MAIN EVENT. A Good Place to Get Started --- a.k.a "Table of Contents"

FISHERS OF BOMBS

by Elena Romanato

To read this article in Deutsch, Francaise, Italiano, Portuguese, Espanol, copy and paste the complete URL("http://www.g21.net/do86.htm") and enter it in the box after you click through.

It was the night of 4 November, 1994. One of the usual nights when fishermen of the fishing boat "Francesco Padre" left the port of Molfetta ( near Bari). All of them hoped to catch a lot of high-quality fish to sell the best Italian restaurant on the coast. The fishermen's skins were burnished by the sun; at home their wives, sons and daughters were quietly sleeping. The fishing net was heavy that night. As they pulled the heavy net onto the boat nobody realized what was in that fishing net. Between the anchovies and prawns there was a bomb, a "gift" from the Bosnian war that killed five of them.

The first days of May, 1999: nothing's changed. Another war is causing a bloodbath in Yugoslavia and Adriatic sea is again full of bombs dropped by NATO planes that have technical problems during flights and must lighten their loads. This year there aren't any dead men yet, only three wounded fishermen from the boat called "Profeta."

The Profeta left Chioggia's port (near Venezia) every night at 3:15 going to the open sea. When they were in the open sea, the 45 fishermen cast their nets.

Immediately they felt fishing net grow heavy.

"Go! Pull up the net!" one of them exclaimed.

But when they pulled the fishing net onto the boat they found something more than fish. They found a bomb that wounded three of them.

Italian fishermen having been fishing bombs [out of the Adriatic Sea] since [the] first days of May but nobody knew where [the] bombs came from or who had [dumped them] .. in the Adriatic. Some claimed that [the] bombs [were from ] .. the second world war.

"It's a lie!" - says a fisherman of Chioggioa - "We saw the old bombs and [they] are rusty and [covered with] seaweeds. Bombs we fished some days ago are new and polished."

It's [now] clear that [these new "catches"] are bombs dropped by [the] NATO fighter-bombers that leave Aviano airbase going to Serbia and Kosovo. The bombs that planes [dump] in the sea when they are in [weight] difficulty.

For some days it was all a mystery. Only [recently], under pressure [from the] Italian Government, after fishermen's requests for explanations and [much] polemical protesting has .. NATO a admitted that these are bombs from [NATO war] planes.

But NATO doesn't give clear explanations because, it says, the particulars of the dumping in the Adriatic are "a military secret."

The only clear thing is that there are hundreds of bombs in the Adriatic Sea. They are [believed to include] CBU 87 cluster bombs, Guided Bombs Unit 10 (the most clever bombs in the world -- they only [lack] the gift of speech!) and Mk 84s.

The 20th of May: polemics go on. Italian Minister of the Environment, Edo Ronchi deplores that " for the recovery of bombs dropped in the sea, as already reported by my offices, we don't still have necessary information about type of bombs, nor how many bombs are in the sea nor the date bombs were dropped."

All these are necessary [particulars of] information for finding and defusing the bombs [and potentially] avoiding other occurrences of explosions and deaths.

Lately NATO (and some Italian politicians now admit [having been] informed of these facts in the past) says that since 1992 there [have been] marked zones of the Adriatic Sea where NATO planes can drop payloads that compromise flight or landings.

[So now we have a reported] 6,689 Italian fishermen [who] don't want to go [out to] the open sea and prefer fishing near the coast. If they want high quality fish they have to go to the open sea [knowing that they are] risking their lives. And, while politicians talk about peace , new agreements and diplomacy, Adriatic fishermen [watching] a NATO bomber take off and fly above their heads, they wonder if [any of this effort] has [been] really worth while.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Since Ms. Romanato filed this report, the G21 has learned that the Italian government has set aside $6 million as reparations for lost revenues by the protesting Adriatic fisherman.]


ELENA ROMANATO was born in 1967 (Savona, Italy). She's married and a graduate of IULM University in Milan with a degree in Public Relations. She later received her degree in Political Science from La Statale University in Milan. Ms. Romanato is a journalist and writes for Italian magazines about television, media communications and information technology

This is Ms. Romanato's first article for The World's Magazine.

Translation from the Italian was assisted by Logan Bentley Lessona, Editor, Made in Italy Online.

| THE PREVIOUS DAY ONE | THE TANDEM DAY ONE(from the Slovakia) | The NEXT DAY ONE |