nuclear-news

Unusual cancers in Xinjiang, China’s nuclear test area

China’s top-secret nuclear base to be revived as £30m Communist Party theme park, Telegraph, 7 Nov 13 One of China’s most secret military compounds is undergoing an unlikely transformation into a “red tourism” theme park for Communist Party aficionados By Tom Phillips, Red Mountain Command Base, Xinjiang“………According to a report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute earlier this year, China now possesses around 250 of the world’s estimated 17,270 nuclear weapons and and appears to be expanding its nuclear arsenal…….

A “Political Department Exhibit Hall” will display the official narrative but there is no indication its displays will delve into the long-hidden controversies surrounding the tests’ human cost.

As early as 1981 Beijing-based diplomats began whispering about fears of a hidden nuclear catastrophe in Xinjiang.

Citing one local official, Canada’s Globe and Mail reported “lung, liver and skin cancer has greatly increased in the area, touching off increased fears of [nuclear] contamination”. A number of cancer patients had been sent to Beijing for “special study”, the newspaper added.

In the absence of any public investigation such concerns have persisted. In 1998, a team of Channel Four journalists accused Beijing of a systematic cover-up after they obtained evidence pointing to a dramatic rise in the number of cancer cases in the region since 1965, the year after China’s first nuclear test.

“Basically, cancer is everywhere in Xinjiang,” one local doctor told the programme, adding: “We can’t do research into it. It’s not allowed.”

Beijing rejected that report as “sheer fabrication”. But a 2008 study by a Japanese scholar claimed up to 190,000 people may have died from illnesses linked to radiation.

Local officials say there is no risk of lingering radiation at the Red Mountain theme park and some tourists are already making the pilgrimage to the birthplace of China’s nuclear arsenal…..  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/10433364/Chinas-top-secret-nuclear-base-to-be-revived-as-30m-Communist-Party-theme-park.html

November 8, 2013 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | China, health, secrets,lies and civil liberties