Portrait
of Roksanda Tasic, she lives in a poor neighborhood of Bor, approx.
5-10 minutes from the city centre of Bor. Roksanda lives in a small
house with a lot cracks in the walls of the house, which she says is
from the explosions of the mining.

The ‘Jama’ mine is the
closest to the city centre of Bor, where it should be possible to get it
from an angle where you can get both the city and the enormous mine in a
picture.

In 2018 the Chinese company Zijin Mining bought the
state-owned mining company in Bor and its mines. And also another mine
in a village nearby, Metovnica. Ever since that, production has gone up
and locals are now complaining about their land getting expropriated,
cracks in their houses because of explosions from the mine, and
pollution in general.

Serbia is a country that politically
juggles between East and West – it’s nominally on EU path but lately has
started to court a number of Chinese investors who are interested in
outsourcing dirty industries from the Asian giant. Serbia is a
convenient partner because its proximity to the EU gives easy access to
European market, but also due to the country’s willingness to make deals
labelled as state secret, where the investors don’t have to disclose
any details on the deal.
Most of those investments have stirred fears
for potential environmental impact, because in recent years Chinese
investors have taken over Serbia’s steelworks, a number of copper and
other mines and started building a tyremega factory.