In the eight years since Chinese company HBIS bought a steel mill near the eastern Serbian city of Smederevo, locals say they have been plagued by heavy air pollution and thick red dust.
“There are times of the day when breathing normally is impossible,” said Zvezdan Veljkovic, from the village of Radinac, where the mill is based.
Radinac has become known as “red village,” because everything is permanently coated in a layer of red dust.
Photo: AP
Locals say cancer cases have rocketed and that the dust contains high levels of arsenic, chromium and lead.
Dragana Milic said that her grandchildren do not like coming to visit her anymore.
“They won’t play outside,” she said.
HBIS — one of the world’s largest steel producers — bought the mill in 2016 in a high-profile deal marked by a visit from Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), on his last official trip to Serbia.
Xi arrived in Serbia on Tuesday on another official visit, one of only three countries he is flying into on his first European trip since the COVID-19 pandemic.
China has invested billions in Serbia and neighboring Balkan countries in the past few years, with Beijing and Belgrade signing a free-trade agreement last year.
However, locals around Smederevo blame Chinese investment for the increased pollution.
In the three villages near the mill, residents said that they have experienced throat irritation, unpleasant smells and continual soot coating their houses, clothes and bodies.
The only thing villagers can do to protect themselves is to stay indoors, Milic said.
The Serbian Environmental Protection Agency has ranked Smederevo repeatedly among the country’s most polluted cities, classified as having “excessively polluted air.”
Nikola Krstic, an advocate at non-governmental organization Tvrdjava (“Fortress”), said pollution has soared since the Chinese takeover.
“We don’t know the reason why ... whether it’s high production, technology failure, lack of maintenance or non-compliance,” he said.
Tvrdjava carried out an analysis of the dust produced by the factory in 2021, together with scientific group the National Environmental Association.
The analysis found high concentrations of heavy metals including arsenic, chromium and lead, which the report said are among “the most toxic and carcinogenic metals when present in ambient air.”
HBIS “have saved this steel mill in economic terms, but in environmental terms they have caused great damage to this city,” Krstic said.
Data from the state-run Smederevo Health Centre found a fourfold increase in cancer cases between 2011 and 2019, which advocates believe is due to increased pollution.
The group filed a criminal complaint against the company in Smederevo, but it was rejected on the basis of lack of evidence. They now plan to take their case to the European Court of Human Rights.
The steel mill employs about 5,000 people, with thousands more employed indirectly.
Once a state-owned enterprise, it was privatized in 2003 and sold to US Steel, but the American corporation pulled out in 2012 after a steel market crash, and the Serbian government bought it back for US$1.
In April 2016, the plant was sold for 46 million euros (US$49.4 million at the current exchange rate) to China’s HBIS, heralded as a sign of the “friendship” between the two countries.
Chinese-owned companies were among Serbia’s top three exporters last year — including HBIS, whose exports topped 549 million euros.
Serbian Minister of Internal and Foreign Trade Tomislav Momirovic told Radio Television of Serbia that “no other country in the region or Europe” enjoys a similar level of cooperation with China.
Smederevo is one of several big investments by Chinese companies in Serbia, including a US$3.8 billion investment by Chinese state-owned company Zijin Mining near the eastern city of Bor. Stefan Vladisavljev, program director of the Foundation BFPE for a Responsible Society, said claims Chinese investment “saved” Serbia are “exaggerated.”
“What is true is that Chinese companies were willing to take over the management and ownership of certain industrial systems for which Serbia had no other solution,” he said.
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