Human Rights and the Marshall Islands victims of atomic bomb testing

United Nations Report Reveals the Ongoing Legacy of Nuclear Colonialism in the Marshall Islands Asia Pacific Journal, 11 Dec 12, Robert Jacobs & Mick Broderick In September of 2012, Dr. Calin Georgescu, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the implications for human rights of the environmentally sound management and disposal of hazardous substances and waste, submitted his report on the legacy of the nuclear weapon testing
program of the United States in the Marshall Islands to the Human Rights Council of the UN.1

This long overdue report offers a harsh assessment of the history of American nuclear testing in the Pacific and the subsequent underplaying of both the health and welfare of the
Marshallese, and the radiological contamination wrought by the 67 nuclear weapon tests (atmospheric and underwater) conducted there between 1946 and 1958.

This report offers an important step forward in addressing the
devastation to both community and environment that six decades of
neglect have left in their wake. Our own, ongoing research on the
social and cultural consequences of nuclear weapon testing around the
world, conducted as part of the Japanese-government funded Global
Hibakusha Project, largely supports the findings of the UN Rapporteur,
while casting them in a global context.

Bikinians in the housing provided for them as refugees (1948)
While the specifics of these events are unique to the Marshallese,
unfortunately this experience has been repeated throughout the Cold
War in a range of international territories. And only some of the
tests were conducted by the United States. These nuclear test programs
have also resulted in ongoing legacies of contamination, denial,
neglect and the failure to provide adequate environmental remediation
and compensation. Affected populations include, in particular,
indigenous peoples from: Kazakhstan (nuclear testing by the Soviet
Union), populations downwind from the Nevada Test Site (nuclear
testing by the United States), Australia and the former Gilbert
Islands (nuclear testing by the United Kingdom), Algeria and French
Polynesia (nuclear testing by the French), and minority populations
downwind from Lop Nor (nuclear testing by the Chinese). Amongst the
other more recent nuclear powers (India, Pakistan, North Korea) it is
fair to assume that similar impacts have affected populations from
underground testing in remote areas, just as countless communities
have been adversely affected by the industrial production of nuclear
weapons and their fuel cycle.
The UN report details recommendations for the parties involved: the
government of the Republic of the Marshall Islands; the government of
the United States of America; and the United Nations and international
community as a whole. We welcome this honest assessment of the
conditions and imperatives necessary to address this neglect.
The report states, unambiguously, that the United States government
should fully fund compensation to individual Marshallese by the
Nuclear Claims Tribunal, and release all secret reports concerning the
extent of the contamination, the health data collected by the U.S.
government, the full history of the tests, and issue a public apology
from the President of the United States. 2 These Special Rapporteur
recommendations to the United Nations formally recognize the
culpability and impact of U.S. policy in relation to the Marshall
Islands across generations….
http://japanfocus.org/-Robert-Jacobs/3853