Email this article
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the April 20, 2000
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------Pancevo, Yugoslavia
U.S. bombing amounted to ecocide
By John Catalinotto
Pancevo, Yugoslavia
For weeks during last year's U.S.-led NATO bombing assault on Yugoslavia, virtually all of Serbia was covered with a gray, smoky haze. It ended eerily in the north, where a different weather system blows in over Yugoslavia's border with Hungary from across the plains of the Ukraine and Poland.
The smoke causing this haze poured out of bombed oil refineries and petrochemical and fertilizer plants in the key industrial regions of Yugoslavia. U.S. generals commanding the NATO air armada ordered these bombings not because they were valid military targets, but in an attempt to demoralize the Yugoslav population.
This assault added a new word to the list of war crimes: ecocide. The murder of the environment.
The HIP-Petrochemical Pancevo plant manufactures polyvinyl chloride and ethylene and also produces chlorine. On March 30, Assistant Technical Director Dmitar Krivokuca showed the still severely damaged plant to visitors and described what happened a year ago.
Workers at plant
when missiles struck"Most of the workers from all shifts were at the plant when the missiles hit late in the evening of April 15, 1999," Kivokuca said. "We had taken in a full load of vinyl before the bombing started and were trying to use up as much as possible and move the rest someplace safer.
"We had special teams on hand to help with rescues, should bombs or missiles hit the plant."
Nodding toward where a bomb had struck, Kivokuca said: "I was 150 meters away from the missile when it hit, operating special equipment. Six missiles hit the plant within 12 minutes, and a seventh hit three hours later."
The vinyl chloride monomer plant and ethylene plant took direct hits. Indirectly, heavy and destructive explosions damaged the chlorine and polyvinyl chloride plant.
Some of the buildings have since been repaired. But the complex of cylindrical tubes and spherical vessels making up the plant still stand, damaged beyond repair as any delicate system would be by such a blast.
NATO missiles hit the plant a second time three days later, on April 18, 1999. The chlorine and vinyl plant are still closed, costing workers 1,200 of the original 3,200 jobs at HIP.
While workers are aware of the dangers from the damaged plant, they prefer to remain working at the restarted parts of the plant than to be unemployed.
Kivokuca pointed to the holes on the sides of the spherical storage tanks. "Shell fragments opened those tanks, releasing huge amounts of ethylene-dichloride and hydrochloric acid. Also, large amounts of mercury escaped into the soil, underground waters and the Danube River."
The fire resulted in the release of phosgene--a poisonous gas produced by the burning vinyl-chloride--into the air. Eighteen people were poisoned and had difficulty breathing. A part of the population of Pancevo had to be moved.
"We do not yet know the long-term consequence of the changes here," said Kivokuca.
HIP's report on the damage revealed that 460 tons of vinyl-chloride monomer had been released into the air by the explosion and fire. One thousand square meters of ethylene-dichloride, 200 kilograms of mercury, 70 tons of hydrochloric acid, and 40 tons of sodium hypochloride were released into the Danube.
In addition, 1,100 tons of ethylene dichloride, 60 tons of hydrochloric acid, 100 tons of caustics and 40 tons of sodium hypochloride were released into the ground water and soil.
There is no longer heavy smoke pouring out of fires. The rapid flow of the giant Danube River has washed much of the toxic materials downstream. But heavy metals like mercury remain in the soil, destined to contaminate the food chain.
Even an expensive process to clean the soil and ground water, developed in the Netherlands, cannot guarantee that all toxins are removed, said Kivokuca.
The severe sanctions the United States and NATO have imposed on Yugoslavia hamper all efforts to reverse the environmental damage caused by the U.S.-led war.
Environmental warfare
Also at the HIP plant March 30, Serbian Assistant Minister of Environmental Protection Gordana Brun filled out the picture of the environmental damage to the region.
"The NATO aggression against Yugoslavia is a unique worldwide example of ecological warfare. It not only annihilated the flora and fauna of one of the largest biological treasurehouses of the continent, it also endangered broader regions in the Balkans and in all of Europe.
"In addition, it threatens worldwide consequences, including adding to global warming and the erosion of the ozone layer."
She said that far from hitting only military targets as U.S. military strategists claim, NATO bombs "hit civilian targets in over 60 percent of the cases, in the most densely populated regions of Serbia."
These targets included industrial zones that brought the greatest risk to Serbia's ecology such as Pancevo, Baric, Belgrade, Novi Sad, Krusevac, Kragujevac and others.
Her assessment of the danger was supported by a United Nations study released in June 1999, which states the bombing of Pancevo itself "may pose a serious threat to health in the region, as well as to ecological systems in the broader Balkans and European region. ...
"Many of the compounds released in these chemical accidents can cause cancer, miscarriages and birth defects. Others are associated with fatal nerve and liver diseases. The pollutants which have been released could also have a negative effect in the short and long term on the nutrition chain," said the UN Interagency Needs Assessment Mission study.
Brun said that NATO targeting these industrial areas, along with using depleted uranium weapons, violated the 1907 Hague Convention, the Geneva Convention, the UN Charter, NATO's charter and the laws of NATO member states. It added up to ecocide.
The International Action Center is planning to hold a final hearing June 10 in New York on 19 charges accusing U.S. and NATO political and military leaders of crimes against peace, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The indictment was written by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark.
The murder of the environment will surely be one of the crimes under examination.
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
Subscribe wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net
Support independent news http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php)HOME :: U.S. NEWS :: WORLD NEWS :: EDITORIALS :: SUBSCRIBE :: DONATE