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Bhopal: Following the catastrophic
tragedy that struck Japan in the aftermath of the earthquake and
Tsunami on March 11 last, the leaders of five NGOs working for the
survivors of the December 1984 Bhopal Gas Disaster have asked the
Government of India to learn lessons from it so that the countrymen
are saved from another holocaust like in Bhopal 26 years ago.
Such incidents are not repeated in India following natural
calamities or man-made errors, the NGOs have demanded immediate
suspension of the work on the Jaitapur nuclear power plant and
called for independent review of the proposed nuclear reactors in
five other locations within India.
The five NGOs who appealed the Government included: Bhopal Gas
Peedit Nirashrit Pension Bhogi Sangharsh Morcha, Bhopal Gas Peedit
Mahila Stationery Karmchari Sangh, Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Purush
Sangharsh Morcha, Bhopal Group for Information & Action and Children
Against Dow Carbide.
Meanwhile, the survivors of Bhopal gas disaster, which included many
“Burqa” (veil) clad women and some children, observed two minutes
silence to pay homage to those who perished in Japan in the Tsunami
and earthquake. They called for the Central Government to pull up
its socks and have a relook of all the nuclear plants to see that
the safety measures are in place and are upgraded in the backdrop of
the Fukushima debacle.
Addressing a joint Press conference here on Tuesday the NGOs
expressed condolences for the nearly 15,000 victims who perished in
the tragedy and appealed the world community for help to
rehabilitate about half a million Japanese who have been displaced
following the disaster. They expressed deep concerns over the
ongoing nuclear disaster and apprehensions that such tragedy could
strike India if the government did not heed the warning signals and
have a complete relook of the safety measures of the existing
nuclear power plants in the country.
Satinath Sarangi of the Bhopal Group for Information & Action said
the Fukushima disaster has highlighted the importance of public
knowledge concerning all aspects of the nuclear industry. The Atomic
Energy Regulatory Board, (AERB), being part of the Department of
Atomic Energy of Government of India is not an independent body and
the Indian people cannot rely on it for authentic information.
Any investigation carried out by AERB is not reliable as the world
over a veil of secrecy exists over the working of nuclear plants, he
remarked.
Sarangi pointed out the similarities of the locations of the
Fukushima and the proposed Jaitapur nuclear power plant and demanded
immediate suspension of work on the project. He said that Jaitapur
is located around the coast line and as per the figures of
Geological Survey of India it has witnessed 92 earthquakes from 1985
to 2009.
He called for independent review of the proposed nuclear power
plants at five other locations in the country namely in Chutkha
(Madhya Pradesh), Haripur (West Bengal), Mithi Virdi (Gujarat),
Pitti Sonapur (Orissa) and Kowada (Andhra Pradesh).
Rashida Bee of Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Stationery Karmchari Sangh
said that the city in which over 24,000 people have died and many
are still dying, can feel the pain of relatives and friends of the
thousands of Japanese people who have died due to the Tsunami and
earthquake. She expressed hope that the people from all over the
world will help over 4, 52,000 affected people to rebuild their
lives. She said that by causing irreparable damage to the world
environment large corporations are causing and heightening the
impact of natural disasters
Balkrishna Namdeo of Bhopal Gas Peedit Nirashrit Pension Bhogi
Sangharsh Morcha expressed grave concerns on the ongoing exposure of
workers and others to nuclear radiation and the contamination of
food and water. He said that the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade
and Industry which is responsible for nuclear energy production has
been covering up nuclear accidents and obscuring the true costs and
problems associated with the nuclear industry. On behalf of the
survivors of Bhopal he demanded that the Japanese government release
factual information on the levels of radiation in and around the
nuclear plant in Fukushima.
Safreen Khan of Children Against Dow-Carbide called for independent
scientific investigations into the operation and impact of the 19
reactors currently operating in various parts of India. She said
that there has been no official study yet on the health effects
including birth defects and cancer in the communities around these
nuclear plants.
It may be recalled here that 40 tonnes of poisonous methyl
isocyanate gas spewed from the pesticide plant of the Union Carbide
factory in the intervening night of December 2-3, 1984. The gas leak
killed 3,000 people instantly and more that 25,000 over the years.
It also affected 100,000 people that night and estimates are that
more than 500,000 continue to suffer till date.
Meanwhile, it may be mentioned here that at the US atomic weapons
plant at Rocky Flats, Colorado, there were numerous mishaps
involving radioactive material which were kept secret over four
decades, from the 1950s to the 1980s. In Russia, the province of
Chelyabinsk, just east of the Urals, housed a major atomic weapons
complex, which was the site of three major nuclear disasters:
radioactive waste dumping and the explosion of a waste containment
unit in the 1950s, and a vast escape of radioactive dust in 1967. It
is estimated that about half a million people in the region were
irradiated in one or more of the incidents, exposing them to as much
as 20 times the radiation suffered by the Chernobyl victims. None of
which, of course.
When we turn to Japan, we find an identical culture of nuclear
cover-up and lies. Of particular concern has been the Tokyo Electric
Power Company (TEPCO), Asia's biggest utility, which just happens to
be the owner and operator of the stricken reactors at Fukushima.
It is said that TEPCO has a truly rotten record in telling the
truth. In 2002, its chairman and a group of senior executives had to
resign after the Japanese government disclosed they had covered up a
large series of cracks and other damage to reactors, and in 2006 the
company admitted it had been falsifying data about coolant materials
in its plants over a long period. Even Chernobyl, the world's most
publicised nuclear accident, was at first hidden from the world by
what was then the Soviet Union, and might have remained hidden had
its plume of escaping radioactivity not been detected by scientists
in Sweden.
(pervezbari@eth.net)
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