Victory For Mafia Waste Victims In Italy's 'Land Of Fires'

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

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 the Campania countryside north of Naples but failed to act.

Italy's top health authority in 2021 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 case.

Moccia's daughter Miriam was diagnosed with a brain tumour aged 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," their Campania town of 60,000, Moccia told AFP ahead of the verdict.

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

Miriam, now 18, suffered serious after-effects but the cancer is "under control" and she "is moving forward and wants to turn the page", her mother said.

But they are still waiting for the territory to be cleaned up and for compensation "to help other families", with Moccia saying she received no help except from family and friends.

The ECHR on Thursday reserved a decision on potential compensation.

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 not until 2013 that the government adopted a decree-law officially defining the "Land of Fires".

The court said Italy's response in assessing the impact of pollution, which affected the air, water and soil, had been "glacial".

It gave Rome two years to draw up a "comprehensive strategy" to deal with the situation, to set up an independent monitoring mechanism and a public information platform.

A lawyer for the plaintiffs, Antonella Mascia, said it was an "historic verdict, extremely important".

"It urges (Italy) to resolve this enormous problem, which affects not only our clients but everyone who lives there," she told AFP.

For decades, industrial waste -- often from northern Italy -- was burned in the open air in the 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 everything from broken sheets of asbestos to car tyres and containers of industrial-strength glue.

Maurizio Patriciello, the parish priest of Caivano who has campaigned for years on the issue, said the ruling was an answer to "the deniers, the ignorant, the complicit, the corrupt" who threatened and derided residents who raised concerns.

In a post on Faceboook, he recalled all the victims, including two of his brothers, his sister-in-law and his nephew, and "the many many children, young people, young parents who cancer has ripped apart and killed".

Years after the issue was made public, mounds of rubbish still lie near waterways, along roads, and in fields where sheep and goats graze.

Alessandro Cannavacciuolo, another of the plaintiffs, told AFP this week how he first knew something was wrong when his sheep in the early 2000s birthed "deformed lambs, with two heads, two tongues, tails on the side".

"We no longer had lambs, but real monsters," he said.

As his friends and relatives also fell sick, Cannavacciuolo became an activist, finding and reporting illegal dump sites -- at great personal risk.

"We are at war. Anyone who raises their voice, anyone who points out these criminal activities, is threatened," he said.

"Our cars have been shot at, our animals have been killed, we have received threatening letters," he added.

Since 2013, a host of parliamentary inquiries has found the authorities negligent and in some cases complicit.

They have also highlighted the health fallout, including an increase in cases of cancer and foetal and neonatal malformations.

In 2018, the Senate said mobster criminality and political inaction had caused an ecological disaster.

Pina Picierno, a vice-president of the European Parliament for the centre-left Democratic Party, said the ECHR ruling was "unequivocal" and Italy's government must now act.

"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.