Nuke waste dumping: Are Somalia’s pirates reacting to international abuses?

Are Somalia’s pirates reacting to international abuses? Somali UK 21 April 09 “…………………………The coast remains an easy dumping ground for toxic and nuclear waste.

“It’s a real problem,” said Roger Middleton, a Somalia expert and researcher for the London-based think tank, Chatham House.

“There are very shady goings-on, mostly involving the Mafia.”

The force of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami pulled up dozens of toxic-waste containers, leaving a lethal trail along the Somali coast.

A UN report found as a result many residents suffered “acute respiratory infections, heavy coughing, bleeding gums and mouth, abdominal haemorrhages, unusual skin rashes, and even death.”

Two years later, a team of specialists discovered nine toxic waste sites along 700 km of coastline in southern Somalia.

“Somalia has been used as a dumping ground for hazardous waste starting in the early 1990s, and continuing through the civil war there,” Nick Nuttall of the UN’s Environment Program told the television channel Al-Jazeera, echoing similar findings from other reports.

“And the waste is many different kinds. There is uranium radioactive waste. There is lead, and heavy metals like cadmium and mercury. There is also industrial waste, and there are hospital wastes, chemical wastes – you name it.”

The waste came from European companies, which paid shady intermediaries as little as $2.50 a tonne to dispose of it, compared with about $1,000 a tonne in Europe…………

………. http://www.somaliuk.com/Indepth1/Fullarticle.php?IndepthID=483

April 21, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, Somalia | antinuclear, nuclear, radioactive, Somalia