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G4EBT > VETS 13.12.04 15:22l 152 Lines 6771 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 713694G4EBT
Read: GUEST
Subj: Re: Health probs (Nuclear)
Path: DB0FHN<DB0THA<DB0ERF<DB0HGW<ON0DXC<ON0RET<DB0RES<DK0WUE<GB7FCR
Sent: 041213/1057Z @:GB7FCR.#16.GBR.EU #:26044 [Blackpool] FBB-7.03a $:713694G4
From: G4EBT@GB7FCR.#16.GBR.EU
To : VETS@WW
The following might be of interest to anyone concerned about health issues
of Service Veterans:
Aftermath of Nuclear Tests on Service Personnel:
In 1997 the European Commission on Human Rights concluded that the British
government acted illegally and dishonestly towards veterans of the atomic
bomb tests in the Pacific.
The Commission found the government guilty of violating veterans' rights
to a fair hearing to their claims for compensation for illnesses they've
suffered since being exposed to radiation on Christmas Island almost forty
years ago. It referred the veterans' claims to the European Court of Human
Rights in Strasbourg.
Ken McGinley, chairman of the British Nuclear Tests Veterans' Association
said: "This is a dramatic vindication of our decades-long struggle for
justice against a massive government cover-up. Atonement may now be at
hand for one of the last major atrocities of the Cold War."
For ten years the Ministry of Defence (MoD) had refused to award
compensation to nuclear test veterans who've since contracted cancer.
The Commission, which consists of 26 judges and lawyers from the
40 countries that belong to the Council of Europe, concluded in
a detailed report that the British government breached articles
6 and 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Article 6 states that "everyone is entitled to a fair and public hearing"
and article 8 says that "everyone has the right to respect for his private
life". The report argued that the government has deprived veterans of
information about radiation levels vital to challenging the MoD's refusal
of compensation.
In 1998 the Commission asked the British government about the original
records of radiation levels on Christmas Island after the nuclear
explosions. The government replied: "Information from such records
was summarised in a report by the Atomic Weapons Establishment at
Aldermaston published in 1993".
The Commission accused the government of "lacking in candour" and
concluded that original records had been withheld for reasons of national
security. The report pointed out that veterans had extreme difficulties
discovering which records existed, which had been destroyed, which had
been lost and which had been withheld. The Commission said: "In such
circumstances, we consider it justifiable to say that the public records
system was, for all practical purposes, inaccessible,".
The Commission said that government memoranda from the 1950s and the fact
that the veterans were made to line up on the beach at Christmas Island
when the explosions took place give it "a basis for reasonable anxiety and
concern". The government's contention that the veterans weren't exposed to
radiation as part of a scientific experiment was also described by the
commission as "unconvincing".
Two studies commissioned by the MoD in 1988 and 1993 claimed that test
veterans had suffered "no detectable increases in their risk of
contracting cancer", although these studies have been criticised by the
veterans and by a US advisory committee consisting of 14 leading experts
in radiation and health.
The Commission argued that the veterans should be compensated, and pointed
out that the US government had paid out more than $25 million to 676
people from the Marshall Islands, who were farther away from smaller
nuclear tests than British veterans. The British government has also paid
E20 million to people exposed to atomic tests in Australia.
The NZ Herald in Dec 97 reported:
Quote:
"Government used him as a Guinea pig".
An Australian veteran accused the federal government of using him as a
guinea pig to test protective clothing and equipment while working in
nuclear testing fields. More than 20,000 servicemen were exposed to
radiation when the British Government exploded atom and hydrogen bombs
in Australia and the Pacific in the 1950s.
The University of Dundee found that of 2300 surveyed, at least 400 had
descendents affected by handicaps or chronic medical conditions. Of seven
veterans who formed the association in 1972 all but Ric Johnstone died of
cancer.
He was treated for radiation poisoning and later diagnosed with
post-traumatic stress disorder. They were asked to clean radiation
from vehicles in protective clothing which was lethal in the desert
heat and they had to remove it to survive.
End quote.
I find it reprehensible that service personnel and their families
should have to fight these battles against governments who, through
loyalty and patriotism, these men had sought to support and protect.
The extent to which western governments - whilst seeking to occupy
the moral high ground, are still dabbling in these areas, sometimes
failing to co-operate in international treaties, is obscene.
Although not the only country to have nuclear weapons, the only country
which has used them. It has also used chemical and biological weapons. It
has continued to use weapons, which - in any circumstances are barely
legal and of dubious morality such napalm, cluster bombs, depleted
uranium, and land-mines (which cost $1 to plant, and $1,000 to make safe).
The US frequently votes against UN resolutions to monitor and curb such
weapons. It insists on other countries having UN inspections for weapons
programmes while denying UN access to monitor its own extensive chemical,
nuclear and biological armoury.
Quick enough to use the international legal system when it suits it, but
ignoring the system when it doesn't. Little of this gets to the general
public, but we shouldn't be surprised that the world at large thinks
there's one law for the US and its friends, and another for the rest
of the world.
It's my sincere view that we aren't being patriotic when we allow our
governments to behave in such a way - we're being misguided and cowed
into unquestioning loyalty by the politics of fear.
Others may see things differently, but my conscience is clear. I wholly
refute any suggestion that to criticise our governments is to side with
the enemy. That isn't democracy - it's totalitarianism. I'm a citizen -
not a subject.
As I write this, a friend is in the closing stages of his life after many
years of suffering and ill health through radiation exposure at Christmas
Island.
Quote of the day:
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired,
signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are
not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
President Dwight D. Eisenhower
April 16, 1953
73 - David, G4EBT @ GB7FCR
Eddystone User Group Member
G-QRP Club Member No: 1339
QTH: Cottingham, East Yorkshire.
Message timed: 10:49 on 2004-Dec-13
Message sent using WinPack-Telnet V6.70
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