Portrait
of Roksanda Tasic, she lives in a poor neighborhood of Bor, approx.
5-10 minutes from the city centre of Bor. Roksanda lives in a small
house with a lot cracks in the walls of the house, which she says is
from the explosions of the mining.

The ‘Jama’ mine is the
closest to the city centre of Bor, where it should be possible to get it
from an angle where you can get both the city and the enormous mine in a
picture.

In 2018 the Chinese company Zijin Mining bought the
state-owned mining company in Bor and its mines. And also another mine
in a village nearby, Metovnica. Ever since that, production has gone up
and locals are now complaining about their land getting expropriated,
cracks in their houses because of explosions from the mine, and
pollution in general.

Serbia is a country that politically
juggles between East and West – it’s nominally on EU path but lately has
started to court a number of Chinese investors who are interested in
outsourcing dirty industries from the Asian giant. Serbia is a
convenient partner because its proximity to the EU gives easy access to
European market, but also due to the country’s willingness to make deals
labelled as state secret, where the investors don’t have to disclose
any details on the deal.
Most of those investments have stirred fears
for potential environmental impact, because in recent years Chinese
investors have taken over Serbia’s steelworks, a number of copper and
other mines and started building a tyremega factory.

Portrait of Milos Savic,
In the story, we visit Savic at his home in a more poor neighborhood
of Bor, approx. 5-10 minutes from the city centre of Bor. He lives in a
small house with a lot cracks in the walls of the house, which he says
is from the explosions of the mining.
He lives about 50 meters from the mining pit of the ‘Jama’ mine in the city of Bor.

The
‘Jama’ mine is the closest to the city centre of Bor, where it should
be possible to get it from an angle where you can get both the city and
the enormous mine in a picture.

In 2018 the Chinese company Zijin
Mining bought the state-owned mining company in Bor and its mines. And
also another mine in a village nearby, Metovnica. Ever since that,
production has gone up and locals are now complaining about their land
getting expropriated, cracks in their houses because of explosions from
the mine, and pollution in general.

Serbia is a country that
politically juggles between East and West – it’s nominally on EU path
but lately has started to court a number of Chinese investors who are
interested in outsourcing dirty industries from the Asian giant. Serbia
is a convenient partner because its proximity to the EU gives easy
access to European market, but also due to the country’s willingness to
make deals labelled as state secret, where the investors don’t have to
disclose any details on the deal.
Most of those investments have
stirred fears for potential environmental impact, because in recent
years Chinese investors have taken over Serbia’s steelworks, a number of
copper and other mines and started building a tyremega factory.

For @informationdk

From my ongoing work about “Ecocide”

A
red village. This is how Radinac – a village about a 15-minute drive
away from the center of Smederevo – can be described in three words. The
walls of houses, air conditioning units, antennas, lamp posts –
everything that was once white is now a copper, dark red color. And not
by the will of the inhabitants – the Železara Smederevo steel mill gets
the “credit” for the village’s appearance.

According to data from
the Smederevo public health body, which a watchdog called Tvrdjava
obtained through a freedom of information request, the municipality of
around 100,000 people reported 6,866 cancer cases in 2019, up from 1,738
in 2011.
The plant says it has invested 300 million euros in
technology and pollution reduction since China’s biggest steelmaker,
Hesteel, bought it from the Serbian state for 46 million euros ($53
million).