Review of General Human Rights Abuses and Atomic Testing

In this chapter there will be a general review of the abuses which compare with those associated with the British Atomic tests, namely human rights abuse, exploitation, radiation and environmental damage, and colonialism, as it is the proof that these abuses were associated with the tests that is the objective of this thesis. The chapter will concentrate first on works dealing with the general area of human rights violations and then consider the ill treatment, by present standards equating in many cases to genocide, of Australian Aborigines since the arrival of white settlers. The first goal will be to show that the treatment meted out to Indigenous Australians during the British Atomic tests differed little from the treatment accorded them since the white invasion.

Secondly this chapter will discuss the point that generally associated with nuclear testing is the practice of using humans unknowingly as atomic test subjects, and as a cause of severe and long-term environmental damage. Further to this objective, is to show a consistency by some nuclear nations to use their colonial powers as a lever to facilitate testing on past or present subservient territories. For specific examples of the use of human guineapigs in atomic testing, community health problems due to radiation from fallout, environmental damage and colonialism, the chapter will concentrate on only three of the nuclear powers, France, China and the US.

The US and France are chosen because they best equate to Britain in using their colonialist powers to avoid testing nuclear weapons on their own soil. The US was specifically chosen because it exemplifies the ruthlessness that Britain demonstrated in using service personnel as test guinea pigs. China is selected because of the extensive and widespread pollution and the suffering of local inhabitants that was caused by her testing. Although all nuclear testing caused widespread contamination of the test sites, France also provides at the Mururoa and Fangataufa Atolls, examples of the legacy environmental damage that is synonymous with the testing of nuclear weapons as did China in Turkestan.

However the term Human Rights Abuse is often used in a broader connotation to include atrocities, massacres and genocide in its various forms 2. For instance in Guatemala in what was referred to as a “human-rights disaster”, women and children were massacred when residents refused to vacate their village to make way for a World Bank sponsored dam construction (New Internationalist 282, p 5).

Of Burma, a country that he describes as having the “worst human-rights record in the world”, John Pilger cites an example of abuse which occurred on March 18, 1988 when a group of hundreds of marching and singing school children and students were attacked by riot police with none surviving. Fire engines were called to hose the blood from the streets (New Internationalist 280, pp 7-10).

Lastly, Geoffrey Robertson who sees those who committed terrible abuses of human rights by torturing and killing dissidents during Pinochet’s reign of terror in Chile, as being more deserving of punishment than “the old Nazis who are occasionally dragged to trial a half century or so after their offences” - a practice, which he sees as doomed to failure in most cases (Robertson G., 1999, p 247).

The examples given in the foregoing show that in general usage, the term human rights abuse can include the most appalling acts of which humans are capable, including murder and genocide. For the purpose of this thesis, the definition of human rights abuse used will be according to the relevant articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

In a more general sense, Robertson is optimistic for the future of human rights in the World, given the example of UN intervention in Kosovo to protect human rights by “enlightened states” acting collectively through NATO. Resulting from such intervention, he sees that in future, those committing human rights abuses will face trial in the International criminal court (Robertson G., 1999, pp. 453-454). At the same time he is critical of NATO for not providing for the surrendering of those involved in ethnic cleansing as part of the Kosovo peace settlement (Robertson G., 1999, p 420). Author Noam Chomsky shares Robertson’s deep concern for human rights, but fails to see NATO’s intervention in Kosovo as reason for optimism.

He interprets the UN and NATO interventions in Iraq and Kosovo as isolated events reasoning that many states, for example Turkey and Israel, commit human rights abuse with impunity (Chomsky N., 1999 p. 52) because one or more United Nations Security Council members may find intervention inappropriate and use their right of veto. Further he suggests that intervention in Kosovo occurred mainly because the reputations of both NATO and the US were at stake (Chomsky N., 1999 p. 134).

However neither of the previous writers gives any indication why human rights abuses occur, probably because there are many reasons, each dependent on the encompassing circumstances. Most abuses happen for the same reasons, eg delusions of superiority and greed, and arguably, these influences were the root cause of the dispossession of Aboriginal land.

It is important to understand the reasons that the Aborigines were deprived of their land, and suffered such severe human rights abuses at the hands of the white settlers. This is relevant since it is argued that the same attitudes towards indigenous people persisted in the minds of the members of the atomic tests hierarchy, leading to the same abuses that Aborigines had experienced since white settlers claimed Aboriginal tribal lands for their own.

Aboriginal Mistreatment in Australia

In this section it is intended to show that the mistreatment suffered by Aborigines during the British atomic tests, was but a segment in time of a continuum of the abuse experienced by them since the arrival of the first fleet. Since it is not possible in the short space of a few paragraphs to adequately document the treatment of Aborigines at the hands of white Australians, this section will attempt to show how white hostility, aggressiveness and racism directed towards Aborigines originated, and illustrate with examples, the form in which these animosities were applied.

The occupation of Australia by white invaders imposed arduous and even traumatic conditions on the indigenous people, disrupting their lifestyle that had not changed for thousands of years.
Suddenly they were deprived of food-bearing lands and forced to scavenge for sustenance in less productive areas away from the white settlers’ encroachment. Although at first, Aborigines living near settlements lived in harmony with the newcomers, allegations of stealing by blacks soon soured relations (Moore G., n.d. a, pp. 1-2). Since stealing violated tribal law, historians believe that the stealing by Aborigines was a quid pro quo response to convict stealing of their personal items (spears, shields, bark canoes etc) and sold for gain to sailors from ships of the fleet.

There were those however, who saw it as consistent with the growing negative image attributed to Aborigines (Moore G., n.d.a, p. 2). That starving Aborigines stampeded and killed settlers’ cattle in an attempt to drive them from what were once tribal lands, also helped foster white animosities (Moore G., n.d.b, p. 1). Within months of the fleet’s arrival, relations between the Aborigines and colonists had deteriorated such that unarmed, isolated groups of whites, mostly convicts, were being ambushed and killed, to be followed by random reprisals by British marines against Aborigines.

At the arrival of Governor Gipps in early 1838, open hostility existed between settler and Aboriginal groups resulting in continuing violence on both sides. In June 1838, a reader’s letter was published in The Colonialist calling for a “decisive step” to be taken against the Aborigines so that they may be “shown their own weakness, and convinced that it is useless for them to contend with Europeans”. The author saw this as essential, so that “much bloodshed may be spared” (Moore G., n.d.b, p. 1).

The result according to author Robert Hughes, was a racial war which cost the lives of an estimated 2000-2500 white settlers and 20,000 Aborigines of both sexes and all ages (Hughes R., 1987, p. 277). Noteworthy, the Myall Creek massacre, which took the lives of 28 Aboriginal men, women and children, occurred within days of the publication of the letter. The hanging of seven white settlers convicted of culpability in the massacre, aroused the disgust of the colonialists, who vowed to conceal any future ill-treatment of Aborigines including massacres from the Authorities, and resorted to using poison where the cause of death was harder to detect (Moore G., n.d.b, p. 1).

At this time many settlers, now enjoying the status of cattle barons, saw Aborigines as a “hindrance to progress” and also “a pest and a nuisance that deserved to be exterminated”. Racism was rife with Aborigines being stereotyped as “wild animals”, “vermin”, “scarcely human”, “hideous to humanity” and “loathsome” and “fair game for white sportsmen” (Tatz C., 1999, p. 15).

Under pressure from those who sympathised with Aborigines, including religious groups that saw the need to teach them Christian principles, Australian Governments moved to take control of Aboriginal affairs. In 1901, a decision was made for the Federal Government to assume responsibility for Australia’s Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders at the time considered to be close to extinction (Moore G., n.d.c, p. 1).

The indigenous people however did not easily discern the difference, since an oppressive bureaucracy replaced vigilante law. Nor did arbitrary violence against Aborigines cease completely, for during the 1920s Aborigines working on cattle stations were only paid in provisions - clothing, food and tobacco and any who complained were flogged. In May 1927 twenty-five Aborigines were murdered at Forrest Creek in Western Australia, and police at Coniston in the Northern Territory killed another seventeen. In the first instance the findings of a Royal Commission into the incident were suppressed and in the second, a police inquiry exonerated the police involved (Moore G., n.d.c, p. 2).

In lecture four of the Boyer Lectures given in 1999, Inga Clendinnen gives an important insight into Aboriginal life under state control - control based on the philosophy that in order to be protected, they needed to be incarcerated in camps, missions or reserves, where the quality of life was alien and dependent on the sensitivity of the white supervision (Clendinnen I., 1999, p. 30). Usually those of the community that were able to find work which paid wages, had them taken from them to be doled out at the whim of those in charge. She notes that the crowded accommodation was inevitably of low standard as was the food and health of the inmates - a result of chronic government underfunding.

In lecture three, she describes a Presbyterian Aboriginal mission of Aurukun at Cape York in Arnhem land in 1932 (Clendinnen I., 1999, p. 22). Here minor infringements attracted brutal punishments in the form of floggings, incarceration in a small heat box or exile to Palm Island. Forcing family members to perform floggings exacerbated the trauma for the victim. Those exiled to Palm Island were forced to travel in chains on foot, carrying their belongings and guarded by mounted policemen.

Ill-treatment of Aborigines also extended to taking away their livelihood and depriving them of accommodation. In Victoria in 1863, a native mission “Coranderrk” was established to accommodate the surviving 25% of Victoria’s original Aboriginal population, and a manager John Green, who believed in helping the occupants to manage the mission themselves was appointed. Over a ten-year period, the mission’s Aborigines, with Green’s support, developed the mission by building and furnishing houses and establishing gardens, cottage industries and hops-growing, making the community almost self-sufficient with many otherwise homeless people being provided for (Clendinnen I., 1999, pp. 41-42). However in 1873, the mission’s parent body, the Victorian Aboriginal Protection Board, moved to claim the income from crops and cottage industries, and in 1886 to expel “half-castes”, because it was deemed morally offensive to have half-castes and full-blooded Aborigines living together.

By the mid-1890s half of the then developed land of Coranderrk had been sold to white farmers and by the early 1900s all but a few of the original inhabitants had been moved to Lake Tyers, an area considered unsuitable for white settlement, the last ex-inhabitant dying in 1944. In NSW, the Government sold a similar Aboriginal enterprise, Cumeragunja, once it had achieved the necessary standard to attract white buyers. Of the inhabitants, half-caste children were sent into domestic service with white families, and the remainder became destitute and impoverished after being expelled, many surviving on river flats of the Murray River which were prone to twice-yearly flooding (Clendinnen I., 1999, pp. 41-43).

As early as the mid-1800s there arose first in NSW and Victoria a system of “forced assimilation”. This system, alluded to in the examples of Victoria’s Coranderrk and NSW’s Cumeragunja above, was based on the premise that “full-blooded” Aborigines would eventually die out and that the more attractive half-castes, with a population growth of three times that of full-bloods, should be forcibly assimilated into the white population (Clendinnen I., 1999, pp. 33-34). At the time of its introduction, the practice differed markedly from those in the Northern Territory, Queensland, Western Australia and Tasmania, viz of indifference to Aboriginal sustenance, shelter and health needs, leading to malnutrition and assorted diseases on one hand, to state sanctioned killings on the other. In Tasmania the entire Aboriginal population was destroyed in this manner (Tatz C., 1999, pp. 24-27).

Forced assimilation entailed forcibly removing tens of thousands of children from their parents and placing them into the care of white foster parents, adoptive parents or special half-caste homes established as part of the forced assimilation program. Many were physically and sexually abused or otherwise exploited by their hosts. Great care was taken to destroy the original identity of the child, even to the extent of altering the first name, to avoid the possibility of a reunification with real family members at some later date. For the same reason family groups were broken up with siblings being sent to different destinations. Abducted children understandably suffered severe alienation and disorientation (Tatz C., 1999, pp. 24-27; Nando Times, 1996, pp. 1-2).

The state-sponsored abductions of half-caste Aboriginal children from their families has caused a national trauma which lasts to the present day, with many abductees still trying to find lost families. Their suffering is not lessened by a recent Amnesty International report (July 6, 2000) which suggests that successive Australian Governments that have practiced forced assimilation, have since 1948, been in breach of the Universal declaration of Human Rights to which Australia was a signatory (Amnesty International, February, 1998).

The foregoing account of the maltreatment experienced by Aborigines will be shown to have provided a template for similar treatment accorded them during the British nuclear tests. In the following section under ‘nuclear testing’ examples will be given of other indigenous peoples who, like the Australian Aborigines, had their tribal lands used for nuclear testing. It will be shown that of the three nuclear powers chosen, all held their tests on acquired indigenous lands after forcibly removing the inhabitants from the immediate vicinities of the proposed test areas. Evidence will be presented that at least two of the nations, China and the United States, were responsible for death, disease and illness including birth defects and miscarriages caused by fallout on surrounding tribal areas. It will be argued in a later chapter that the Aboriginal people suffered similarly during the British atomic tests. Examples, also as parallels with the British nuclear tests, of the exploitation as nuclear guinea pigs of service personnel, members of the general population and indigenous people will also be given.

Nuclear testing

The effects of atomic testing both on humans and the environment and involving nations other than Britain will be considered. Although France, China and the United States have been chosen specifically, all nuclear testing nations during the Cold War exhibited the same ruthlessness and indifference towards environmental and human damage. Since the end of the Second World War the five recognised nuclear weapons states of China, France, Britain, the United states and the former USSR have collectively exploded an estimated in excess of 2000 nuclear devices of which an estimated 1500 were exploded underground (International Advisory Committee, n.d., IAEA, p.1).

Under the heading of “The Legacy of Nuclear Testing” the same International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report describes the residual radioactive materials left in the ground after a test as being “a complex mixture of nuclides including long-lived caesium-137, strontium-90, plutonium-239/240 and tritium”. It also refers to the propensity of the residual radionuclides to migrate further afield in land and water and into the biosphere (International Advisory Committee, n.d., IAEA, pp. 1-2) and thence into the food chain. Important is that it is the short half-life nuclides that present the greatest danger to life, because the relatively rapid decay of their atoms during the transmutation process to form other elements, produces intense radioactivity.

That human rights, human safety and environmental significance can be held subservient to the powerful interests of governments is a truly frightening concept and although a reality, it must be internally denied if one is to retain one’s belief in order, justice and the decency of mankind. Unfortunately though, as will be seen from what follows, national governments do on occasions when given sufficient motivation for example when reacting to cold war tensions, callously sacrifice the safety and wellbeing of their citizens to say nothing of causing intolerable environmental damage.

France

Prior to settling on Mururoa Atoll as a nuclear test proving ground France held tests in her colony of Algeria at Reggane and I-n-Eker, the first test occurring on February 13, 1960. Between 1966 and 1974 however, France conducted at Mururoa and Fangataufa in French Polynesia, 41 atmospheric tests all but 4 of which were tethered from balloons, hence being air bursts contributed little to local ground contamination. Five safety trials to test non-nuclear aspects of atomic weapons (eg the effects of fire and being destroyed with conventional explosives) were also conducted during that period. In the period of 1975 to 1996 France performed 147 underground tests of which 10 were safety trials (International Advisory Committee, n.d., IAEA, p. 2).

Noteworthy is that all the nuclear tests conducted by the French from 1960 to 1996, occurred in territories over which France was the colonial master. Between September 5, 1995 and January 27, 1996 France held her final test series before agreeing to a permanent cessation of testing. In conducting the test series, France ignored a plea by the people of the Cook Islands opposing the tests on the grounds that they put the future security of the Island’s children and grandchildren in jeopardy (Cook Islands News, (c. September 1995), p. 1). The Cook Islands is the nearest nation outside French Polynesia where the tests were held.

In 1995 prior to commencing her final atomic test series, the French government requested that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) perform a radiological study of the Mururoa and Fangataufa atolls in order to determine the effects, if any, of the previous thirty years of nuclear testing. The survey considered the possible release of radioactive materials from underground cavities occurring in two ways - via the expected migration through volcanic and carbonate rocks, and through the possible release of material through cracks and fissures caused by nuclear testing.

While the IAEC report concluded that those consuming local produce on the atolls would receive less than background radiation from residual radiation sources, at Mururoa where there were concentrations of Plutonium-239 and Plutonium-240 in the lagoon, there existed a real possibility of ingestion or injection of plutonium. Small quantities of tritium, Caesium-137 and Strontium-90 in all lagoons would also pose a threat to health, albeit small (International Advisory Committee, n.d., IAEA, pp. 3-4).

However on May 6, 1999, the Environment News Service quoted the director of France’s Atomic Energy Commission as admitting that French nuclear tests had caused cracks in the coral at the Mururoa and Fangataufa Atolls. This disclosure followed previous admissions that plutonium had been detected in the Mururoa Lagoon and that a leakage of radioactive Iodine-131 had been detected at the conclusion of the test series in 1996. Following this latest disclosure, Green Peace, a long-time opponent of French nuclear testing complained bitterly that “these new revelations about cracks in the Atoll at Mururoa show up huge cracks in the credibility of the French Government” (ENS, 1999, pp. 1-2).

Here it is seen that in spite of local opposition, France used her colonial powers to hold her nuclear tests in Algeria and French Polynesia - places other than on the French mainland, and in doing so emulated Britain who it will be argued took advantage of her residual colonial powers to hold her own tests in Australia. Also like Britain the French held their atomic tests on indigenous lands. Similarly emphasised is the vast and lasting environmental damage, which is characteristic of all nuclear testing.

China

This section is based on material obtained from a report of the Research Centre for Turkestan and Azerbaijan shortened to SOTA, an acronym derived from the first letters of the Dutch abbreviation of "Foundation for the research of Turkestan, Azerbaijan, Crimea, Caucasus and Siberia". The Chinese carried out their nuclear tests at Eastern Turkestan in the Xinjiang Uigar Autonomous Region in Western China on a test site, which was established in 1959. The tests have produced what the inhabitants see is an ecological disaster with radioactive pollution of drinking water and food supplies endangering human and animal life. In the forty years since testing started, local observers estimated that successive radioactive fallouts had claimed the lives of an estimation in excess of 200,000 inhabitants of the region.

No Official government figures are available to confirm or deny this estimate, although the Chinese Government does concede that some deaths have occurred (SOTA, n.d., p. 1). Locals also claim that from 1975 onwards, there has been a large increase in conditions and diseases attributable to radioactivity, with for example, increases of seven times the incidence of leukemia and of seven to eight times in oesophagus cancer, both compared with incidences in the previous decade. Pregnancy and birth problems also increased at similar rates. There were allegations in 1988 that 20,000 deformed children lived in the vicinity of the testing site (SOTA, n.d., p. 1).

The report defines Eastern Turkestan as peopled by the indigenous Turkestanis and possessing vast industries devoted to all aspects to facilitate the military use of nuclear energy. Thus, apart from the Lop Nor test site, facilities where uranium is mined exist in eight separate locations producing ore estimated at 300,000 tons annually. At Jumin, a plant was established with the capacity to produce 300 kilograms of plutonium annually. Similar installations also exist in two other East Turkestan locations (SOTA, n.d., pp. 1-2).

As an indication of the ill-feeling directed towards the Chinese Government by the Eastern Turkestani over nuclear testing, violent demonstrations have occurred since 1985. In March 1993 fighting developed between demonstrators and units of the Peoples Liberation Army after the Army opened fire on 1000 Eastern Turkestanis who were demanding closure of the Lop Nor nuclear test site. On the same occasion, demonstrators severely damaged equipment within the complex including military vehicles, tanks and aircraft (SOTA, n.d., pp. 1-2).

China stands culpable of holding her nuclear tests in East Turkestan, the homeland of the indigenous Turkestanis, and in so doing causing widespread radioactive pollution of the land. The tests have caused an estimated 200,000 deaths, an accelerated incidence of diseases including cancer and birth defects, and an estimated 20,000 deformed children in the local population. Local opposition has continued to mount since China commenced testing there.

Although the Chinese testing experience has parallels with that of the British tests occurring before it, both in environmental damage, and human damage through fallout, the consequences arising from the British tests are perceived as less severe and will be shown as such. Nevertheless comparable tests attitudes towards people and environment, which will be echoed in the discussion of the British tests that is the theme of this thesis, have been made.

The United States

Although the US was chosen because of its callous attitude in using its citizens as nuclear test guinea pigs without their knowledge, it did, like France and Britain take advantage of its colonialist powers to hold tests outside US territory. Good examples of this practice are the Eniwetok and Bikini Atolls in the Marshall Islands, at the time a US protectorate.

However it is America’s record of the use of humans as radiation test subjects, many without their knowledge that is important here, since it provides a parallel to the claim that the British atomic test program included the use of service personnel as guinea pigs. In January 1994, US President Clinton assembled a committee which included experts in medicine, health, ethics and law, in addition to ordinary citizens, to investigate the growing media accusations that the US carried out radiation experiments on human subjects during the cold war (American Institute of Physics, 1995, P.1). The President ordered the panel specifically to review all occurrences of US government-sponsored human radiation experiments, deliberate releases of radiation into the environment between 1944 and 1974 and to examine the incidence of current research on human test subjects.

The committee found that over the stated period, there occurred thousands of radiation experiments on human guineapigs and several hundred deliberate releases of radiation (American Institute of Physics, 1995, P.2). While most of the human experiments were of a minor nature judged unlikely to cause harm, it severely condemned the breach of trust in performing the experiments without the knowledge of consent of the subjects. As will be discussed later however, many of the thousands of experiments had the propensity to cause serious harm. The committee also found that given another situation of cold war significance and if the offending organisations still retained the power to invoke national security considerations to waive consent requirements, there is a real possibility of a recurrence of these events (American Institute of Physics, 1995, P.2).

As an indication of the accusations that prompted the report, one need look no further than a report taken from the newspaper “News From Indian Country” (Lord M., 1994, p. 1). The article refers to the many recent press reports of the US government’s use of its citizens as guinea pigs including children, pregnant women, soldiers and the handicapped. It also mentions a recent statement by the then Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary, concerning 204 nuclear tests which were performed without warning, presumably as part of the program of releasing radiation for human-experimental purposes (Lord M., 1994, p. 1).

The Navajo native people are particularly incensed since for decades it has been their common knowledge that in the name of “national security” many of them “were among the first to be used as laboratory animals for government and industry”. Not only they claim, did they provide the manpower to mine uranium, with many dying from the effects of inhaling uranium dust and drinking contaminated water, but that concurrently, the US government conducted secret tests to determine which diseases uranium miners were susceptible to. A physician Dr Victor Archer involved in the project, stated that he was sworn to secrecy as to his role, which required him to provide “dead bodies to demonstrate that radiation was killing Navajo people” (Lord M., 1994, pp. 1-2).

The report condemns the US government for seizing indigenous lands both for uranium mining and nuclear testing citing particularly the Western Shoshone tribal lands in Nevada, which were acquired under national security statutes for a nuclear test site. The fallout from the atmospheric tests held there showered large areas with radiation (Lord M., 1994, p. 2). This caused the Shoshone, Ute, NavaJo, Hopi Paiute, Havasupai and Hualpai native communities downwind of the tests, to suffer high incident rates of cancer, thyroid disease and birth defects (Lord M., 1994, p. 3). In Alaska 15,000 pounds of contaminated soil from the Nevada test site was buried as part of an experiment to study how radioactive materials migrate in an arctic environment. This led tribal elders to suggest that the sudden increase in experienced community cancer rates, which exceeded the national average, was due to the radioactivity entering the food chain (Lord M., 1994, p. 3).

More in the vein of the British use of guinea pigs, that of using service personnel, are examples in an article written by human rights campaigner Eric Gould sub-titled “Deception in the Nuclear Era” (Gould E., 1996, pp. 2-3). In it is cited the testimony of Carole Gallagher, a New York investigative photojournalist, (Gallagher C., 1993, quoted in Gould E., 1996, pp. 2-3) relating an experience of nuclear testing of Bob Carter an ex-serviceman who participated in the Operation Plumbbob manoeuvres, which included the explosion of a 74 kiloton atomic bomb at a height of 1500 feet at Camp Desert Rock in 1957.

Gallagher claims that Carter described to her how, when moving into the ground-zero area as part of the manoeuvres following the explosion, he saw human test subjects handcuffed behind fenced enclosures. He says that in response to mentioning his observations to doctors treating him for radioactive exposure, he was given unpleasant drug treatment and then asked to repeat his “bizarre story”. By then he had learned to remain silent.

Formed in 1979 the National Association of Atomic Veterans (NAAV) represents the 382,000 servicemen, servicewomen and civilians who were exposed to ionising radiation from nuclear weapons testing including the Trinity blast of July 16, 1945, the clean-up of Hiroshima and Nakisaki and the 235 atmospheric tests held in the Pacific and at Nevada, until the test ban treaty of 1963 (NAAV(a), n.d., p.1). The organisation claims that since the end of atmospheric testing in 1963 there has been no US Government sponsored medical surveillance of test participants or any attempt to warn them of any likely potential health problems resulting from the tests (NAAV(a), n.d., p.2).

In another publication NAAV alleges that many of its members ‘feel that they were used as guinea pigs’ and that ‘Most were never told about possible radiation hazards, or were told that there was not enough radiation to cause concern’ (NAAV(b), n.d., pp. 2-3). The publication implores those with health problems to demand their rights and ‘File your claim with the US department of justice’ (NAAV(b), n.d., pp. 2-3) The organisation also complains that Federal Government withholding of records and other information from veterans and their families causes great difficulties in obtaining compensation (NAAV(b), n.d., p. 2).

The requirement that this chapter point to similar atomic tests abuses, as will be shown resulted from the British atomic tests program, is more than adequately satisfied here. In the experience of American nuclear testing, not only are there comparable examples of for instance, driving the inhabitants from indigenous lands then made uninhabitable by nuclear testing and of indifference to the safety and welfare of the inhabitants in adjoining areas to the effects of radioactive fallout, all of which will be shown occurred during the British tests, but also of a deliberate, callous program involving without warning, a large portion of the US population.

Thus, not only are there American examples of using service personnel as test guinea pigs and refusing them access to their service medical records, as Australian and British atomic tests veterans will be seen to be claiming, but also of the specific use as nuclear test subjects of indigenous people, pregnant women, children and the handicapped, in addition to those in the vast areas deliberately exposed to fallout. All these people in the US were subjected to experiments without their knowledge or consent.

So far I have not encountered any evidence of any similar British program of using non-tests participants as nuclear test subjects as was described above, although as will be shown there were several examples of large regions in Australia unwittingly being subjected to nuclear fallout. The question as to whether unsuspecting populations were deliberately subjected to nuclear experiments during the British tests on the Australian mainland is a serious one, and should remain open until an answer is found.

Conclusion

The reader has been given examples of human rights abuses occurring throughout the world in order to appreciate the severity and extent of the abuses that are possible. This chapter has also attempted to show that human rights abuse, destruction of tribal areas, ill-treatment of indigenous peoples and indifference to the safety and wellbeing of Aborigines and participating service personnel, which it will be seen occurred during the British nuclear tests, has its parallels in the behaviour of other nuclear powers as part of their tests programs.

Considered were examples of the severe ecological damage in a number of places throughout the world including Algeria, French Polynesia, Eastern Turkestan, the Marshall Islands and the American mainland. This damage was caused only by the three nuclear powers considered, and the reader must be aware that many more sites would be included if the legacy of all nuclear nations were considered. Importantly, in an article in the periodical “News from Indian County”, journalist Michele Lord accuses the nuclear states of testing their weapons in indigenous homelands, citing the Western Shoshone of Nevada, the Australian Aborigines, the Pacific Islanders of Micronesia and the Marshall Islands, the Kazakhs of Kazakstan and the Nenetz of Novaya Zemlya in the old USSR, and the Uighur of Lop Nor (Turkestan) of China as examples (Lord M., 1994, p. 3).

Instances of using service personnel as test subjects and government reticence in supplying medical files to enable compensation to by claimed for radiation-induced sickness were also given. The categories of maltreatment described in this chapter, human rights abuse, environmental damage and abuse of the rights of service personnel and their use as guinea pigs, are it seems endemic in the worlds of nuclear testing. It is here intended to show a parallel with similar abuses that will be shown stemmed from the British nuclear tests. The next chapter will discuss the effects of radiation on humans.