Children playing in front of tailings, waste material left after mineral is extracted from its ore, at the Zmajevo settlement near the village of Krivelj, Serbia. Krivelj’s landscape is scarred by piles of mine waste and cracked houses from tremors of underground explosions. — Reuters
BEFORE dawn, 78-year-old Vukosava Radivojevic prepares breakfast for her husband then walks into her village in eastern Serbia to guard a barricade stopping trucks entering an open-pit copper mine that residents say is contaminating local land and water.
Radivojevic is one of two dozen women who since January has taken shifts day and night on a small bridge in Krivelj to protest against the mine, run by a subsidiary of China’s Zijin Mining, that dominates the surrounding countryside and encroaches on their homes.
