and Han Pijesak appear very
different. One is a mainly Muslim settlement in an industrial zone while
the other is a series of Serb mountain villages in one of Europe’s last
unspoilt wildernesses.
But residents of both communities say they suffer from an abnormally high
cancer rate and they believe it is the result of Depleted Uranium, DU,
munitions, which were used during NATO’s September 1995 airstrikes on
Bosnia.
DEPLETED URANIUM – A LEGACY OF BOSNIAN WAR
The United Nations describes DU as a by-product of the process used to enrich
natural uranium ore for use in nuclear reactors and weapons. It is an
“unstable,
radioactive heavy metal” that emits ionizing radiation of three types -
alpha, beta and gamma.
The United States, together with other NATO member states, uses DU in
armour-piercing shells for both tanks and planes.
NATO aircraft used DU against the Bosnian Serb army in August and
September 1995 to bring a quick end to the vicious three-year conflict in
the former Yugoslav republic.
“The aim was to disrupt the Bosnian Serb forces’ command and control
structure and degrade their fighting capabilities,” a NATO source in
Sarajevo said. ”We were not trying to destroy the army.”
According to NATO, from September 5-11, 1995, their planes fired 5,800 DU
shells in the vicinity of Han Pijesak and Hadzici. More than 90 per cent
of all such ammunition fired in Bosnia during the airstrikes fell in just
these two locations.
NATO states a total of 2,400 DU rounds were directed against at the Han
Pijesak army base, next to the village of Japaga. A further 1,500 were
fired at the Hadzici tank repair facility, close to Grivici.
Scientists of the UN Environmental Programme, UNEP, discovered DU
contamination in air, water and ground samples taken from Hadzici and Han
Pijesak in October 2002.
“We found DU ammunition on the ground and we found DU dust in buildings
that were being turned into shops in Hadzici,” Pekko Haavisto, chief of
the UNEP mission, told IWPR.
“In Hadzici we also found two wells that had small amounts of DU in the
water, eight years after the conflict.
“At Han Pijesak army base, we found DU dust in buildings, tanks and other
equipment and we were concerned that conscripts using this equipment might
be affected.”
However, UNEP did not agree that its findings had confirmed Bosnian fears
that local high rates of ill health were linked to the NATO bombing
campaign.
”The extremely low exposure identified in the mission indicates it is highly
unlikely that DU could be associated with any of the reported health
effects,” said a report by the UN body in 2003.
But locals in Han Pijesak and Hadzici do not agree with this conclusion.
They insist that DU contamination must be responsible for what they say
are abnormally high rates of cancer.
NO ONE TAKES UP DECONTAMINATION MONEY
Although the UNEP recommended in its report that buildings and ground
affected by DU should be decontaminated, an initial investigation by IWPR
showed that little or nothing was happening.
When IWPR visited the RS Han Pijesak army base, targeted years before by
NATO, we found a destroyed T62 tank still rusting close to the perimeter
fence. The sentries who stopped us from going any further said as far as
they knew, the sites affected by DU munitions had not been decontaminated.
"We walk across that ground often and nobody has ever warned us of the
dangers," one sentry added worriedly.
In the Federation, the complaints are similar. ”We moved back in 1997, two
years after the bombing,” Suljo Drina, of Grivici, said. ”But the ground
was never decontaminated. Now my father has throat cancer.”
In 2002, the Federation government allocated 138,000 Bosnian convertible
marks to decontaminate the Hadzici sites, and the Sarajevo canton
authorities were asked to contribute an additional 123,000 marks, but
nothing has yet been done.
The money, it appears, never reached its intended beneficiaries. “We just
don’t have the money,” Mustafa Kovac, head of civil defence headquarters
of Sarajevo canton, added.
“We need equipment to measure radiation, equipment to protect our staff
and we need to provide training for them - but there are no funds.”
Pekko Haavisto, of UNEP, told IWPR the European Union had offered to fund the
clean-up process but the money had not been taken up locally.
"The UNEP also told authorities in the Republika Srpska and the Federation
at a
training seminar that we could offer on-site training during any
decontamination process,” he said, ”but nobody came forward with a
request.”
INFORMATION BLACK HOLE FUELS PUBLIC FEARS
Bosnian doctors say a lack of publicised research into the health effects
of DU has created a climate of distrust.
“What confuses me is that the UNEP report said radiation levels in the
contaminated areas in Bosnia were harmless,” Dr Zehra Dizdarevic,
Sarajevo’s health minister, told IWPR.
“But on the other hand there were 24 recommendations in the same report
about how the area could be protected from contamination and cleaned up.
”It is difficult to establish whether somebody is suffering from cancer
because they live near a still-contaminated area. With no research, nobody
can deny this claim, either.
"The UNEP report said that more scientific work was needed and that all
health
claims should be investigated. Yet this has not happened.”
Dr Lejla Saracevic, director of the Sarajevo radiology institute, agrees
that lack
of reliable information is a serious problem. ”There has not been any serious
research on this issue,” she said.
“Although the Federation government has set up an expert working group, of
which I am a member, there is a lack of funding and general interest,
which means nothing has been done.”
RS doctors largely share these concerns about a lack of information.
“While there has been considerable increase into cancer-related disease in
Han Pijesak since the war, without research as a part of a serious
investigation, I cannot say that this is due to DU,” said Dr Ljuboje
Sapic, a lung disease specialist at the health centre in Han Pijesak.
“The little research that has been done on DU is still based on assumption
and
conjecture,” Sapic added. “We need statistics and hard facts.”
In fact, all Bosnian health officials interviewed by IWPR said the lack of
statistical data was a major obstacle in establishing cancer mortality
rates in the areas affected by NATO bombing. The dearth of such statistics
means it is difficult to track the rate of the alleged increase in cancer
during the post-war period.
“I can tell you we have had an increase in the number of cancer patients
but we cannot confirm or deny a link to depleted uranium,” said Dr Bozidar
Djokic, director of the health centre in Han Pijesak. “We have no
statistics with which to make a comparison.”
Colleagues in the Federation echo this. “When we say that there is an
increase of sick people, it does not mean anything,” said Dr Saracevic.
“How can we quantify an increase, when we do not know exactly how many
sick people there are now, compared to last year, or the preceding years?
“We also know the people who lived in Hadzici during the bombardment are
now living in the Serb entity. They should be medically examined too, if
we are to get to the bottom of this.”
After the 1995 Dayton peace agreement awarded Hadzici to the Federation,
most Serbs from there were obliged to resettle in RS. Many now live in the
small town of Bratunac, in eastern Bosnia.
IWPR travelled to Bratunac. Although we could find no official statistical
data to confirm an increase in cancer rates there, local doctors produced
much anecdotal evidence.
According to Dr Svetlana Jovanovic, of Bratunac’s health centre, since 1996
approximately 650 of the 7,000-odd people who left Hadzici have died and
been buried in the town’s fast-filling cemetery.
Dr Jovanovic claims that after examining the bodies, she believed 40 of
these 650 had died from cancer or leukaemia.
“If approximately 7,000 people from Hadzici moved here, we can estimate
that the malignancy rate is unusually high compared to the overall
estimated mortality rate in the country,” Dr Jovanovic said.
“But we don’t have any statistics from elsewhere to make official
comparisons and conclusions.”
What is beyond doubt is that the overall mortality rate in Bratunac is
much higher than it is in Bosnia as a whole. In 2002, the death rate in
the country was 7.9 per thousand. In Bratunac, for the period 1996 to
2003, it was 11.2. More people die in Bratunac than in the rest of Bosnia.
The question is why.
SCEPTICISM OVER DU RISK
The 2003 UNEP report, as we said earlier, would not be drawn on the issue
of DU and cancer. Citing insufficient information, it concluded that “due
to the lack of a proper cancer registry and reporting systems in Bosnia,
claims of an increase in the rates of adverse health effects stemming from
DU could not be
substantiated”.
Scientists from the World Health Organisation, WHO, also are sceptical
regarding claims that DU may be a health hazard to Bosnia’s population.
"From the information we have at the moment we don’t believe civilians are
at risk," said Dr Mike Repacholi, WHO’s Geneva-based radiation programme
coordinator.
He admitted, however, that the research deficit made final conclusions
hard to draw. “We have gaps in knowledge where we need focused research in
order to make a better assessment of health risk,” he said.
The International Atomic Energy Authority, IAEA, takes much the same line.
Tiberio Cabianca, of the IAEA’s nuclear safety department, was part of the
ten-day UNEP mission to investigate DU in Bosnia in 2002.
”From a radiological point of view, the IAEA does not view DU as a health
threat to the civilian population in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” he said.
”From our samples, we found that DU munitions had contaminated local water
supplies and we also found DU dust particles suspended in the air.
However, contamination levels were very low and did not represent an
immediate radioactive risk.”
However, UNEP’s Pekko Haavisto qualifies that conclusion, recalling the
considerable time lapse between the period immediately after the NATO
bombing campaign, when contamination would be highest, and the time of the
scientific study.
“When we conducted our ten-day study, our experts could not find any
direct impact on human health. But this was 2002, so we could not say what
the health impact was in the years previously,” he said. “We did not carry
out any tests until eight years after the bombing.
"The UNEP report was based on mainstream scientific thinking on DU which
says that DU has a limited health impact outside the immediate
contamination zone. But there is a group of scientists who think that
lower levels of DU radiation have a greater effect, and they have
criticised our report.”
DISAGREEMENT OVER MEASURING CONTAMINATION
But some scientists say the problem is all in the measuring mechanism
One scientist who believes DU is far more hazardous than has previously been
acknowledged is Dr Chris Busby, of the British ministry of defence’s
oversight
committee on depleted uranium.
Dr Busby conducted his own studies in Kosovo, where DU was also used.
“UNEP say small amounts of DU in the air are harmless, however this is not
the case,” he told IWPR, adding that in his view, ”they used the wrong
risk models.”
“The conventional risk model is based on a whole human body or organ
versus one DU particle,” he explained.
“But when a DU particle is inhaled, what happens is that a very small area
of tissue will be exposed. It’s not the whole body we should be measuring
the effect of DU against, but the few affected cells.”
Professor Malcolm Hooper, emeritus professor of medicinal chemistry at the
University of Sunderland, agrees that this is a better way of measuring
the strength of contamination.
“Depleted uranium is a health hazard for the local population because DU
particles are first washed into the water system. Then, when the sun comes
out, light and heat stimulates the particles and they are suspended in the
air once again,” he told IWPR.
“The UNEP report was totally compromised. They went in seven years too
late and the sites they went to had been sanitised - the destroyed
vehicles and much of the visible ammunition had been removed.”
Finally, Professor Hooper recalled the controversy surrounding former Italian
soldiers who served in both Bosnia and Kosovo.
The first suggestion of a link between DU and cancer followed the
mysterious deaths of a number of young Italian soldiers who had served there.
Italian TV dubbed it Balkans Syndrome and the foreign press soon picked up
the
story, feeding a media frenzy.
Fears over DU in Bosnia first surfaced in December 2000, with the reported
death from cancer of Salvatore Carbonaro, aged only 24.
Carbonaro was the sixth Balkan veteran to die from cancer and differed
from the other five in that he had only served in Bosnia, not in Kosovo.
Until then, NATO had not even admitted it had used DU in Bosnia. But in
December 2000 Italy’s defence minister, Sergio Mattarella, admitted that
the alliance had, adding that Rome had only just been informed of this.
Mattarella then ordered an inquiry, under Professor Franco Mandelli, to
investigate the potential association between cancer incidence and DU.
A member of Mandelli’s team, Dr Martino Grandolfo, told IWPR that it had
found a statistically significant excess of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma - a form of
leukaemia.
“The percentage of cases of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma amongst Italian troops who
served in Bosnia and Kosovo is more than double the amount found in
soldiers who stayed in Italy,” he told IWPR. “But at the moment, we don’t
know why this is.”
The number of Italian Balkans veterans who have since died from cancer
rose to 27 by July 2004 – and campaigners claim that the real figure is
even higher.
“The figure is actually 32 or 33, and the number of veterans living with
cancer is in the hundreds,” Falco Accame, a former naval officer and
military researcher, who is chair of Italy’s Anavafaf veterans’ group,
told IWPR.
The public outcry has forced the government to establish a DU
parliamentary commission in the Italian senate to investigate further.
But Accame told IWPR that in the meantime, aside from the compensation
paid to the dead servicemen’s families, the state had not formally
recognised any link between DU and cancer.
“As was the case with [health concerns over] cigarettes and asbestos, we
cannot be certain that DU is responsible for the deaths of all these
soldiers,” Accame added.
“Instead, what we are dealing with here are probabilities.”
However, this official unwillingness to admit any link between DU and
cancer may be changing.
In a landmark judgment on July 10, 2004, a Rome court ordered the Italian
defence ministry to pay 500,000 euro in compensation to the family of
Stefano Melone, a Balkans veteran who died of cancer in 2001.
The court declared Melone had died “due to exposure to radioactive and
carcinogenic substances” and listed DU among those substances.
The dead soldier’s widow Paola Melone told IWPR that this was “a historic
case”, adding that a civil court had “now acknowledged that DU is a
carcinogenic agent and listed it as one of the possible causes” of her
husband’s death.
“This case has set a precedent and we are organising a conference here in
Italy for other dead serviceman’s families, to help them with pending
cases,” she added.
IN BOSNIA, INEXPLICABLE DEATHS CONTINUE
Back in Bosnia, however, there is no such talk of court cases, parliamentary
commissions, or even of decontamination.
As the debate rages over cause and effect in Italy, locals in Bosnia say
people are continuing to die inexplicably.
Ahmed Fazlic-Ivan, vice-president of the Grivici district, lives 300
metres from the bombed Hadzici tank repair plant.
“We only learned about DU in 2002, when the UN inspectors came here," he
told IWPR.
“My father died of lung cancer in March of this year. There are 700 people
living in Grivici and 56 have died in the last two years, most of them
from cancer or diabetes.
"Here we often say that Azrael, the Angel of Death, has come to Grivici -
and that he takes everyone away.”
Ekrem Tinjak and Faruk Boric are Sarajevo-based journalists. Hugh
Griffiths is an IWPR investigations coordinator.
Received on 15-11-04
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