Victory for mafia waste victims in Italy's 'Land of Fires'

Victory for mafia waste victims in Italy's 'Land of Fires'

STRASBOURG
Victory for mafia waste victims in Italys Land of Fires

Europe's top rights court on Thursday ruled that Italy had failed to protect nearly 3 million people living in a region blighted by toxic waste dumped by the mafia and gave the government two years to fix the situation.

Haberin Devamı

The Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) found Italy was aware of the illegal dumping, burying and burning of hazardous waste by the mafia in Campania near Naples, but failed to act.

Cancer rates are higher than normal in the region, known as the "Land of Fires" and home to Antonietta Moccia, one of the 41 people who brought the case.

Moccia's daughter Miriam was diagnosed with a brain tumor aged 5, a medulloblastoma that occurs in around 1.5 people in a million in Europe.

But "in the hospital there were three other cases from Acerra," their Campania town of 60,000, Moccia told AFP ahead of the verdict.

"We are invisible, nobody listens to us," she said.

Moccia is waiting for the territory to be cleaned up and for compensation "to help other families," saying that she herself received no help except from family and friends.

Fortunately Miriam, now 18, has her cancer "under control" and she "is moving forward and wants to turn the page," her mother said.

The ECHR yesterday gave Rome two years to draw up a "comprehensive strategy" to deal with the situation.

The comprehensive strategy should see the setting up of an independent monitoring mechanism and establishment of a public information platform, the court said.

For decades, industrial waste, often from northern Italy, was burned in the open air in this vast area, which is also known as the "Triangle of Death."

Instead of paying exorbitant sums to have it disposed of legally, companies paid the Camorra mafia a fraction of the cost to dump it in fields, wells and lakes.

Everything from broken sheets of asbestos to car tires and containers of industrial-strength glue was burned or left to rot, polluting the air, soil and water.