Ban Nuclear Weapons, Stand up for Victims and Survivors

1945    Hiroshima    Nagasaki    2015

Under the shattered structures amidst the excruciating flames.
Parent left child, child left parent,
husband left wife, wife left husband.

Nowhere to escape to.
Figures fleeing in all directions.
This was the Atomic Bomb.

In the midst of this, how eerie--
Mothers' loving arms shielding their babies from death, dying themselves.
There were oh! so many.

From “Mother and Child”, 11th of The Hiroshima Panels by Maruki Iri and Toshi
http://www.aya.or.jp/~marukimsn/gen/gen11e.html

Last week I encourage everyone: dig into Banning nuclear weapons: principles and elements for a legally binding instrument -- by Reaching Critical Will -- and find ways to share elements you find particularly salient.

In my study of this document, one of the first things that caught my eye was two sections stressing the responsibility to victims of nuclear injury:

The treaty should recognise the rights of victims and survivors of nuclear weapons, and acknowledge the disproportionate and ongoing impact of the testing and development of nuclear testing on indigenous communities. (p. 10 - section on Principles and objectives - Human rights principles)

The treaty should recognise that victims and survivors of the use and testing of nuclear weapons have rights, as articulated in the development of international human rights law and other instruments prohibiting inhumane weapons, such as the treaties banning cluster munitions and antipersonnel landmines. (p. 19 - section on Positive obligations - Recognition of rights)

This reminds me of the extensive discussion of these issues at the World Nuclear Victims Forum, which I attended in Hiroshima in November, 2015. That gathering emphasized for me the centrality of people to the problem of nuclear weapons, and the fact that there are people throughout the world who have been injured by nuclear weapons and other aspects of radiation. It led me to ask: What does it mean to say, "We are ALL 'hibakusha'?"

from Hiroshima No Pika

This also reminds me -- particularly during this season of Lent, and with the approach of Good Friday -- of a ceremony we carried out in Chicago two years ago: Good Friday 2015: People Will Find the Way to Eliminate Nuclear Injury.

Everything in us wants to avert our gaze and act like none of this has happened . . . and/or that there's nothing we can do about it. And that's exactly why it's important that the issue of victims and survivors of the use and testing of nuclear weapons is central to this document.


I encourage everyone to read in full the sections of Banning nuclear weapons: principles and elements for a legally binding instrument I've referenced here, as well as the rest of the document.


More notes at: REQUIRED READING: "Banning nuclear weapons" from Reaching Critical Will


Please share this post . . . .

CHERNOBYL: Nuclear Energy - the door to . . . what?

Abandoned classroom, Pryp’yat, Ukraine
(Source: Britannica.com)

The Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster occurred thirty years ago -- April 26, 1986.

A series of images in today's New York Times invite people to remember and think about that event. It is particularly important at a moment when we are realizing that we cannot continue to rely on fossil fuels, and some people are pushing for reliance on nuclear energy.

You only need to search "Chernobyl" on Google images to find hundreds of images of what's left of Chernobyl, like the one at left.

How bad? The memorial to Chernobyl liquidators
in Moscow hints at the degree of devastation.

Most people have no real sense of the scale of the Chernobyl disaster -- the deaths and illnesses, the degree of contamination, the size of the no-man's land left behind.

Last year, the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded for a book that provides first-hand accounts of the Chernobyl disaster.

Read this overview of Voices from Chernobyl to learn what happened, and why.

My Ten Favorite "Scarry Thoughts" Blog Posts from 2015

Some of the blog posts I'm happiest about aren't necessarily the ones that get viewed the most.

These twelve made my 2015.


January

I never quite understood how much of a Chicago story the Bomb and opposition to it really is. I can think of at least three reasons why people right here in Chicago -- today -- need to make themselves heard about nuclear disarmament . . .

(See Unfinished Business in Chicago (Nuclear disarmament, that is))










February

Far more important than the historic performance of fossil fuel stocks is the future correlation of fossil fuel stocks to generalized, systemic risk in the market, and their negative correlation to the few sectors of the market that stand apart from that risk.

(See The Feel-Good Folly of Fossil-Fuel Valuation )




March

What I'm feeling particularly energized about is the potential for the thousands of people who have already signed on as supporters of World Beyond War -- as well as millions more who are expected to do so soon -- to become active participants in spreading this good news.

(See News Worth Spreading: "There IS An Alternative to War!" )



April

Can there be any more clear illustration than the one at left to remind us that the work of the Church is liberation?

(See Christian "Church"? How about Christian "Liberation Organization"? )









May

"Once the boat went to full pressure, there was really no other option."

(See In Whose Machine Will YOU Be a Cog? )







June

It will be the 2016 presidential election that will provide the main form of entertainment and distraction to the U.S. populace between now an the end of next year. An enormous amount of political fluff will fill our lives -- pushing aside, I suppose, vast amounts of sports fluff and shopping fluff and celebrity fluff and -- well, you get the point.

(See What Will Dominate Election 2016? (ANSWER: ISIS and #BlackLivesMatter) )








July

It has required years and years of reflection to sort out the good and bad aspects and conclude that the diplomatic and commercial opening of China was part of a massive move away from conflict and toward peace.

(See THE EYES AND EARS OF HISTORY: A Perspective on the Iran Deal)








August

You might think that each person is just another face in the crowd, but if you look closely, they're all carefully drawn to depict an individual, and it's all these individuals working together that is going to stop Japan's return to militarization and war.

(See People Power Against War in Japan: A Lesson for Us All? )



September

Yesterday was the UN International Day of Peace. The day nudged me to think about what -- if anything -- I feel I really know about peace and the movement for peace. Here are 10 things that are true for me . . . .

(See #PeaceDay 2015 - Ten Thoughts on Peace)







October

As I walked home from today's service, I replayed the service in my mind. "The part about the visitor card was pretty good . . . " I thought, "and yet . . . visitor card . . . ? Maybe it's not really a visitor card . . . . Maybe what we should be calling them is participant cards."

(See Being Church in Logan Square, Chicago: An Ecclesiophilic Reflection )




November

"A terrible disease has struck the area . . . people call it the 'flu' . . . many in our own community have fallen to it . . . including someone very dear to you, someone in your own family . . . I'm talking about your sister, Margaret."

(See November 11, 1918: Another Veteran for Peace )













December

Hibakusha is a word that has traditionally been used to refer to people affected by the nuclear blasts in Hiroshima and Nagaski.  It is now being broadened to recognize the many additional victims of acute affects of nuclear radiation (including fallout from tests and radioactivity from mining and processing). In fact, we are all subject to the impact and threat of nuclear radiation spread indiscriminately by nations and corporations.

(See HIROSHIMA: What does it mean to say, "We are ALL 'hibakusha'?")






To be continued . . . . 

Want #NoNukes in 2016? TAKE ACTION!

A Ban on Nuclear Weapons
(Read statements of 120+ countries supporting.)

Following the the World Nuclear Victims Forum in Hiroshima (WNVF) I have written a lot about the many places in the world that people have been harmed, and continue to be harmed, and are likely to be harmed more in the future, by nuclear radiation.

But even more important is to tell people about the progress being made to stop nuclear weapons, and to urge everyone to take action.

Tonight is the State of the Union address in the US.  Despite the hopes of many, President Obama seems to have forgotten his call for the elimination of nuclear weapons.  The good news is that a bill is in Congress to eliminate US nuclear weapons and convert the money and resources to safe, renewable energy. YOU can help by joining with thousands of other activists and getting your member of Congress to become a co-sponsor of "The Nuclear Weapons Abolition and Economic and Energy Conversion Act."

The movement to eliminate nuclear weapons from the UK
has grown in success through the courage of thousands
in taking to the streets and putting their bodies on the line.
(What are you prepared to do?)

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, the movement to get nuclear weapons out of the UK is coming to a head. For years, dedicated activists have built a consensus to get Trident nuclear submarines out of Scotland -- and effectively out of the UK. A powerful bloc in Parliament, led by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, is pressing hard on this issue. YOU can help by participating in the Mirror UK poll saying you support eliminating Trident.

(UPDATE February 23, 2016: On February 27 ... Jeremy Corbyn 'to address 50,000 in biggest anti-nuclear demonstration for a generation'.)

Most exciting of all, a movement is underway WORLDWIDE to ban nuclear weapons. At this writing, 121 countries have joined the call for a global treaty to outlaw and eliminate nuclear weapons. You can help by sharing this information with others and meeting with your government representatives to help increase support.

Make no mistake: we face a profound challenge to overcome an Empire that threatens annihilation and has a thermonuclear monarch sitting at its head.  Most of what passes for politics is really just another layer of entertainment in a pervasive entertainment culture -- especially in 2016 in the US. But there is something new happening: the fact that you are reading this online, and can use social media to take action and encourage others to do so, too, points to the tool we can use to liberate ourselves.


TAKE ACTION:

* Use the Roots Action petition to get your member of Congress
to become a co-sponsor of HR 1976  - 
"The Nuclear Weapons Abolition and
Economic and Energy Conversion Act."

* Take a few seconds to say 
"YES - the UK should Scrap Trident!"

* Write to your foreign minister and
call for a BAN on nuclear weapons
using the easy ICAN web form.

Related posts

Hibakusha is a word that has traditionally been used to refer to people affected by the nuclear blasts in Hiroshima and Nagaski.  It is now being broadened to recognize the many additional victims of acute affects of nuclear radiation (including fallout from tests and radioactivity from mining and processing). In fact, we are all subject to the impact and threat of nuclear radiation spread indiscriminately by nations and corporations.

(See HIROSHIMA: What does it mean to say, "We are ALL 'hibakusha'?")







There are three centers of power that will impact nuclear disarmament: the President, the Congress, and the people. One of them will have to make nuclear disarmament happen.

(See Countdown to U.S. Nuclear Disarmament (With or Without the Politicians) )

The decision about whether to live with the threat of nuclear annihilation is our decision. And that is why the entire country is mobilizing for mass action for nuclear disarmament in 2015. Are we capable of making sure the messengers -- Obama, Putin, the other agents of government -- hear their instructions from us clearly?

(See NEEDED: Heroes to Bring About Nuclear Disarmament )

The Problem With Technology: Nuclear Radiation Injury and the Need to Admit Our Limitations

Jacob Peter Gowy's The Flight of Icarus.

During my time at the World Nuclear Victims Forum in Hiroshima (WNVF) I was struck again and again my the central role of technology -- or, more specifically, our failure to recognize the limits of technology -- in creating a hibakusha phenomenon that is truly global in scope.

The 20th century was the century of science and technology -- a time of belief that we can use science to solve any problem. "Everything is manageable."

The 21st century is starting to look like a century in which we say, "Knowledge, logic, ingenuity? Yes, but . . . . "

I remember the situation of the scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project in Chicago, and who thought their "expertise" would earn them the right to be heard about how the atomic bomb would be used.  (See Unfinished Business in Chicago (Nuclear disarmament, that is))

I think of the acres and acres of bags filled with contaminated soil from Fukushima. (See Radioactive Waste: "What are you gonna do with it?" )

Svetlana Alexievich's Voices From Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster is replete with examples of how people in the Soviet Union thought scientists could make anything work. There was "the cult of physics" (p. 179) and everyone said "nuclear stations . . . they're safer than samovars" (p. 87) . . . "At school and at the university we'd been taught that this was a magical factory that made 'energy out of nothing,' where people in white robes sat and pushed buttons" (p. 164)

Why did that Chernobyl break down? Some people say it was the scientists' fault. They grabbed God by the beard, and now he's laughing. But we're the ones who pay for it. (p. 78)

"The scientists had been gods, now they were fallen angels, demons even." (p. 192)


Admitting our limitations

Dr. Hiroaki Koide

Dr. Hiroaki Koide provided sobering testimony during his keynote lecture at WNVF. He said that he had sought out nuclear studies in the belief that peaceful uses of nuclear energy for power could in some way compensate for the suffering caused by its military use [i.e. in the atomic bombing of Japan]. However, he said, he realized that that hope was "a mistake" . . . . He now realizes that there are no "safe" ways to "harness" nuclear energy.

(His statement had echoes for me of my own experience as a high schooler studying "nucleonics" in New Jersey in the 1970s.)

It is one thing to embrace science -- an understanding of the true nature of reality based on experiment, observation, and deduction. At the same time, it is necessary to see the limitations of technology -- human actions informed by science.

That's why the "Declaration of the World Nuclear Victims Forum in Hiroshima (Draft Elements of a Charter of World Nuclear Victims’ Rights)" states:

Complete prevention of nuclear chain related disasters is impossible. No safe method exists for disposing of ever-increasing volumes of nuclear waste. Nuclear contamination is forever, making it utterly impossible to return the environment to its original state. Thus, we stress that the human family must abandon its use of nuclear energy. (emphasis added)

(Read the Declaration of the World Nuclear Victims Forum in Hiroshima (Draft Elements of a Charter of World Nuclear Victims’ Rights) in English | in Japanese )

The very fundamental problem that we must discuss thoughtfully with everybody is the tension between the hopefulness inspired by the many amazing things humankind can do using science, and the reality of the utter failure to control nuclear radiation.


"Knowledge, logic, ingenuity? Yes, but . . . . " It's a 21st century idea. It's also one that some have been inviting us to heed for a very, very long time.


Related posts

I never quite understood how much of a Chicago story the Bomb and opposition to it really is. I can think of at least three reasons why people right here in Chicago -- today -- need to make themselves heard about nuclear disarmament . . .

(See Unfinished Business in Chicago (Nuclear disarmament, that is))











I'm marveling at the adjacency of a piece of public art -- one with a very clear message about the risk of human ambition and self-absorption and heedlessness -- to the center of political power in the city of Chicago.

(See NUCLEAR WEAPONS: Who will bring us down to earth? )










We can now entrust all the dirty work -- including war -- to robots. (Or can we?)

(See A Modest Proposal: Debate the Drones )














Do we have a way to immerse ourselves in the experience of what the use of those nuclear weapons would really mean -- prospectively -- so that we can truly cause ourselves to confront our own inaction?

(See Stop engaging in risky behavior )

IN ORDER TO HAVE A FUTURE: We MUST Study Chernobyl . . .

Map of radiation levels in 1996 around Chernobyl
(map scale is about 300 miles across)

My participation in the World Nuclear Victims Forum in Hiroshima (WNVF) made me pay renewed attention to Chernobyl.

There is something out of whack about the way the Chernobyl disaster keeps getting "put into perspective."

For instance, I have learned that a UN report (Chernobyl Forum) puts a number of four thousand on the total number of deaths attributable to the accident. It is hard to square this with the suggestion in Voices from Chernobyl that "[t]wo hundred and ten military units were thrown at the liquidation of the fallout of the catastrophe,which equals about 340,000 military personnel." (p. 131).

Similarly, the testimony of speakers at WNVF, like Alexander Velikin (who had himself participated in the cleanup as a "liquidator"), Anton Vdovichenko (Radymich, Russia, representative of Chernobyl Nuclear Accident Victim Support NGO), and Anatolii Chumak (Ukraine: Vice Director of the Institute of Clinical Radiology of National Research Center for Radiation Medicine) gave glimpses into specific aspects of the health effects of Chernobyl, but could not begin to encompass the whole.

As a brief review of the section on "deaths due to radiation" at Chernobyl on Wikipedia indicates, the estimates range widely and it's hard to get your arms around the truth.

Svetlana Alexievich,
Voices From Chernobyl:
The Oral History of a
Nuclear Disaster

As suggested in my post about the "human nexus" in addressing the challenge of global hibakusha, I pointed to the importance of personal testimony. Voices From Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster is an immensely rich resource for anyone concerned with nuclear issues, and, in fact, with protecting our future.  (It's author/compiler, Svetlana Alexievich, was awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature. just a few months ago.)

The examples from Voices from Chernobyl that I share below give just a glimpse of the richness of this resource.


Just another "battle"? ("We'll defeat Chernobyl!")

An unmistakable element of account after account in Voices from Chernobyl is the way in which response to the Chernobyl disaster was conditioned by the wars and threats of war that the Soviet Union experienced in prior years.

Over and over, reference is made to World War II, and how it shaped people's response.  "You can't compare it to a war, not exactly, but everyone compares it anyway. I lived through the Leningrad Blockade as a kid, and you can't compare them. . . . ." (p. 119)

Closely associated with the war years were the years of Stalin's terror. "Stalin's old vocabulary has sprung up again: 'agents of the Western secret services,' 'the cursed enemies of socialism,' 'an undermining of the indestructible union of the Soviet peoples,' Everyone talks about the spies and provocateurs sent here, and no one talks about iodine protection." (p. 124)

Memorial to Chernobyl liquidators (Moscow)

The closest referent was the expectation of nuclear war. "You know, we all had a military upbringing. We were trained to block and liquidate a nuclear attack. We needed to be ready for chemical, biological, and atomic warfare. But not to draw radionuclides out of our organisms." (p. 119) "People didn't understand. They'd been frightened over and over again about a nuclear war, but not about Chernobyl."(p. 168)

This was essential to bolstering a spirit of cohesion, with strong statist and militant character. "[w]e were a Soviet generation." (p. 182) "My neighbor told me in a whisper that Radio Free Europe had reported an accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. I didn't pay her any mind. I was absolutely certain that if anything serious happened, they'd tell us." (p.202)

And the enemy of cohesion, of course is "panic".  "We got telegrams from the Central Committee, from the Regional Committee, they told us: You must prevent panic. And it's true, a panic is a frightening thing. Only during the war did they pay so much attention to news from the front as they did then to the news from Chernobyl. There was fear, and there were rumors. People weren't killed by the radiation, but by the events. We had to prevent a panic." (p. 196)

All this adds up to a war-based attitude and response toward Chernobyl. "We were all part of that system. We believed! We believed in high ideals, in victory! We'll defeat Chernobyl! We read about the heroic battle to put down the reactor that had gotten out from under man's control. A Russian without a high ideal? Without a great dream? That's also scary." (p.197)

Soviet military badge (left) and medal (right) awarded to liquidators. (Wikipedia)

Wasn't anybody thinking?

As Voices from Chernobyl progresses, the accounts touch more and more on the question of the personal responsibility of the people involved. Yes, there were external factors -- the government, the legacy of the past -- but at some point someone has to start to ask: How come no one spoke up? Why did people go along with the government's approach to the disaster, especially all the hiding and silencing?

I focus on this question because it is one we all have to face in our own lives. What are the distractions and excuses that we use to enable us to look the other way?

One can't help noticing that vodka is a big factor.  Vodka was pushed especially hard at the people with direct access to the disaster -- "It will counteract the effects of the radiation" -- and a lot of people in Voices from Chernobyl describe escaping the call to think independently through serial inebriation. "If we weren't drinking like crazy every night, I doubt we'd have been able to take it." (p. 157)

Detail: "Chernobyl. Last Day of Pripyat"
(See full work and additional close-ups.)

Of course, people were dazzled with incentive pay, too. "[P]eople talked more about the rubles than the radiation." (p. 205)

(In the West, of course, we obtain our inebriation from a more varied buffet of intoxicants and inducements, but the resulting paralysis is the same . . . . )

Another big factor was the need to belong.  Over and over, people in Voices from Chernobyl refer to their "Party card." "That evening on the way back to Minsk on the institute bus we rode for half an hour in silence, or talking of other things. Everyone was afraid to talk about what happened. Everyone had his Party card in his pocket." (p. 178) It took me a while, but I began to understand that the need to continue being part of the system, to not be shunned, was so strong that people couldn't really bring themselves to contemplate going against the mainstream.

(Is it so different in our society? You don't have to have a Party card in your wallet to feel the gnawing sense that "people will turn their backs on me if I'm difficult" . . . . )

The converse of this, of course, was the medals and certificates handed out for "heroic service" in the cleanup.

Do we need a radical re-examination of our material culture simply to assure that our minds can truly be free to see (and communicate!) a clear path to a healthy future?


In order that the truth be told . . .

from Chernobyl Children:
"On UN International Day of Persons with Disabilities
we think of those affected by the Chernobyl disaster."

Voices from Chernobyl is itself a rock upon which to build a global effort to tell the truth about Chernobyl and the hibakusha of Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia.

The short film The Door dramatizes one of the accounts in Voices from Chernobyl. (The Door made me realize, "My city could become off-limits -- a ghost town -- if there was a nuclear accident here!")

The novel All That Is Solid Melts Into Air is a dramatic entry point into understanding the Chernobyl disaster. For one thing, it makes clear that, once radiation is released, it is a monumental (and nearly hopeless) task to contain it.

Some of the facts are being publicized by charities helping the survivors, such as Chernobyl Children International.

In fact, there is a continuing stream of video, images, and other information being shared via Twitter using the hashtag #Chernobyl.

The question is how to lift up the questions of Chernobyl into the larger #GlobalHibakusha discourse.

Some of the images shared on Twitter at the hashtag #Chernobyl.

Related posts

Upon returning from the World Nuclear Victims Forum in Hiroshima, I introduced 10 of the post prominent examples of "global hibakusha" about which I learned at the conference.

(See NUCLEAR RADIATION VICTIMS: 10 Dimensions of the #GlobalHibakusha Phenomenon)



 

Three factors have played a big part in Germany's decision to go 100% "zero nuclear" by 2022 has relied on : the threat posed by the big powers, soul-searching within a very "bourgeoise" society, and organizing.

(See GERMANY TURNS OFF NUCLEAR: The long road to freedom . . . . )









 

According to the Chicago-based Nuclear Energy Information Service, "Illinois is by far the most nuclear state in the United States . . . . Illinois was also home to the first commercial power reactor . . . one of the first commercial power reactors to close prematurely . . . . ComEd’s two large PWR reactors in Zion, IL also had to close prematurely . . . . We also have the first and only commercial storage facility for high level waste . . . Besides the 3 plants which closed prematurely, Illinois currently has eleven operating nukes – far more than any other state . . . etc. etc."

(See Chicago, IL: Zero Carbon AND Zero Nuclear! )








After removing a thin layer of soil from just the residential areas, the workers had produced acres of garbage bags full of contaminated soil.

(See Radioactive Waste: "What are you gonna do with it?" )

It can all happen very fast . . . . No one really knows ahead of time what will happen . . . . That's why it's so important for people to get together and talk.

(See The Lesson of Reykjavik: TALK About Nuclear Disarmament (You Never Know) )

"It's not enough to remember this just once a year; it's not enough that we make a single book -- Hiroshima -- required reading, and never go beyond that. There should be a whole canon that people study progressively, year by year, to grasp and retain the horror of this."

(See FIRE AND BLAST: A Curriculum that Confronts Nuclear Danger?)

The Alpha and Omega of Nuclear Radiation Injury: the Human Nexus

At the World Nuclear Victims Forum, Ashish Birulee exhibited
photographs documenting the impact of nuclear radiation on the
uranium workers of Jadugoda, India. "Deformities and mutations
like these are endemic. It is a heavy price that the people of
Jadugoda are paying for living close to a toxic mining facility."
(See Jadugoda, Drowning in Nuclear Greed)

During my time at the World Nuclear Victims Forum in Hiroshima, I recognized that what makes advocacy on behalf of victims of nuclear radiation, and effective activism, so difficult is that it involves at least six challenging dimensions. Most of these stem from the invisibility of the nuclear radiation, and from the way nuclear radiation has come to be used with people with disproportionate amounts of power. In the end, I think, our biggest challenge is to keep the focus of our advocacy and activism on the human nexus of harm done by nuclear radiation. Hence the focus on the notion of #GlobalHibakusha.

Today is recognized as Human Rights Day around the world. It is a particularly important day for people worldwide to recognize the harm that nuclear radiation does to people, and to lift up the newly-proposed "Charter of World Nuclear Victims' Rights."

The linchpin of the Charter is a simple sentence:

[A]ll persons living in the nuclear age have the right . . . [n]ot to be exposed to ionizing radiation other than that which occurs in nature or is for medical purposes [. . .] ."

(Charter: "Draft Elements of a World Charter of the Rights of Nuclear Victims" [II] Rights Section 1.1)

The subsequent list of rights raise powerful questions about who must bear the cost of reversing the harm done by nuclear radiation.  That's why it's so important that this initial sentence defines an ironclad, fundamental right: people have the right to not be exposed to ionizing radiation . . . and so those responsible must -- at a minimum -- bear complete responsibility for remediating any damage done.

At the forum, Mary Dickson shared this map showing the
extent of nuclear radiation from the 1,000+ nuclear bomb
tests conducted in the US, and described the illnesses
suffered by herself, her family, and her neighbors as a result.
(Image: Richard Miller, “Areas crossed by two or more
radioactive clouds during the era of nuclear testing
in the American Southwest, 1951-62” in Under the Cloud:
The Decades of Nuclear Testing (Two-Sixty Press, 1999))
(From: "Terry Tempest Williams on living with radiation
from the 1,000+ nuclear bomb explosions in North America")

This is especially important because those who cause harm by exposing people to nuclear radiation often hide behind the excuse, "Well, you can't prove that your specific illness was caused by the radiation that I released." The Charter erases that excuse.

"To receive free of charge the best possible medical care and regular examinations for effects related to past, present and future exposure; this right to extend to the 2nd, 3rd and future generations." (II.2.2) -- Yes, the effects of nuclear radiation impact generation after generation. The costs continue to mount. The implication: nuclear radiation release should never be allowed.

"The remediation of radiation contaminated land and domicile, and the renewal of community and local culture." (II.2.4) -- In fact, releases of radiation are practically irreversible. Since true remediation can't be achieved, nuclear radiation release should never be allowed.

I had a powerful reminder of the need to stay focused on the human nexus of nuclear radiation injury when I attended the Peace and Planet conference in New York last April. I was particularly impressed with the example of Taniguchi Sumiteru, a survivor of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki who has, for the past 70 years, used his body to remind people of the injury caused by nuclear radiation.

"When will the world heed the testimony of Taniguchi Sumiteru?"

At the forum in Hiroshima, I heard testimony from people about the nuclear radiation injuries experienced in Australia, the Marshall Islands, India, Ukraine and Belarus, Iraq, the US, China . . . the hibakusha phenomenon truly is happening everywhere. The Declaration recognizes this:

"We define the nuclear victims in the narrow sense of not distinguishing between victims of military and industrial nuclear use, including victims of the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and of nuclear testing, as well as victims of exposure to radiation and radioactive contamination created by the entire process including uranium mining and milling, and nuclear development, use and waste. In the broad sense, we confirm that until we end the nuclear age, any person anywhere could at any time become a victim=a potential Hibakusha, and that nuclear weapons, nuclear power and humanity cannot coexist." (Declaration, 2)

Svetlana Alexievich,
Voices From Chernobyl:
The Oral History of a
Nuclear Disaster

I can think of several corollaries of the focusing on the human nexus of nuclear radiation injury:

* the importance of testimony -- including those who have actually suffered injury themselves, and those who are witnesses. Narratives, photographs, art, data . . . .

* the challenge of epidemiology -- the science of analyzing harm nuclear radiation does at the level of communities (epidemiology - "the study of the patterns, causes, and effects of health and disease conditions in defined populations") is essential.

* trauma and fear -- we should not for a moment discount the massive psychic injury done by nuclear radiation.

A truly human rights-based approach to nuclear issues can point in only one direction: eliminating all possibility of exposing anyone to excess nuclear radiation.


Related posts

Hibakusha is a word that has traditionally been used to refer to people affected by the nuclear blasts in Hiroshima and Nagaski.  It is now being broadened to recognize the many additional victims of acute affects of nuclear radiation (including fallout from tests and radioactivity from mining and processing). In fact, we are all subject to the impact and threat of nuclear radiation spread indiscriminately by nations and corporations.

(See HIROSHIMA: What does it mean to say, "We are ALL 'hibakusha'?")






For each week from March through July, you can see the month and day, followed by the count for "white," "red," and "blood." If you follow closely, as I did, you see the counts rise and fall. You wonder, "What did Sadako think as she read each new set of numbers? Is this week's result good? Or bad?"

(See "May the odds be ever in your favor!" ("Live in fear . . . . ") )

Hundreds gathered in Chicago on Good Friday 2015 to say to the victims of the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, "We can hear you are in pain. We can smell your injuries. We don't have the power to restore your health. But we will NOT forget you."

(See "People Will Find the Way to Eliminate Nuclear Injury")