ventiquattromarzonovantanove (2)
PANCEVO: NEMMENO I NAZISTI AVEVANO OSATO TANTO
Ecco come il "New York Times" racconto' il bombardamento chimico
contro la popolazione civile di Pancevo, poche settimane dopo gli
eventi. La NATO miro' intenzionalmente sui depositi di cloruro di
vinile monomero ed altre sostanze venefiche e cancerogene, per
garantirsi un effetto genocida di lunga durata, causando anche la
contaminazione del Danubio. Questo su di una citta' governata dai
partiti della (allora) opposizione. Il "Tribunale" dell'Aia non ha mai
aperto ne' aprira' mai alcuna inchiesta per questi crimini contro
l'umanita' commessi dai responsabili politici dei paesi della NATO.
Complice degli assassini della NATO e' oggi la classe dirigente serba,
che nasconde le statistiche e le ricerche epidemiologiche sulle
conseguenze della guerra chimica contro i civili scatenata nel 1999.
(I.S.)
---
http://emperors-clothes.com/news/pancevo.htm
www.tenc.net [emperors-clothes]
Toxic aftermath of war
From the NY Times News Service
Petar Makara, who is from Pancevo in Serbia and now works
as a computer scientist in the US, wrote the following
comments:
#1: The Pancevo chemical industry was built by NATO
countries. They knew exactly what they were hitting.
#2: It is clear from the NATO spokeswoman quoted
below that the war crime was deliberate and well
calculated: ""There were tactical and strategic targets.
The oil refinery in Pancevo was considered a strategic
target..."
And she adds: "When targeting is done we take into
account all possible collateral damage," she said, "be it
environmental, human or to the civilian infrastructure..."
As someone who was born and lived in Pancevo for 33 years I
must add that even though bombing of my home town
happened 8,000 miles away I have experienced some of the
same symptoms as my Pancevo neighbours. The symptoms
are vomiting and stomach cramps.
- Petar Makara
The New York Times
July 14, 1999, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final
Section A; Page 1; Column 5; Foreign Desk
Serbian Town Bombed by NATO Fears Effects of Toxic Chemicals
By CHRIS HEDGES
PANCEVO, Serbia, July 12
On the edge of town, in a sprawling industrial park that held an oil
refinery, a petrochemical plant and a fertilizer factory, lie the
twisted pipes, scorched storage tanks, crumbled roofs and jagged
detritus left by NATO bombs.
Yet it is not these ruined factories that are the worst scourges of
war in this river town, many people here say, but the tons of toxic
material that poured out of them. Farm workers, plunging their fingers
into the earth, say they come away with rashes that burn and blister.
Those who eat the river fish and vegetables or drink the tap water,
which trickles out of faucets because of the damage to the
purification plant, come down with diarrhea, vomiting and stomach
cramps.
Children, many of whom were sent away to Slovakia by local Red Cross
officials for several weeks to escape the clouds of noxious gasses
that hovered for days over Pancevo, still suffer headaches and
dizziness. The war's lingering, ghoulish touch could be affecting even
the unborn. There are twice as many miscarriages as there were during
the comparable period last year, doctors here say.
There is no independent assessment of the medical effects of the
exposure to chemicals that the bombing caused. The scientific studies
conducted by the Yugoslavs in Pancevo, by their own admission, have
been carried out with outdated methods and inferior, antiquated
equipment.
The results of such testing, said Dr. Predrag S. Polic, the chemist
who conducted many of the tests, are three or four weeks away.
The United Nations Environment Program has formed a Balkans Task
Force, headed by Pakka Haavisto, who was the Environment Minister of
Finland.
The task force will send a team of international experts to Pancevo,
and about half a dozen other damaged industrial sites, next Tuesday to
take air, water and soil samples for three or four weeks. It expects
to publish its findings and make recommendations in September.
"The most dangerous moment probably occurred during the fires, when
the smoke was in the air," said Mr. Haavisto, who briefly visited
Pancevo two weeks ago and was reached by phone in Geneva. "A large
amount of chemicals burned during this time. It remains unclear how
much is in the soil, but when you walk in Pancevo you can smell
chemical substances.
"The biggest danger now is that the ground water and the Danube have
been directly polluted, something that will affect the drinking water.
There are towns in Romania and Bulgaria that use the Danube for
drinking water. In my estimation the most damaged sites will need a
cleaning process, as in places where the soil and water have been
contaminated with toxic materials, before we can talk about
rebuilding."
Government officials, doctors and residents in the town report a
surge of unexplained symptoms.
"The effects of the bombing on these industrial sites have been
enormous," said Simon Bancov, the Government health inspector for the
region. "More than 100,000 tons of carcinogenics were unleashed into
the air, the water and the soil. The produce is not safe to eat. The
long-term damage to the water table and riverbeds is severe. People
complain constantly of stomach pain but have no viral or bacterial
symptoms. We have all been poisoned."
The repeated air strikes on the industrial complex, which covers
several acres, culminated in three huge hits at 1 A.M. on April 18.
The bombs sent fireballs into the air and enveloped Pancevo in clouds
of black smoke and milky white gases. Flames leapt from the site for
10 days.
The air strikes unleashed tons of chemicals into the air and water.
An estimated 1,500 tons of vinyl chloride, the building block of a
type of plastic, 3,000 times higher than permitted levels, burned into
the air or poured into the soil and river, said municipal officials in
Pancevo, which is controlled by opposition parties hostile to
President Slobodan Milosevic.
The chemical, which has left the banks of the river edged with white
foam, still clogs the canals around the town. Huge quantities of other
noxious chemicals burned or gushed out of storage tanks, said town
officials and Yugoslav scientists.
Those chemicals included an estimated 15,000 tons of ammonia, used to
make fertilizer; 800 tons of hydrochloric acid and 250 tons of liquid
chlorine, used for several industrial products; vast quantities of
dioxin, a component of Agent Orange and other defoliants, and 100 tons
of mercury, the officials said.
By dawn after the night of the attack, dozens of people were
hospitalized gasping for air, struggling to see and unable to digest
food, witnesses said.
The sun was blotted out for nearly a day as people moved with rags
over their noses and mouths through the fog.
NATO officials, reached by phone in Mons, Belgium, said the
industrial site had been a key target in the drive to deny fuel and
other resources to the Yugoslav Army.
"NATO had two types of targets," said a NATO spokeswoman. "There were
tactical and strategic targets. The oil refinery in Pancevo was
considered a strategic target. It was a key installation that provided
petrol and other elements to support the Yugoslav Army. By cutting off
these supplies we denied crucial material to the Serbian forces
fighting in Kosovo."
The official said the environmental damage caused by the attack had
been taken into consideration.
"When targeting is done we take into account all possible collateral
damage," she said, "be it environmental, human or to the civilian
infrastructure. Pancevo was considered to be a very, very important
refinery and strategic target, as important as tactical targets inside
Kosovo."
Three months later, anxious families are coping with illnesses no one
seems able to explain. Mothers, clutching the hands of small children,
along with people whose bodies are covered in rashes, clog the small
waiting rooms of local doctors hoping for explanations and treatment.
The doctors say there is little they can do but wait to see if the
exposure leads to cancer, blood contamination and serious respiratory
ailments.
Chemical exposure can produce immediate and longer-term effects,
causing different kinds of damage to the body, experts say. Some may
be clear to the eye and painful, but other effects could be silent and
only show up years later.
It is difficult to pinpoint the cause of the symptoms that people in
Pancevo report without scientific tests. Neither Dr. Polic nor
officials of the United Nations Environment Program said they were
ready to speculate on the possible health risks.
"What can we tell people?" said Dr. Dobrosav Pavlovic, a
gynecologist. "We have not advised expectant mothers to have
abortions, but we are seeing more and more miscarriages.
"I can't say how much the bombing has contributed to this increase. I
can't say what the results of the bombing will be over the long term.
It will be over a year, when we can begin to look for birth defects
and can detect serious illnesses, that we will start to understand
what has happened."
The bombing left most of the 8,761 people who worked in the plants,
10 miles northwest of Belgrade, out of work. The Government, which was
months late with salaries before the bombing, has reduced incomes from
$100 to $15 a month until the factories are repaired, something
workers say will never happen without foreign investment. The damage
is estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Three United States companies and a German company built the
petrochemical plant, used to make plastics, in 1978. Two American
corporations and a French concern constructed the oil refinery in
1969. The fertilizer plant, which began operation in 1958, was a joint
venture by companies from the United States, Spain and the
Netherlands.
The loss of income in the town has made it difficult for those who
would like to move or take precautions against the pollutants. There
is now 70 percent unemployment.
"My son and I have constant headaches," said Radmila Vukelic, 52. "We
feel dizzy, as if we were going to faint. No one has told us anything.
We have no information about what has happened or what we should do.
"I do not eat the fish from the river. I am afraid. We would like to
eat frozen or canned vegetables, but we do not have this kind of
money. We must eat what is in the markets."
Srdjan Mikovic, 38, the Mayor of Pancevo, said he was bewildered by
the extent of the air strikes, especially since his town of 130,000,
with a mixture of people of Hungarian and Croatian ancestry, has long
been one of the centers of the opposition.
It is one of the few places in Serbia where the radio and television
stations are free from party control, either by Mr. Milosevic's ruling
Socialists or the parties that oppose him.
"We have heard nothing from the Government," the Mayor said. "We have
never supported the regime, and for this reason I fear we will be
sacrificed.
"NATO had to understand what they were doing to us, because these
factories were built by American and European firms. They could not
have been ignorant of the environmental damage. I have given up. I eat
the fish. How much more can I be poisoned after living in clouds of
this stuff?"
Pancevo was once a frontier town, manned by Hungarian, Serbian and
Austrian soldiers in the Austro-Hungarian empire. The pink facade of
the former imperial army barracks lies in the center of Pancevo. It
was from here that the European troops faced the Ottoman Turks across
the river from 1716, when Vienna captured Pancevo, until the end of
World War I.
The buildings, although in bad repair, look as if they were lifted
from Austria, with stuccoed block exteriors, onion domed towers,
arched windows and delicate wrought iron staircases.
This part of Serbia has never embraced Mr. Milosevic's nationalist
movement. Pancevo played host to a women's water polo tournament last
year, and the American swimmers won. The spectators cheered the
athletes as "The Star-Spangled Banner" was played during the awards
ceremony.
"The bombing has changed how we feel about the outside world," Mr.
Mikovic said. "People have lost their desire to fight, to reach out.
They only want to survive. The Americans can come back, but they will
not have any applause from us."
(c) NY Times * Reprinted for Fair Use Only
www.tenc.net [emperors-clothes]
PANCEVO: NEMMENO I NAZISTI AVEVANO OSATO TANTO
Ecco come il "New York Times" racconto' il bombardamento chimico
contro la popolazione civile di Pancevo, poche settimane dopo gli
eventi. La NATO miro' intenzionalmente sui depositi di cloruro di
vinile monomero ed altre sostanze venefiche e cancerogene, per
garantirsi un effetto genocida di lunga durata, causando anche la
contaminazione del Danubio. Questo su di una citta' governata dai
partiti della (allora) opposizione. Il "Tribunale" dell'Aia non ha mai
aperto ne' aprira' mai alcuna inchiesta per questi crimini contro
l'umanita' commessi dai responsabili politici dei paesi della NATO.
Complice degli assassini della NATO e' oggi la classe dirigente serba,
che nasconde le statistiche e le ricerche epidemiologiche sulle
conseguenze della guerra chimica contro i civili scatenata nel 1999.
(I.S.)
---
http://emperors-clothes.com/news/pancevo.htm
www.tenc.net [emperors-clothes]
Toxic aftermath of war
From the NY Times News Service
Petar Makara, who is from Pancevo in Serbia and now works
as a computer scientist in the US, wrote the following
comments:
#1: The Pancevo chemical industry was built by NATO
countries. They knew exactly what they were hitting.
#2: It is clear from the NATO spokeswoman quoted
below that the war crime was deliberate and well
calculated: ""There were tactical and strategic targets.
The oil refinery in Pancevo was considered a strategic
target..."
And she adds: "When targeting is done we take into
account all possible collateral damage," she said, "be it
environmental, human or to the civilian infrastructure..."
As someone who was born and lived in Pancevo for 33 years I
must add that even though bombing of my home town
happened 8,000 miles away I have experienced some of the
same symptoms as my Pancevo neighbours. The symptoms
are vomiting and stomach cramps.
- Petar Makara
The New York Times
July 14, 1999, Wednesday, Late Edition - Final
Section A; Page 1; Column 5; Foreign Desk
Serbian Town Bombed by NATO Fears Effects of Toxic Chemicals
By CHRIS HEDGES
PANCEVO, Serbia, July 12
On the edge of town, in a sprawling industrial park that held an oil
refinery, a petrochemical plant and a fertilizer factory, lie the
twisted pipes, scorched storage tanks, crumbled roofs and jagged
detritus left by NATO bombs.
Yet it is not these ruined factories that are the worst scourges of
war in this river town, many people here say, but the tons of toxic
material that poured out of them. Farm workers, plunging their fingers
into the earth, say they come away with rashes that burn and blister.
Those who eat the river fish and vegetables or drink the tap water,
which trickles out of faucets because of the damage to the
purification plant, come down with diarrhea, vomiting and stomach
cramps.
Children, many of whom were sent away to Slovakia by local Red Cross
officials for several weeks to escape the clouds of noxious gasses
that hovered for days over Pancevo, still suffer headaches and
dizziness. The war's lingering, ghoulish touch could be affecting even
the unborn. There are twice as many miscarriages as there were during
the comparable period last year, doctors here say.
There is no independent assessment of the medical effects of the
exposure to chemicals that the bombing caused. The scientific studies
conducted by the Yugoslavs in Pancevo, by their own admission, have
been carried out with outdated methods and inferior, antiquated
equipment.
The results of such testing, said Dr. Predrag S. Polic, the chemist
who conducted many of the tests, are three or four weeks away.
The United Nations Environment Program has formed a Balkans Task
Force, headed by Pakka Haavisto, who was the Environment Minister of
Finland.
The task force will send a team of international experts to Pancevo,
and about half a dozen other damaged industrial sites, next Tuesday to
take air, water and soil samples for three or four weeks. It expects
to publish its findings and make recommendations in September.
"The most dangerous moment probably occurred during the fires, when
the smoke was in the air," said Mr. Haavisto, who briefly visited
Pancevo two weeks ago and was reached by phone in Geneva. "A large
amount of chemicals burned during this time. It remains unclear how
much is in the soil, but when you walk in Pancevo you can smell
chemical substances.
"The biggest danger now is that the ground water and the Danube have
been directly polluted, something that will affect the drinking water.
There are towns in Romania and Bulgaria that use the Danube for
drinking water. In my estimation the most damaged sites will need a
cleaning process, as in places where the soil and water have been
contaminated with toxic materials, before we can talk about
rebuilding."
Government officials, doctors and residents in the town report a
surge of unexplained symptoms.
"The effects of the bombing on these industrial sites have been
enormous," said Simon Bancov, the Government health inspector for the
region. "More than 100,000 tons of carcinogenics were unleashed into
the air, the water and the soil. The produce is not safe to eat. The
long-term damage to the water table and riverbeds is severe. People
complain constantly of stomach pain but have no viral or bacterial
symptoms. We have all been poisoned."
The repeated air strikes on the industrial complex, which covers
several acres, culminated in three huge hits at 1 A.M. on April 18.
The bombs sent fireballs into the air and enveloped Pancevo in clouds
of black smoke and milky white gases. Flames leapt from the site for
10 days.
The air strikes unleashed tons of chemicals into the air and water.
An estimated 1,500 tons of vinyl chloride, the building block of a
type of plastic, 3,000 times higher than permitted levels, burned into
the air or poured into the soil and river, said municipal officials in
Pancevo, which is controlled by opposition parties hostile to
President Slobodan Milosevic.
The chemical, which has left the banks of the river edged with white
foam, still clogs the canals around the town. Huge quantities of other
noxious chemicals burned or gushed out of storage tanks, said town
officials and Yugoslav scientists.
Those chemicals included an estimated 15,000 tons of ammonia, used to
make fertilizer; 800 tons of hydrochloric acid and 250 tons of liquid
chlorine, used for several industrial products; vast quantities of
dioxin, a component of Agent Orange and other defoliants, and 100 tons
of mercury, the officials said.
By dawn after the night of the attack, dozens of people were
hospitalized gasping for air, struggling to see and unable to digest
food, witnesses said.
The sun was blotted out for nearly a day as people moved with rags
over their noses and mouths through the fog.
NATO officials, reached by phone in Mons, Belgium, said the
industrial site had been a key target in the drive to deny fuel and
other resources to the Yugoslav Army.
"NATO had two types of targets," said a NATO spokeswoman. "There were
tactical and strategic targets. The oil refinery in Pancevo was
considered a strategic target. It was a key installation that provided
petrol and other elements to support the Yugoslav Army. By cutting off
these supplies we denied crucial material to the Serbian forces
fighting in Kosovo."
The official said the environmental damage caused by the attack had
been taken into consideration.
"When targeting is done we take into account all possible collateral
damage," she said, "be it environmental, human or to the civilian
infrastructure. Pancevo was considered to be a very, very important
refinery and strategic target, as important as tactical targets inside
Kosovo."
Three months later, anxious families are coping with illnesses no one
seems able to explain. Mothers, clutching the hands of small children,
along with people whose bodies are covered in rashes, clog the small
waiting rooms of local doctors hoping for explanations and treatment.
The doctors say there is little they can do but wait to see if the
exposure leads to cancer, blood contamination and serious respiratory
ailments.
Chemical exposure can produce immediate and longer-term effects,
causing different kinds of damage to the body, experts say. Some may
be clear to the eye and painful, but other effects could be silent and
only show up years later.
It is difficult to pinpoint the cause of the symptoms that people in
Pancevo report without scientific tests. Neither Dr. Polic nor
officials of the United Nations Environment Program said they were
ready to speculate on the possible health risks.
"What can we tell people?" said Dr. Dobrosav Pavlovic, a
gynecologist. "We have not advised expectant mothers to have
abortions, but we are seeing more and more miscarriages.
"I can't say how much the bombing has contributed to this increase. I
can't say what the results of the bombing will be over the long term.
It will be over a year, when we can begin to look for birth defects
and can detect serious illnesses, that we will start to understand
what has happened."
The bombing left most of the 8,761 people who worked in the plants,
10 miles northwest of Belgrade, out of work. The Government, which was
months late with salaries before the bombing, has reduced incomes from
$100 to $15 a month until the factories are repaired, something
workers say will never happen without foreign investment. The damage
is estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Three United States companies and a German company built the
petrochemical plant, used to make plastics, in 1978. Two American
corporations and a French concern constructed the oil refinery in
1969. The fertilizer plant, which began operation in 1958, was a joint
venture by companies from the United States, Spain and the
Netherlands.
The loss of income in the town has made it difficult for those who
would like to move or take precautions against the pollutants. There
is now 70 percent unemployment.
"My son and I have constant headaches," said Radmila Vukelic, 52. "We
feel dizzy, as if we were going to faint. No one has told us anything.
We have no information about what has happened or what we should do.
"I do not eat the fish from the river. I am afraid. We would like to
eat frozen or canned vegetables, but we do not have this kind of
money. We must eat what is in the markets."
Srdjan Mikovic, 38, the Mayor of Pancevo, said he was bewildered by
the extent of the air strikes, especially since his town of 130,000,
with a mixture of people of Hungarian and Croatian ancestry, has long
been one of the centers of the opposition.
It is one of the few places in Serbia where the radio and television
stations are free from party control, either by Mr. Milosevic's ruling
Socialists or the parties that oppose him.
"We have heard nothing from the Government," the Mayor said. "We have
never supported the regime, and for this reason I fear we will be
sacrificed.
"NATO had to understand what they were doing to us, because these
factories were built by American and European firms. They could not
have been ignorant of the environmental damage. I have given up. I eat
the fish. How much more can I be poisoned after living in clouds of
this stuff?"
Pancevo was once a frontier town, manned by Hungarian, Serbian and
Austrian soldiers in the Austro-Hungarian empire. The pink facade of
the former imperial army barracks lies in the center of Pancevo. It
was from here that the European troops faced the Ottoman Turks across
the river from 1716, when Vienna captured Pancevo, until the end of
World War I.
The buildings, although in bad repair, look as if they were lifted
from Austria, with stuccoed block exteriors, onion domed towers,
arched windows and delicate wrought iron staircases.
This part of Serbia has never embraced Mr. Milosevic's nationalist
movement. Pancevo played host to a women's water polo tournament last
year, and the American swimmers won. The spectators cheered the
athletes as "The Star-Spangled Banner" was played during the awards
ceremony.
"The bombing has changed how we feel about the outside world," Mr.
Mikovic said. "People have lost their desire to fight, to reach out.
They only want to survive. The Americans can come back, but they will
not have any applause from us."
(c) NY Times * Reprinted for Fair Use Only
www.tenc.net [emperors-clothes]