The legacy of Nuclear testing ... : Melbourne Indymedia

THE Woomera Cemetery contains the gravesites of 22 stillborn babies who died during the British nuclear tests, an inspection by The Advertiser has revealed.

There are another 34 gravesites for babies who died when they were only hours, days or several months old, with a further 12 gravesites for children who died between the ages of one and seven years. Men and women in their 40s and 50s also feature prominently in the cemetery.

Former Woomera servicemen and their families who lost children have declined to speak to The Advertiser, citing the Official Secrets Act or continuing grief.

However, one mother, 58, who now lives at Salisbury, said: "We were very close to the bombs and we know now that the mushroom clouds came over Woomera so what is there to say we weren't exposed to radiation."

Questions about the deaths of the babies at Woomera have arisen in the wake of new fears the British nuclear tests have caused genetic defects and multiple cancers in the families of servicemen posted to Maralinga.

A Far North resident who visited the cemetery last week said she was "horrified" at the large number of gravesites for stillborn babies.

Julie Wilkinson, of Wirraminna Station, said she had heard "general local talk" about children dying because of extreme heat "and assumed like everyone else that everybody does it tough out here".

"Nothing could be further from the truth," she said yesterday.

"At least half of the cemetery is full of stillborn babies. I have spoken to a couple of nurses about this at the Woomera Hospital and they both agreed heat and dehydration have no effect on the rate of stillborn babies.

"In one situation there is a whole row of stillborn babies and surely this can't be blamed on heat and a lack of airconditioning."

The Department of Human Services said it did not have any records from the Woomera Hospital as it was a Defence Department facility operated by the Federal Government.

A spokeswoman said the number of deaths was "certainly a cause for concern" but was unable to comment.

A State Government hotline for families who had bones removed from their dead children for secret testing for radioactive fallout said it had not received inquiries about the Woomera deaths. Attempts by The Advertiser to locate the doctor in charge of the Woomera Hospital during the 1950s and '60s were unsuccessful.

Other former hospital staff also declined to comment, saying only that they did not believe extreme heat was the sole cause for the deaths.

Woomera was well-established as a base to test British long-range missiles when the nuclear tests moved to Emu Field, 480km to the northwest and then to Maralinga, 400km to the west. Two atomic bombs were exploded at Emu Field in 1953, with another four detonated at Maralinga in 1956 and another three in late 1957. Woomera is believed to have been exposed to further radioactive contamination by another series of tests known as the "minor trials", when at least another 300 nuclear devices were detonated at
Maralinga.

http://www.theadvertiser.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,6395128%5E910,00.html

posted by Pamela Curr
Greens National Refugee Spokesperson

http://baxterwatch.net/

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On the PARIAH site - download

The British Nuclear Tests: Was the Test Policy
Indifferent to Human Suffering?

Thesis: Robert William Varney

http://www.country-liberal-party.com/images/Bob-Varney_Thesis.zip

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From - http://www.antenna.nl/wise/549/5280.html

"Aborigines affected by the nuclear tests have been treated even worse than military guinea-pigs."

"An act of indefensible callousness"
- published by WISE News Communique on June 1, 2001

After years of denial and deceit, the British government has admitted that military personnel were used in radiation experiments during the nuclear weapons tests at Maralinga in South Australia in the 1950s.

(549.5280) Jim Green - Confirming statements made repeatedly by veterans over the years, the British ministry of defense acknowledged on 11 May that it used military personnel from Britain, Australia and New Zealand in radiation experiments, but claimed they were testing clothing not humans. A statement released by the British government said that military personnel were "transported to or walked in various uniforms to an area of low-level fallout."

The admission followed publicity surrounding documents found in the Australian National Archive in February by Sue Rabbitt Roff, a senior research fellow from Scotland's Dundee University. (A report in the 19 May Melbourne Age by "defence correspondent" Mark Forbes says that the publicity "provoked both [the British and Australian] governments into a whispering campaign to undermine Roff's credibility while publicly professing concern." Forbes himself says Roff's "nose for publicity is impeccable" but disputes only minor details of her recent statements.)

A document dated 12 October 1956 on an "Australian Military Forces - Central Command" letterhead refers to the "Buffalo" series of four atmospheric nuclear tests conducted at Maralinga in September and October 1956. The document names 70 Australian military personnel and one civilian, plus five New Zealand officers, all listed as exposed to radiation following a 27 September nuclear test.

"As far as can be determined the individual dose for round one was received over a period of two to three hours while the various indoctrinee groups were touring the target response area. ... Certain people were exposed to radiation on dates other than 28 and 29 Sep, during clothing trials or for a limited number during a tour of the contaminated area after round two", the document said.

The central command document reveals that at least 26 of the 76 people named as being exposed to radiation from tests in 1956 received a dose greater than the "maximum permissible exposure" of 0.3 roentgens in a week; the highest exposure was 0.66 roentgens in a few hours.

Some men were chosen for "clothing trials" from an "indoctrinee force" of British, Australian and New Zealand military personnel. The men walked, crawled and were driven through a fallout zone three days after a nuclear test at Maralinga. Roff dismisses the British government's claim that it was testing clothing, not humans, and says that thousands of Commonwealth military personnel not directly involved in the nuclear tests at Maralinga were required to be outdoors to observe the detonations.

Roff said the recently-uncovered documents contradict claims by the British government in the European Court of Human Rights in 1997 that no humans were used in experiments in nuclear-weapons trials; a claim which enabled the British government to successfully defeat compensation claims.

"I was in the court in 1997 when the government denied using humans [in] studies of the effects of radiation", Roff said. "In fact the government said it would be 'an act of indefensible callousness' to have done so".

The European Court of Human Rights was presented with a 1953 memo issued by the British "Defense Research Policy Sub-Committee of the Chiefs of Staff Committee". The memo, titled "Atomic Weapons Trials" and marked "Top Secret", stated, "The army must discover the detailed effects of various types of explosions on equipment, stores and men with and without various types of protection."

Veterans of the Maralinga tests have described trucks speeding past to raise dust to make sure military personnel "got a bit of the fallout over the top of us"; being ordered to uncover equipment shelters located 100-150 meters from ground zero about one hour after a test, without protective clothing; men being ordered to roll in the dust about 5 km from ground zero after a test; ship and ground crews washing down equipment and themselves with irradiated water; and drinking contaminated water and eating contaminated food.

Ric Johnstone, national president of the Australian Nuclear Veterans Association, said in a July 2000 statement, "They [military personnel at Maralinga] were provided with little or no protective clothing and seldom badged while some badges and dosimeters were falsified or not recorded because of high readings. In spite of this long lived dangerous level of radioactivity, the Australian Government expect us to believe that the test participants were exposed to only minimal non-hazardous levels of radiation."

(see web site http://www.tac.com.au/~anva)

Thirty Australian veterans are seeking compensation from the federal government as a result of weapons tests at Maralinga and on the Monte Bello Islands off the coast of Western Australia.

Australian government's complicity

Buck-passing between successive British and Australian governments has for many years been a familiar ploy to avoid responsibility for the nuclear tests. Another ploy has been to stall for time in the expectation that the political controversy will fade away as veterans die. A large majority of people involved in weapons tests in Australia have already died.

Bruce Scott, minister for veterans' affairs, responded to Roff's release of Australian archives by saying that his office has contacted Roff in Scotland to ask her to forward the documents. But the documents are held in the national archive in Canberra, and Scott has access to further information which still remains classified.

In 1999, the federal government announced it would compile a "nominal roll" of veterans, Aborigines and others who may have been exposed to radiation from the Maralinga tests. The roll is expected to be completed in June or July 2001. A cancer incidence study is promised following compilation of the roll.

A bureaucrat from the veterans' affairs department said in a Senate hearing in May 2000 that the cancer incidence study would be completed by the end of 2000 - yet it has not even begun as at May 2001. Ric Johnstone said in his July 2000 statement that the government's procrastination was "... just another stalling tactic as the Government are now fully aware that time is on their side."

Scott says that issues raised by Roff in recent weeks will only be pursued if "there is any new material in these documents that hasn't been raised before in the context of the royal commission". The royal commission into the British weapons tests in Australia did raise the issue of "clothing trials" in its 1985 report, quite possibly basing its findings on the same document uncovered by Roff.

However, the fact that the royal commission discussed the "clothing trials" is no reason for the Coalition government to ignore the matter. Rather, it adds strength to the victims' claims for the compensation they are being denied. Johnstone says this issue was "buried" following the royal commission. Scott seems keen to keep it that way.

Johnstone derided the government's claim that victims are being adequately dealt with under the Military Compensation Scheme: "... the onus of proof is on the claimant and not on the Government as it is under the Veterans Entitlement Act. So go ahead and prove it if you can, knowing full well that since all of the tests were done under maximum secrecy (some aspects of the tests will never be revealed) and that all records are held by the Australian or the British governments it is going to be almost impossible for a claimant to prove the relationship between radiation exposure and illness, disease or death without their help which has been constantly refused."

Johnstone also addressed the Coalition government's refusal to provide funding for medical tests to assist in the determination of past radiation exposure: "Given the attitude of the Government you might think this would be a great opportunity for them to prove once and for all that nuclear veterans had never been exposed to harmful amounts of radiation, but no they are well aware of the truth and will not assist in supporting a test that will help the survivors prove their case."

In addition to the issues arising from exposure to radiation from the weapons tests, another unresolved issue is the radioactive contamination remaining at Maralinga - much of it from "minor" trials which did not involve fission explosions but scattered about 24 kg of plutonium nonetheless.

The last of four "clean-ups" was completed last year, but a leaked email from Geoff Williams, a senior officer of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA), complained about "a host of indiscretions, short-cuts and cover-ups".

Publicly, ARPANSA is part of the charade, with CEO John Loy describing the "clean-up" as "world's best practice" even though more thorough clean-up options were debated and discarded in favor of simply burying contaminated materials in unlined trenches.

Alan Parkinson, a nuclear engineer with over 40 years experience and a former government adviser on the Maralinga clean-up, wrote in the 16 April 2000 Canberra Times: "Is Dr Loy saying that a hole in the ground, without any treatment or lining is world best practice? That isn't even world best practice for disposal of household garbage, let alone a long-lived hazardous substance such as plutonium."

Parkinson said a temporary storage pit should have been dug and lined with concrete for use until a permanent storage technique had been devised to immobilize the plutonium.

Aborigines affected by the nuclear tests have been treated even worse than military guinea-pigs. The Menzies government did not seek permission from traditional owners before the nuclear tests. Some Aborigines in South Australia were given one-way train tickets to Karlgoorlie; others were herded into a concentration camp at Yalata, a mission station 150 km west of Ceduna; while others remained in the testing range (a fact known to the Australian government).

A 1996 government report on the Maralinga "clean-up" said, "The project is aimed at reducing Commonwealth liability arising from residual contamination." Having appropriated and polluted Aboriginal land, the federal government now wants to "reduce Commonwealth liability" by giving the land back to the traditional owners, the Tjarutja. The government's maneuvering to avoid future responsibility will continue for some months or years and will involve the puppet regulator ARPANSA.

The ongoing scandals surrounding the Maralinga project are of interest to the vast majority of South Australians who are opposed to the federal government's plan to build a national radioactive waste dump in South Australia. The same bureaucrats are involved, the same minister, the same puppet regulator. And the same game plan - dump the waste in unlined trenches while insisting, straight-faced, that this is "world's best practice".

[More information on the British weapons tests at Jim Green's Nuclear & Environmental Research, http://www.geocities.com/jimgreen3]

Source and contact: Jim Green, 18 Rose St, Chippendale, NSW 2008, Australia Tel. +61 2 9211 0805
Email: jimgreen3@hotmail.com or jimgreen3@ozemail.com.au
Web: http://www.geocities.com/jimgreen3