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South Australians join British Class Action over Nuclear Waste

100 South Australians join class action against Britain for Maralinga-related deaths Adelaide Now, BRYAN LITTLELY INVESTIGATIONS EDITORFrom: The Advertiser March 01, 2010, SECRET records detailing the fate of dozens of babies born in the shadow of Maralinga’s nuclear testing hold the key to a case building as the state’s largest class action

• More than 100 South Australians have joined a class action against the British Ministry of Defence over deaths and disabilities they believe were caused by nuclear testing at Maralinga more than 50 years ago. Among them are families of the Woomera babies – more than 60 lives lost, many without explanation, during the decade of nuclear testing, up to 600km away.

  Lawyers running the case say it is “just the tip of the iceberg”. They have heard only from people who are “very confident” they have a case for compensation.

  Already, families of some of the stillborn children, hours-old babies and toddlers who account for more than half the plots in Woomera Cemetery for the 1950s and 1960s, have come forward.

  Now, as British lawyers search for others to join the class action against the British Ministry of Defence, they will also push for the secrets of the Woomera baby graves to be revealed.

  Hickman & Rose partners Anna Mazzola and Beth Handley, working with the Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement in Adelaide, have collected more than 100 names of people who believe they could join a class action for compensation from the British Government.

  They will apply for the records of the Woomera babies to be made public.

  Secrecy surrounding the disturbing rate of baby deaths and research suggesting fallout from tests blanketed the town despite being more than 600km from the Maralinga testing sites, warrants those families investigating claims as part of the class act, Ms Mazzola says….They are primary victims who were there at the time or secondary victims – the children who were either disabled by the contamination or had ailments and disabilities passed on by their parents.”The Hickman & Rose team is working with private injury firm Stacks Goudkamp, which is representing Australian ex-military claimants.

  The claims follow the lead of a class action lodged on behalf of British ex-servicemen affected by the tests during the ’50s and ’60s.

  The legal team is headed by Cherie Booth, QC – the wife of the former British prime minister Tony Blair.

  It lodged the case after British soldiers also affected by radiation exposure were granted permission to sue their government last year.

100 South Australians join class action against Britain for Maralinga-related deaths | Adelaide Now

March 1, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Legal | antinuclear, AUSTRALIA, indigenous, nuclear, nuclear costs, nuclear secrecy, nuclear weapons, radiation, radioactive, uranium