By AFP - Agence France Presse
Victory for victims of mafia waste in Italy's “Land of Fires”
Caserta (Italy) (AFP) - Europe's top human rights court ruled Thursday that Italy failed to protect nearly three million people living in a region affected by toxic waste dumped by the mafia, and gave the government two years to resolve the situation.
The Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) concluded that Italy was aware of the illegal dumping, burial, and burning of hazardous waste by the mafia in the Campania countryside north of Naples, but failed to act.
In 2021, Italy's main health authority confirmed the link between high cancer rates and pollution in the area, known as the “Land of Fires” - and home to Antonietta Moccia, one of the 41 people who brought the lawsuit.
Moccia's daughter, Miriam, was diagnosed with a brain tumor at the age of five, a medulloblastoma that occurs in around 1.5 people in a million in Europe.
“In the hospital, there were three other cases from Acerra,” her town of 60,000 inhabitants in Campania, Moccia told AFP before the verdict.
“We are invisible, no one listens to us,” she said.
Miriam, now 18, suffered serious sequelae, but the cancer is “under control” and she “is moving forward and wants to turn the page”, said her mother.
But they are still waiting for the land to be cleared and for compensation “to help other families”, with Moccia saying she has received no help except family and friends.
On Thursday, the ECHR reserved a decision on possible compensation.
Families 'torn apart'
In 1997, a mafia turncoat revealed that hazardous waste had been buried in the area since at least 1988, and parliament was informed.
But it was only in 2013 that the government adopted a decree-law officially defining the “Land of Fires”.
The court said that Italy's response in assessing the impact of the pollution, which affected the air, water, and soil, was “glacial”.
It gave Rome two years to draw up a “comprehensive strategy” to deal with the situation and establish an independent monitoring mechanism and a public information platform.
Antonella Mascia, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said it was a “historic, extremely important verdict”.
“You told AFP that Italy is urged to solve this huge problem, which affects not only our clients but everyone who lives there.
For decades, industrial waste - usually from northern Italy - has been burned in the open in the area, which is also known as the 'Triangle of Death'.
Instead of paying exorbitant sums for the waste to be disposed of legally, companies paid the Camorra mafia a fraction of the cost to dump everything from broken asbestos sheets to car tires and containers of industrial-strength glue.
Maurizio Patriciello, the parish priest of Caivano, who has campaigned on the issue for years, said the decision was a response to the “deniers, ignoramuses, accomplices and corrupt” who threatened and ridiculed residents who raised concerns.
In a Facebook post, he remembered all the victims, including two of his brothers, his sister-in-law, and his nephew, and “the many children, young people, and young parents that cancer has destroyed and killed”.
'Two heads'
Years after the issue became public, there are still piles of garbage near waterways, along roads, and in fields where sheep and goats graze.
Alessandro Cannavacciuolo, another of the complainants, told AFP this week that he first knew something was wrong when his eyes, in the early 2000s, gave birth to “deformed lambs, with two heads, two tongues, tails on their sides”.
“We no longer had lambs, but real monsters,” he said.
As his friends and relatives also fell ill, Cannavacciuolo became an activist, finding and denouncing illegal dumpsites - at great personal risk.
“We are at war. Anyone who raises their voice, anyone who denounces these criminal activities, is threatened,” he said.
“Our cars have been shot at, our animals have been killed, we've received threatening letters,” he added.
Since 2013, a series of parliamentary inquiries have concluded that the authorities are negligent and, in some cases, complicit.
They have also highlighted the health consequences, including an increase in cases of cancer and fetal and neonatal malformations.
In 2018, the Senate stated that mafia crime and political inaction had caused an ecological disaster.
Pina Picierno, vice-president of the European Parliament for the center-left Democratic Party, said that the ECHR's decision was “unequivocal” and that Italy's government must act now.
“Announcements and proclamations are not enough, we immediately need an operational plan to protect the citizens of Campania,” she said.
Neither the government nor the Campania region responded to an AFP request for comment.
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