JAPAN: Women Fight to Save Fukushima's Children
Hundreds of Japanese women have been converging on the Japanese capital demanding better relief for some 30,000 children exposed to nuclear radiation by the Fukushima meltdown.
'Official recovery policy focuses on decontamination rather than protecting the health of those most vulnerable - children and pregnant mothers,' activist Aileen Mioko Smith told IPS.
'Our meetings with officials, to force faster evacuation programmes for high-risk groups, are only met with promises to clear radioactive waste. This is totally irresponsible,' said Smith, who leads the non-government organisation (NGO) Green Action Japan.
Smith criticised the government and the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), operator of the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, for focusing energies on defusing public tension by promising to reduce exposure in affected areas to below one millisieverts (a measure of radiation) per year.
On Wednesday, TEPCO admitted that one of the Fukushima reactors showed presence of radioactive material from a burst of nuclear fission, indicating fresh leakage.
After the meltdown - caused by an earthquake and tsunami on Mar. 11 - the acceptable radiation standard for Fukushima residents was lowered to 20 millisieverts per year, and activists like Smith allege that this was done to minimise the number of evacuees.
Smith said the new standards should, in any case, not have been applied to vulnerable sections such as children and pregnant women.
Some 36,000 people have been evacuated from a 22-km radius of the plant while many more of Fukushima’s two million people may be affected, Smith said.
'We will not give up till the government changes its callous attitude,' vowed Smith, participant in a women’s sit-in and protests before the ministry of economic trade and industry that determines Japan’s nuclear policy.
The core of the protestors was made of about 200 women from Fukushima who sat on a three-day sit-in outside the Tokyo office of Japan’s Ministry of Economy. When that ended on Oct. 30 they appealed to women from all over Japan to join them for week-long protests until Sunday.
Women from 47 prefectures have collected more than 6,000 signatures to support their demands. They have been handing out fliers to passers-by that contain detailed information on the dangers faced by the residents of Fukushima.
Rika Mashiko, an evacuee from Fukushima, explained that she joined the protests along with her seven-year-old daughter to show solidarity and to express her disappointment with the government. Her husband continues working in Fukushima to maintain financial stability.
Mashiko left her organic farm in Miharumachi, 50 km from the damaged nuclear reactor, six months ago. She resides in Tama, a Tokyo suburb and works part-time to support herself and her daughter.
'I receive no financial support from the government because officially I left voluntarily - though I am a nuclear refugee. I do not trust the newly established standards for radioactive exposure in Fukushima and cannot risk the health of my young child,' she told IPS.
© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service