SAfter her son, Antonio, Marzia Kakopouli moved to Casalnovo de Napoli, a town surrounded by the countryside on the outskirts of Naples, to stay away from chaos and pollution of the sprawling southern Italian city.
She said: “Antonio was a strong and healthy boy, but I wanted to grow up in a place where he could breathe the clean air.”
The decision, however, has proven to be a killer. This was in 2003 and Caccioppoli unintentionally moved to the so -called “death triangle”, a vast area to the northeast of Napoli, where the mafia created profitable works of agricultural lands and drinking water.
Instead of living in the long and healthy life that his mother dreamed of for him, Antonio died by the time when he was ten.
The illegal waste, which is often implemented in Cahoots with local police and politicians, was thrown by the mafia coat in the late 1990s, soon from the appearance of signs of its early effects: First the farm animals born with distortions, then anomalous height in cancer cases, especially Rare forms of disease among children.
But the racket with deep roots, which over time had devastating repercussions on health, environment and livelihoods, was not dealt with adequately, whether by local, regional or national authorities.
It can be about to change. Caccioppoli was among the 41 prosecutors who took a case against the Italian state to the European Court of Human Rights, where the rulers recently eliminated that although they have long been aware of, successive governments have failed in their duty to address the crisis. As a result, the residents in the affected area, which includes 90 municipalities and a population of about 3 million, have been deprived of their “right to life”.
The court gave its headquarters Italy Two years to collect a strategy to solve the problem, including creating an independent monitoring mechanism and a public information platform.
Caccioppoli got something wrong with Casalnuovo when I noticed more death ads appearing on the city’s walls.
She said, “They were people in the thirties or forties of the age.” Then there was a child’s funeral, then discovered cancer. I started hearing more and more people with cancer. “
Antonio was nine years old when she noticed cramping in his leg, and after visiting many paramedics, he was diagnosed with aggressive brain cancer, which generally affects older adults. He died in June 2013.
Later that year, the government enacted its first decree to address the matter. This was a plan for a map and cleansing the affected land “fire land”, which was a plan to draw a map and cleansing the affected land.
While some progress was made, toxic waste continued or burned. With the high cancer cases, some government ministers blame the life of those who live in the region.
The relationship between the high rates of cancer and pollution was finally confirmed by the Higher Health Institute in Italy (ISS) in 2021. The ISS report showed in 2023 that the death rate in the region was 9 % higher than the rest of the Campania region, with people in the face of a greater danger Many of the death of malignant tumors and respiratory diseases.
The government of Georgia Meloni officially did not officially respond to the rule of the European Football Association, but during a meeting with the Parliament’s Environmental Committee last week, the Minister of Environment, Gilberto Bishito Frattin, admitted to the state’s shortcomings in dealing with this issue during the decent possibility of the possibility of a possibility commissioner.
There was no official response from the authorities in the Campania region as well, although one of the advisers claimed that the toxic waste dumps were “something of the past.”
“Silence is more than garbage,” said Alessandro Canaavashiolo, an environmental activist who was the first prosecutor to sign the complaint submitted to the European Human Rights Convention. “Half of my family has been handed over to cancer. I don’t wish it to anyone. The ruling is a strong development, but now we do not want press leaflets, we want facts. We cannot wait another 20 years.”
It takes only a visit to the area to see the size of the problem.
The garbage hills connect the roads on the nearby Acerra suburbs, which contain everything from building waste, including asbestos, and plastic used in car production to electrical cables, clothes and public municipal waste. The unpleasant smell of recently burned piles.
Antonita Machia, whose daughter, Mary, 18, lives with rare brain cancer that was diagnosed at the age of five, is regularly monitoring the situation. “The politicians say it is cleaned, but it is clear that it is not true,” she said. “If the environment is sick, we are sick. Here, they really earn our blood.”
It is believed that the company has started in the eighties, when companies in the industrial north, or even Germany, pay the Camoria mafia to throw its dangerous waste on a small part, which would cost it to get rid of them legally.
the Mafia “Turncoat Carmine Schiavone revealed the illegal institution of the journalist Marilana Natale in 1997,” Natal, who has received a police protection since 2017 due to the mafia threats. It is still happening today, all they have done is to change the road. ”For example, waste is now transferred to Tunisia. It is a vicious cycle.”
Valentina Sentonz, Armando Corsini and Ambrojio Valo were among the teams who met in the case, working for free on behalf of the prosecutors.
All of their families have been affected by cancer, while Fallo Cubes take medications every day to get a brain tumor.
Centonze said: “The state not only failed to solve the problem, but also deleted to provide knowledge and information [to the public] About this phenomenon – this is another important fact of rule. “
The issue is not limited to Campania. Centonze said: “This ruling places a precedent that can be applied in all other places in Italy, where there is a problem in dumping waste and self -deficiency of the departments to deal with them.”
Natalie, who has strengthened a child with cancer, believes that the ruling has been late, and that the problem is too big to solve it. “It is a mockery,” she said. “So we can sue the government, but it will not return us to our dead children.”
Santopono Buslepon Children’s Hospital is located in Napoli on Posillipo Tel, with views of Mount Vesuvius. Over the past twenty years, the last port of hope for children with cancer and their families from all over Campania has become. The hospital treated 108 new cancer patients in 2024, eight of them died since the beginning of the year.
“Most of them are from the affected area. While trying to clean the land, the hospital must be strengthened with more employees and more equipment and more money. We must be better equipped To save lives, but also to help those who live alive and have to live with consequences, and work to prevent. “
