Wednesday, 21 November 2012

NGO Information Meeting (Japan) in United Nations Office at Geneva Part 2

(Link) http://fukushima-evacuation-e.blogspot.jp/2012_11_01_archive.html 
http://www.nichibenren.or.jp/activity/document/statement/year/2012/121101.html 
(Reference) http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/26544109  (40m-)  
Mr. Toshio Yanagihara, lawyer spoke about the “Fukushima Collective Evacuation Trial.” Through this class action suit on behalf of 14 children, the plaintiffs hope to force the authorities to recognize the legal right of hundreds of thousands of children to be evacuated from the contaminated areas. The fact that children are obliged to eat contaminated food and breathe radioactive air is a violation of the rights of the child. The press is gagged or gives false information provided by the government, which is a violation of the right to freedom of expression and information. 
Mr. Yanagihara and Mr. Yanagihara, a  Mayor of Futuama-machi (3km away from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power plants) urged the Human Rights Council to make recommendations to the Japanese government to give priority to the health of the population specially the children. He ironized that the government applies lessons learned from Chernobyl to avoid the costs of compensation and not to interfere with the nuclear industry: increasing maximum tolerable radiation doses, covering up the diseases already apparent, systematically refusing to take into account the effects of internal radiation, and not establishing statistical control information. Mayor Katsutaka Idogawa showed photos of the new metering equipment installed by the authorities: the machines display 40% less radioactivity than those set to international standards. 
A young Japanese student, Takafumi Honda, representing the " World Network for Saving Children from Radiation ," read children’s letters, including one from a girl from the region of Fukushima who  is worried and asks if she can have children and if they will be normal. Dr. Michel Fernex, professor emeritus of the University of Basel (Switzerland) and member of IndependentWHO, who recently visited Japan, spoke of birth defects that occur after ingestion or exposure to radioactivity: the genome is attacked and anomalies appear. These anomalies are transmitted to subsequent generations. There is already around Fukushima an increase in miscarriages and perinatal mortality, low weight in new-born babies, children with abnormalities of the thyroid gland, sudden death. Cancers appear later, he said. It is imperative that children and pregnant women be evacuated and that healthy food is available to all residents.  
The Japanese also visited the Hippocratic vigilsof the group "Independent WHO", activists who stand every weekday opposite the WHO’s Geneva headquarters and have been doing so for more than five years,demanding that WHO fulfill its mandate to ensure the highest possible level health for the world’s population. But WHO has no department that deals with the effect of radiation on health. The organisation has abdicated its responsibility and endorses policies of the nuclear lobby, itself supported by the nuclear power. 
The result of the examination will be adopted as a conclusion including views and the advice for Japan in United Nations human rights board of director’s plenary session in February or March, 2013.  Then Japanese government will announce their views and opinions accordingly. 
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I hope the UN will give an appropriate advice to Japanese government this time.  In 1991 Mr. Shigematsu, former head of IAEA visited the contaminated area after the Chernobyl disaster and issued “Safety declaration”, saying that the reasons why children developed thyroid cancer was because of not enough seaweed in their diet, no relation to the radiation.  Ms. Mika Noro who has been helping children in Belarus said that because of his wrong safety declaration UN stopped sending food aid to the contaminated area where people had to grow their own food for financial reasons.  And their children had to go back to eat the radioactively contaminated food.  It took 10 years for UN to admit that it was a wrong judgment.  It was too late.  By then the rate of thyroid cancer in children dramatically increased. We shouldn't allow the same mistake to happen again.

URGENT PETITION to evacuate Fukushima children: http://fukushima-syomei-e.blogspot.jp/

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