Paul Polansky is an American author and activist working for the rights of the Roma people in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. He has also lived with Roma for the past ten years in Eastern Europe, collecting their oral histories and writing several books about their lives in the Czech republic and Kosovo, Serbia, and Macedonia. Today he heads the Kosovo Roma Refugee Foundation (KRRF), an NGO working with the afflicted residents of the UN Camps in north Kosovo

Roma in Mitrovica Camps

About 500-700 Roma people currently live in three UN-created refugee camps in Kosovska Mitrovica, Kosovo. The camps are based around disused heavy metals mines which have fallen out of use since the end of the Kosovo War of 1999...

. From July 1999 until September 2009 he was head of mission for the Society for Threatened Peoples

Society for Threatened Peoples

Society for Threatened Peoples is an international NGO and human rights organization based in Göttingen, Germany. It seeks to create awareness of and protect minority peoples around the world who are threatened by oppressive governments. The group states on its website that it "campaigns against...

 in Kosovo and Serbia. On December 10, 2004, the City Council

City council

A city council or town council is the legislative body that governs a city, town, municipality or local government area.-Australia & NZ:Because of the differences in legislation between the States, the exact definition of a City Council varies...

 of Weimar

Weimar

Weimar is a city in Germany famous for its cultural heritage. It is located in the federal state of Thuringia , north of the Thüringer Wald, east of Erfurt, and southwest of Halle and Leipzig. Its current population is approximately 65,000. The oldest record of the city dates from the year 899...

 awarded its "Human Rights Award" to Polansky.

Author

Polansky has published twenty-seven books, including eighteen books of poetry, and a number of non-fiction books including UN-Leaded Blood, which denounces described the inaction of UNMIK, as many children died from lead poisoning in the UN camps in north Kosovo.

Film

Polansky produced a documentary film, Gypsy Blood, which won best informative film at the 2005 Golden Wheel International Film Festival in Skopje

Skopje

Skopje is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Macedonia with about a third of the total population. It is the country's political, cultural, economic, and academic centre...

, Republic of Macedonia

Republic of Macedonia

Macedonia , officially the Republic of Macedonia , is a country located in the central Balkan peninsula in Southeast Europe. It is one of the successor states of the former Yugoslavia, from which it declared independence in 1991...

.

Polansky was closely involved in a further exposé of inaction regarding the continuing lead poisoning of Roma in north Mitrovica. Dateline's UN's Toxic Shame by Amos Roberts, a scathing review of the UN's inaction on this scandal, aired in Australia on 26th April 2009.

External links

• "Toxic camp angers Kosovo Roma" BBC website 2005
• "Kosovo's poisoned generation" BBC website 2009
• Official Website
• Ocarthaigh, Thomas (July 30, 2008)."Paul Polansky and the Kosovo Roma." The Telegraph. Accessed September 2011.