KOSOVO

LETTER FROM THE UNITED KINGDOM ASSOCIATION OF GYPSY WOMEN

Dear Ms Jones


Bernard has copied me in so I would like make to comment. The UK Association of Gypsy Women strongly feel that Amnesty should fully support the people in question, a statement from Amnesty, who is known as an organisation who have considerable international influence, would I feel be of great significance in our efforts to secure the evacuation of the Roma people on the Toxic Waste Camps in Kosovo.

Evictions of my people are widespread across Europe with very little challenge from the international community but as bad as they are, they are not equitable to the situation of the Roma people residing on the Toxic Waste Camps in Kosovo.

Many displaced Roma from the Mahalla have now spent a decade living in the lead contaminated camps. And now many hundreds are being forcibly sent back from Countries across Europe to Kosovo and inevitably end up on the toxic waste camps.

Furthermore, it is of no credit to the international community that it has accepted this inhumanity and chose to ignore and abandon the children on the camps in Kosovo. I would go as far as to say, there is nowhere on earth that human being's are subjected to the inhumane conditions of the camps.

There are 200 children on the camps and for two young brothers Ergin and Robert, who are presently in a life or death situation due entirely to growing up in the shadow of a 200 hundred metre high 100 hundred million tons mountain of Toxic lead Waste, they are brain damaged (as is all the children born on the camps), Ergin suffers from Kidney failure, the boys will have no chance of ever fathering a family of their own in the future.

There is a little girl named Sara 4 years old, who has multiple heart problems, Sara has had four major heart attacks and is unlikely to survive much longer. These three children are in desperate need to be taken from the source that is killing them and given prolonged medical treatment to get rid of the many toxic poisons that exist in their blood. The children mentioned are typical of all the children on the camps.

I have attached a picture of the mountain of lead waste and of Ergin, Robert and Sara, if you can imagine having to live day after day, year in year out in the shadow of that mountain knowing how lethal it is to your family's, your unborn child's health, it doe's not bear thinking about.

This not a case of one person or a group of people who's human rights are being violated, it is a case of hundreds of people being poisoned for more than a decade. It is a case of nothing less than Genocide of a people, who it seems international organisations find great difficulty in supporting.

There are international organisations with offices in Kosovo that are supposed to support children and who have not even responded to the call for them to fund one child's special diet at a cost of 7 euro a day that is shared by two siblings. They are standing by and doing absolutely nothing to help these poor vulnerable children and families. Moreover, it is surly making a mockery of all they stand for.

We would respectfully ask Amnesty to speak out and show it's revulsion for the situation of people on the Toxic Waste Camps in Kosovo. As it has done for the Roma people who are being evicted in Belgrade.

Kind regards

Rachel Francis-Ingham

Inclusion office

UK Association of Gypsy Women