Dark truth behind Sardinia’s holiday oasis
IT’S one of the most beautiful islands in Europe, a popular holiday destination for the likes of Catherine Zeta Jones, Gwyneth Paltrow and Leonardo DiCaprio and the setting for Hollywood movies.
Yet Sardinia’s golden sand has been chosen as a prime location for manufacturing plants and military testing grounds, and this secluded paradise is becoming a no-go zone.
Islanders say international armies and major corporations have polluted the water and air with chemicals that are giving people cancer. Much of the coastline is now inaccessible, making Sardinia a less and less attractive destination for tourism — its biggest industry.
Anthropologist Lisa Camillo, who has a Sardinian mother and Australian father, had lived in Sydney for 15 years when she decided to return to her home country and find out what was happening. She was horrified at what she saw.
“It was paradise, this incredible landscape, with clear water better than the Caribbean and amazing food,” she told news.com.au “Now the Italian government are pushing what they don’t want into Sardinian territory.
“I want this to stop, I want my island back, I want my people to have a right to health and wellbeing.”
Lisa is in the process of editing a documentary on her island called Balentes(meaning “man of valour”), and has so far crowdfunded $22,000 of the $180,000 she wants to make sure the film is seen by the world. “Why are we the dumping ground of Europe?” she asks. “It’s stopping the economy, tourism ... my dad’s a sailor but he can’t circumnavigate the island for most of the year.”
This autonomous region of Italy has long been seen as “land to exploit”, claims Lisa. It was dubbed “Rome’s bakery” when it was used to grow crops hundreds of years ago, and later endured major deforestation to build Italy’s railways.
The second biggest island in the Mediterranean after Sicily, Sardinia became a popular site for multinational companies several decades ago, with Glencore operating a lead and zinc smelter there and mining companies moving over from mainland Europe. The US navy had a submarine base in the archipelago until 2008, the Israeli army took part in training exercises there and NATO recently held its “biggest exercise since 2002” in the ecologically diverse spot.
Bombs are now tested in Sardinia, and weapons manufactured in gigantic plants. Lisa claims it’s making people sick, with microparticles of metals and chemical waste polluting the water supply or being buried in the ground. Her confronting film meets parents who have lost their sons to cancer after they served as soldiers in Sardinia, and the scientists who blame the polluting armies and big business.
“This is happening in places of great conflict, like Kosovo,” says Lisa. “We didn’t have a war in Sardinia.”
The population of 1.5 million is already depleting as young people like Lisa struggle to find work, and experts say it could fall to just one million within ten years if Sardinia continues down its current path. Long stretches of the northern coast have been bought by Qataris, while
Michael Harte, chief information officer for the Commonwealth Bank, purchased the nearby coral island of Budelli at auction in 2013.
“We have been colonised,” says Lisa. “The military exercises sound like thunder, they are poisoning the island. The US has Area 51, it’s in the middle of nowhere, miles and miles from anything, so it’s hard to damage people. This has to stop.”
Increasingly, Sardinians are protesting to win back control of their island, fighting for representation in Italy’s parliament and attracting the interest of international supporters. Australian artist Jason Benjamin spent weeks there painting the people who appear in Lisa’s film, with an exhibition planned for March 2016 at the Australian Institute of Architects in Sydney.
A once-pristine land has been abandoned and its people are suffering. Time is running out to restore Sardinia to its former glory as the jewel in the crown of the Mediterranean Sea.
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