NATO wages war on Balkans environment
By John Catalinotto
The Hague, NetherlandsMay 27, 1999--Each day brings more evidence of a new dimension to NATO's war crimes in Yugoslavia: It is destroying the environment of the entire Balkans region and the Adriatic Sea.
Fishers in the Adriatic reported May 15 that their nets had snagged on unexploded bombs. NATO planes had dropped them in the sea on their way back to bases in Italy after incomplete bombing runs over Yugoslavia.
The Social Democrat/Green government in Germany came close to cracking May 13 when a special Green Party congress in Bielefeld nearly voted to break with the regime's war policy. Anti-war demonstrators--themselves Green Party members--hit Foreign Minister Joshka Fischer with a bag of red paint at the congress.
Fischer, a leader of the "Realo" faction of the Greens, has broken with the party's pacifist and environmentalist traditions and become a leading spokesperson trying to justify NATO's aggressive war against Yugoslavia as a "humanitarian" intervention. More and more rank-and-file party members see this position as a complete betrayal of Green principles.
As the truth about NATO's destruction of human life and the environment emerges, resistance to the war is expected to spread to new layers of the population in Europe.
Besides the bombs dropped into the sea, people are talking about NATO's bombing of industrial plants containing dangerous chemicals and its use of radioactive depleted-uranium weapons.
On April 15, NATO planes bombed the Serbian petrochemical complex in Pancevo. The bombs directly hit the vinyl chloride monomer plant and the ethylene plant. They also damaged other factories in the complex.
Plant director Dr. Slobodan Tresac reported that fire broke out and huge quantities of chlorine, ethylene dichloride and vinyl chloride monomer flowed out of their containers. The highly toxic fumes released then spread to the entire region.
Fearing more bomb hits, workers at the plant released tons of ethylene dichloride, a carcinogen, into the Danube. This river, now blocked by NATO bombing, is not only an important commercial and transport passageway--it also provides drinking water for almost 10 million people.
In a May 7 news release, the Worldwide Fund for Nature warned that an environmental crisis is looming in the lower Danube River and the Black Sea, due mainly to oil slicks.
Depleted uranium weapons
In an open letter from Belgrade, Yugoslav Agriculture Minister Nedelijko Sipovac wrote in early May that NATO's bombings have caused ecological catastrophe "not only on the territory of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia but on the territories of all Balkan, Danube basin, Mediterranean and European countries as well."
Sipovac added that areas of Yugoslavia experienced an increase in radioactivity. Sipovac attributed this to the use of depleted-uranium-coated shells and bullets.
Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Gen. Chuck Wald admitted to the BBC May 7 that A-10 "Warthog" anti-tank planes used over Kosovo were firing depleted-uranium ammunition. These planes are capable of firing 4,200 such rounds a minute. They fired 940,000 30-millimeter shells into Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War, according to Pentagon reports.
Depleted uranium is a waste created in the process of enriching uranium for nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants. It is an extremely dense metal. The military uses DU to increase a shell's ability to penetrate armor.
When DU shells penetrate steel, the DU burns and releases toxic, radioactive uranium oxide into the air as dust and smoke. When people inhale and ingest it, this dust becomes a danger to health and life.
IAC to expose dangers
On May 13, before leaving for a fact-finding mission to Yugoslavia, International Action Center Co-director Sara Flounders said one of the trip's major goals would be to document how NATO is destroying the environment.
"Along with the immediate tragedy of civilian deaths in Yugoslavia," said Flounders, "NATO bombing is creating environmental devastation that will affect millions of people for generations to come.
"This destruction of the environment for all the different peoples who live in the Balkans exposes the NATO leaders' claim that their goal in making war on Yugoslavia is humanitarian. This bombing harms everyone in the region--Albanian and Serb, Roma and Greek, Croat and Slovene.
"We will bring the truth about this destruction to the people of the NATO countries and make it impossible for anyone claiming to be for protecting the environment to at the same time defend NATO's aggression against Yugoslavia."
Flounders is an editor of "Metal of Dishonor," a book presenting a collection of technical and political articles exposing the dangers of depleted uranium. The IAC published a second edition of the book in early May.
International Action Center
39 West 14th Street, Room 206
New York, NY 10011
email: mailto:iacenter@action-mail.org
En Espanol: iac-cai@action-mail.org
Web: http://www.iacenter.org
Support Mumia Abu-Jamal: http://www.millions4mumia.org/
phone: 212 633-6646
fax: 212 633-2889
Make a donation to the IAC and its projects
The International Action Center
Home ActionAlerts Press
Share this page with a friend