Italy - Toxic Secret
15 min 49 sec [19 May 2014]
Almost 2,000 years after the destruction of Pompeii, those
living in the foothills of Mount Vesuvius face another disaster
- but this apocalyptic threat is entirely man-made.
ENZO TOSTI, ACTIVIST
(Translation): Here we have the smouldering ground caused by
self- combusting toxic waste buried underneath.
And this is only one of hundreds of
sites.
There are fierce that up to 20
million tonnes of toxic waste have been dumped illegally around
Naples - an area now known as the 'Triangle of death'.
ENZO TOSTI (Translation):
Basically, in this area they dumped industrial waste,
including chemical waste, and this is the proof. The ground
is smoldering with unnatural fumes.
With poisonous fumes seeping from
the soil, lethal contamination continues to spread through the
maze of farms and aquifers surrounding Italy's third-largest
city.
ENZO TOSTI (Translation): This
water is filled with poisons from the waste we're standing
on. This water you can see here feeds the wells that serve
all these surrounding fields.
The effects have been devastating.
Toxins have found their way into the
food chain, triggering a massive upsurge in cancer rates - with
children forming the majority of the victims. Last year,
8-year-old Francesco died from bone cancer.
Doctors blame the disease on toxic
waste. In the suburbs of Naples, Francesco suffered for more
than two years as the cancer spread from his leg to his lungs.
ANTONELLA DE CRESCENZO
(Translation): We used to tell him we had to take care of
his leg because of a pulled muscle. He was tired and that
was it. But he knew nothing about the lung and never got to
hear the word 'chemotherapy'. Now I'll show you Francesco's
room. This is Francesco's room. As you can see, he was fond
of Cars, Dragonball. These are his toys. He used to sit on
the floor. I see him here. To me he's here, He's alive, he's
present. Always.
Eight months after Francesco's
death, Antonella wants justice for her son.
ANTONELLA DE CRESCENZO
(Translation): For me, it is a matter of justice. They must
pay. Those who did all this have to pay.
Francesco's parents are not alone in
their search for answers.
FATHER PATRICIELLO
(Translation): Look at the faces of these women, they are
just so… these women's faces are stricken, destroyed by
grief.
In his parish church, Father
Patriciello shows me photo after photo of women and children,
members of his church, who have become the face of a public
campaign for justice.
FATHER PATRICIELLO
(Translation): These are some of the postcards we've printed
to send to the president and to the Holy Father, Francis.
These mothers have become our brave mothers, telling people
about their pain, and fighting against others apathy;
they're criticized for going public with their pain, but
their motives are noble and we stand by them.
Cancer expert, Dr Antonio Marfella,
says childhood cancers in this region of Italy are now double
that of the rest of the country - a result he attributes to
toxic waste contaminating local produce and finding its way from
mother to child.
DR ANTONIO MARFELLA, ONCOLOGIST
(Translation): The carcinogenic, mutagenic damage in the
majority of those cases pre-dates the pregnancy and affects
mainly, but not solely, the mothers' genetic material.
With the link between toxic waste
and cancer being accepted by doctors, blame is now being
directed at Italy's notorious Mafia.
With stunning revelations about one
of the mob's multibillion-dollar scams - it is the Mafia's
control of Italy's waste disposal industry that has proven not
only to be its most lucrative racket yet, but also its
deadliest.
Now, after decades of public
officials looking the other way, Italy faces a toxic waste
crisis that threatens of health of generations to come.
With a health crisis looming, the Mafia boss responsible for
burying Italy's toxic waste has taken an extraordinary step -
with a contract on his head, he has come out of hiding to
publicly warn Italians of the dire threat they face.
CARMINE SCHIAVONE, FORMER MAFIA
BOSS (Translation): I was the boss of Cosa Nostra Campana
for the Casalesi clan. So I was in charge... of a vast
empire of investments. The clan pulled in around 10 billion
lire a month
Carmine Schiavone was once one of
the most powerful Mafia figures in Italy, when he and his mob
friends began turning the Campania region into the garbage tip
of Europe.
He was dripping with money - but
Schiavone says that eventually his conscience got the better of
him.
CARMINE SCHIAVONE (Translation):
Because they'd say to me "You're an old man of honor. We do
it for the money." I'd say "You're not men, you're a bunch
of arseholes. It's not about being an old man of honor. It's
about people's survival, unborn children who won't be born
because of you."
Disgusted at what he was doing, he
betrayed his clan and turned police informant on the Mafia's
toxic dumps. But Schiavone was astonished that his key health
warnings were never passed on to the people of Italy.
What is even more curious is that
the testimony he gave investigators has been declared a state
secret - not to be released until 2050 - an attempt, according
to the former Mafia boss, to conceal the government's
involvement in the toxic trade.
CARMINE SCHIAVONE (Translation):
They're the criminals, those people at high levels of
politics and public service. Why don't they show regret, and
start talking once and for all? Because they can't and they
don't want to.
DR ANTONIO MARFELLA (Translation): The fact that the State
has been fully aware of what was going on since 1980 and
that to this day, in 2013, we still have no data or a
regular, efficient and robust of the epidemiological and
toxicological effects on the land, I see as equivalent to a
confession of complicity.
CARMINE SCHIAVONE (Translation): In here are some of my
files. These here, see?
During his time with the mob,
Schiavone claims to have shelled out millions to corrupt
officials - and the detailed lists he has kept contain the names
of a throng of Italian judges, magistrates and politicians who
were paid for their silence.
CARMINE SCHIAVONE (Translation):
I had to collect these in order to stay alive because if
they kill me in an accident or with strychnine or poison my
coffee, I've photocopied them all and given them to foreign
journalists. And they'd kick up a huge fuss about it. They'd
say "This is why you killed him."
Dateline asked the Italian
government for a detailed response to the claims raised in our
report - but they declined our request to comment on any
specific allegations. But those who have lost loved ones have
plenty to say.
IMMA NASI (Translation):
Schiavone is talking, he's making statements, he's going on
television and I should thank him? I can't thank him because
he's still responsible for my daughter's murder.
Four-year-old Mesia is another
victim of Naples' toxic dumps.
IMMA NASI (Translation): She was
a healthy child, happy and carefree - a cheerful child. She
liked to play and she had every right to play and live a
carefree life. It is unacceptable that a parent should lose
a child. I mean, accidents can happen but for a child who
was born healthy to get cancer, of course it makes you
angry.
CARMINE SCHIAVONE (Translation): I'm not responsible because
I tried to stop this destruction. But I also say that I'm
morally responsible, because I was a Mafioso, and I regret
that.
And Schiavone has one more
revelation - the biggest of them all. Astonishingly, he claims
that radioactive waste was systematically dumped into Italy's
ocean - and it happened on an industrial scale.
Recently, claims have surfaced that
over 100 ships and barges, laden with radioactive waste, were
sunk along the Italian coast, including here, near the Isle of
Capri.
CARMINE SCHIAVONE (Translation):
Those cases were contained inside a cement sarcophagus and
those clapped-out old boats were regularly scuttled.
This video was shot by an
environmental group investigating suspicious wrecks along the
coast.
CARMINE SCHIAVONE (Translation):
Some of the ships that sank off the Tyrrhenian coast were
even carrying tonnes and tonnes of nuclear red mercury.
They're still underwater, but with the wrong coordinates,
because the captains who sank the ships would give the wrong
coordinates and pocket the insurance.
These deeply troubling claims have
also been declared a state secret. Though police investigations
into toxic land dumps are now giving credence to the former
Mafia boss's story.
GENERAL SERGIO COSTA,
ENVIRONMENTAL POLICE (Translation): This is the territory of
Campania region which is managed by this control room…
Ethics and morality simply don't come into it. They're not
interested in them. They're people without a soul. That's
the reality of it. These people have no soul.
General Sergio Costa is leading the
largest investigation in Italian history. Police are scouring
Campania's countryside for illegal dump sites and signs of
contamination. We are hovering over one of the dumps uncovered
by the police.
POLICE (Translation): We are
here, we have dug down to 18 meters here. That is an
asbestos dump.
With the entire region in the grip
of panic about toxic dumps and contamination of the food chain,
scientists are joining the police in a high-tech battle against
the Mafia. Drones are also being deployed, using thermal imaging
to identify dump sites and to track the toxins that flow from
them.
CAPTAIN MARCO BIONDI, POLICE
(Translation): It's used for various activities - not only
for environmental investigations - flying over dumps,
checking water flow and seeing where it leaks into canals -
but also for criminal investigations.
GENERAL SERGIO COSTA (Translation): Each one of us is feels
a father or a mother of those kids who are not here anymore.
We can feel it, we can share the suffering of these mums as
much as is humanly possible.
For Father Patriciello's
congregation, ravaged by the loss of its children, Sunday mass
is an opportunity for healing.
FATHER PATRICIELLO
(Translation): Let us raise our hands to heaven and together
with children all over the world, let us pray. Our father
who art in heaven…
While he preaches peace, Father
Patriciello is preparing his flock for a fight - to help them
reclaim their land and their lives from the criminal clans that
have terrorized the community for so long.
FATHER PATRICIELLO
(Translation): The Camorra has allowed the destruction of
the land and its people. They've done us a huge disservice.
We feel their stinking breath on our necks every day. We
don't want to leave our land because of the rubbish. We
don't want to leave our land, Umberto says, we want to live
on our land.
Father Patriciello believes that the
tide may finally be turning against the Mafia. But so much has
already been lost here - pristine land polluted, young lives
destroyed.
FATHER PATRICIELLO
(Translation): Our forefathers left us this beautiful land,
the world's best and most fertile. Within 30 years we
destroyed it and that hurts very deeply. God in his mercy
may forgive the men responsible but history can never
forgive us.
ANJALI RAO: Although the Italian government didn't respond
to the specific allegations in Nick's report, you can go to
our website for more information they have provided about
their investigation into pollution near Naples. That is at
sbs.com.au/dateline.
And who says crime doesn't pay -
last week a leading Italian think-tank estimated that the Mafia
earns a staggering $193 billion every year. That's more than the
annual budget of the European Union.
