Among key points highlighted: • The report said it is not attempting to make legal pronouncements related to nuclear testing. But in connection with US-Marshall Islands disagreement over interpretation of provisions of the Compact of Free Association related to additional nuclear test compensation, “interpretations of statutes should advance the course of justice,” it said. • There is dispute between US government scientists and Marshallese officials over the effects of radiation. “Regardless of the scientific debate on the link between exposure to low levels of radiation and cancer, (the Special Rapporteur) believes that a precautionary approach that emphasizes the likelihood of risk over conclusive proof may prove more prudent and protective of rights.” • The report expressed concern that scientific uncertainty about health effects of radioactive fallout “may have the effect of shifting the burden of providing those affected by the nuclear fallout with health services from the United States of America to the Marshall Islands.”
Phillip Muller...Marshall Islands is entitled to know the truth and be treated with dignity.
Georgescu expressed some optimism on this matter based on commitments made by US officials “to greater and meaningful discussions with the Marshallese on how the health dimensions may be addressed.” • Compelling testimony was provided by nuclear test survivors about “their psychological trauma from witnessing the explosions and their effect. Psychological stress and anxiety are recognized as a legitimate and serious health concern in populations where nuclear testing has been concluded. Although these health concerns are of a different nature to cancer, the fear of radiation itself is no less real.” This problem “should not be underestimated,” the report added. “The Special Rapporteur’s mission tells the world the Marshall Islands is entitled to know the truth, to be treated with dignity, and to have all those human rights which should never have been lost,” Muller commented, adding the Marshall Islands welcomed the recommendations and “we urge the United States and the international community to do likewise, and we look forward to doing our part to ensure their implementation.”
The 1954 Bravo test: In the eyes of a 2-year-old
J
eban Riklon traveled half way around the world to be present early 1980s) told me my lifespan would be short,” said Riklon, at the September 13 United Nations Human Rights Council’s now 60. “I’m very fortunate to be alive today.” hearing on the human rights impact of US nuclear testing in In contrast to the large percentage of the 82 people and four the Marshall Islands. unborn babies who were on Rongelap during the fallout in 1954, Riklon, now a senator in the Marshall Islands parliament, was Riklon has not had surgery to remove thyroid tumors. a two-year-old on Rongelap when the Bravo hydrogen bomb He called himself “lucky,” noting that he has only one serious was exploded at Bikini on March 1, 1954, dumping high-level health problem: a headache so severe that it induces him to vomit radioactive fallout on Rongelap and other downwind islands. and cause serious muscle pain. It has reoccurred for many years. “I was only two at the time and I don’t remember Doctors at a Hawaii hospital checked the problem the test,” he said in September. “As I grew up, I and “told me that it will not go away,” he said. “I learned about March 1 from my grandmother, from don’t know the cause of it. It will go away for a reading documents and talking with the Department while, then suddenly returns.” of Energy officials. My grandmother told me we In 1985, Rongelap islanders self-evacuated their were all very sick, with diarrhea and hair falling out.” atoll out of concern for radiation-caused health He does remember returning to Rongelap with injuries, and remain exiled to this day. his family in 1957—when US officials told RonBut a US-funded nuclear clean-up of the main gelap Islanders their atoll was safe for re-habitation, island in Rongelap in recent years has put a return but at the same time said in a report: “Even though to Rongelap on the front burner. the radioactive contamination of Rongelap Island is Riklon believes people are not ready to go back considered perfectly safe for human habitation, the and should not be pressured to return to Rongelap. levels of activity are higher than those found in other “People, especially the younger generation, don’t inhabited locations in the world. The habitation understand the consequences of contamination,” of these people on the island afford most valuable he said. ecological radiation data on human beings.” “We who were under the fallout, we know. We Riklon wouldn’t read that passage until many experience it mentally and physically.” Riklon...“I am very fortunate years later. In the meantime, his family in the 1950s Jeban He said there is a need for much more consultato be alive today.” settled on an island in the northern section of Rontion and dialog with the United States government gelap, the most heavily contaminated by the Bravo on the issue of Rongelap’s safety—a concern that fallout cloud in 1954, living by eating fish and fruits of the land the UN Special Rapporteur highlighted in his report as a “legacy that were laced with Cesium 137 and other radionuclides from of distrust” from the nuclear testing period in the 1950s. Bravo and other nuclear tests. “We want to go back home—that’s the bottom line,” Riklon “Dr Robert Conard (the American medical doctor who supersaid. “There is no place better, it’s my home.” But before people vised medical care and studies of Rongelap from 1954 until the return, Rongelap must be safe, he said. Islands Business, October 2012 19