Global
Women’s Association against Nuclear Testing and
‘No-to-Nuclear-Weapons’, Norway
“What
is it that lies, kills and steals in us?” Georg Büchner (Woyzeck)
Ursula
Gelis, Executive
director of the ‘Global Women’s Association against Nuclear
Testing’ works for the rights and needs of victims of nuclear
weapons explosions and nuclear testing. Her partners are in
Kazakhstan and other states, affected by the long-term effects of
nuclear weapons testing. At the Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian
Impact of Nuclear Weapons in December 2014,
she interviewed an anti-nuclear activist and nuclear test victim from
Australia.
Sue
Haseldine in front of the Black Death column. Vienna/Austria,
December 2014. Photo: Ursula Gelis
The
Plague column in Vienna convincingly depicts human suffering; in this
case - the tragedy of the Black Death epidemic from 1679 in Austria
which killed about 30 000 to 75 000 souls. A Black Death
does not distinguish between a noble and a beggar, and a nuclear
weapon explosion does not either.
In
today’s Australia, Aboriginal communities are still suffering from
European racism that came in the aftermath of Captain Cook (1770) who
looked at the Aborigines as lucky people, even if they did not own
many material goods!
The
first inhabitants of Australia, the people who were there ab
origine,
from the beginning, were food-gathering and hunting people. They
arrived about 50 000 years ago.
From
region to region, Aboriginal tribes have clear cultural distinctions
and their ability to co-exist with nature in a sustainable way could
serve as a paradigm for human survival.
America
and Australia. Sculpture in front of the National Science Museum in
Vienna. Photo: UG.
Western
cultures, still proud of their technological achievements, and
apparently committed to poison and to destroy the whole Earth, should
listen to indigenous civilizations in order to prevent human
extinction.
Aborigines
survived best by avoiding contact with ‘White people’. The
invaders brought diseases indigenous people had no immunity to
resist. Children were taken away by missionaries, claiming that the
parents were infidels.
Interestingly enough, the church and social Darwinism partnered in
suppressing Aborigines. Evolution theory served to justify any
brutality: massacres, plundering of goods, rape, etc. The ‘savage’
had to be domesticated and was defined as a race doomed to be
extinct.
“In
the meantime, you can exist on ‘waste land’!”
Map
showing nuclear test sites in Australia
In
1947 the British government decided to develop their own nuclear
weapons program. “In August 1954, the Australian Cabinet agreed to
the establishment of a permanent testing ground at a site that became
named Maralinga
in North West South Australia.
The
United Kingdom conducted 12 atmospheric tests between 1952 and 1957
on Australian territories at Maralinga, Emu Fields and Monte Bello
Islands. […] During the testing period, roughly 16,000 Australian
civilians and servicemen involved in the tests and 22,000 British
servicemen were exposed to nuclear fallout.
“Aboriginal
people living downwind of the tests and other Australians more
distant […] came into contact with airborne radioactivity.”
“Plutonium
and uranium fallout […] contaminated Aboriginal lands. Although the
British government declared the Maralinga site safe following a 1967
cleanup, surveys in the 1980s proved otherwise, prompting a new
cleanup project. Conflicts of interest, cost-cutting measures,
shallow burials of radioactive waste, and other management
“compromises” have left hundreds of square kilometers of
Aboriginal lands contaminated and unfit for rehabilitation.”
Civil
disobedience
Sue
Coleman-Haseldine (64) from the Kokatha-Mula nation is a survivor of
British nuclear weapon testing and spoke at the Vienna conference on
the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons in December 2014.
Sue
was born at Koonibba, which at the time of her birth was a Lutheran
Mission. Koonibba is near the small township of Ceduna, about 800
kilometers west from Adelaide, South Australia.
Her
community, including the local farmers, consists of approximately
4000 people. She grew up nearby, lived in the region all her life and
can trace back the family’s history up to her great grand-mother.
“Our
knowledge about colonialism started with Captain Cook. My grand
grand-father was an Irish man who eventually went back to the white
people. Our old people told us not to hate him. They were singing
Irish songs to us around the camp fire. My first language was
Kokatha, which is also my tribe’s name. Later at school, we had to
learn English.”
Sue’s
mother’s generation had to follow the colonizer’s order of only
speaking English, so Sue was educated to speak her native tongue by
her grand-parents as the cultural tradition-keeper. She went to an
English school and grew up at a German mission.
Sue
always tried to combine traditional life-style with the governmental
request of following the ‘British way’. She went out in the bush,
kept Aboriginal traditions and educated herself and others. “This
was maybe already an act of resistance, I guess”, she said smiling.
Sue won the South Australian premier’s award for excellence in
indigenous leadership in 2007 for her work as an activist, cultural
teacher and environmental defender.
More
and more cancer…
https://www.google.com/search?q=maralinga+nuclear+test+site+map
“The
elderly people had talked about the Nullarbor
dust storm, not knowing that they had seen the fall-out from
Maralinga. I knew about Maralinga and started questioning the amount
of cancer deaths. This was at the time when I started my own family.
More
and more people were dying of leukemia and thyroid cancer. I had
doctors remove my thyroids. My grand-daughter got it as well. The
official city doctors offered us a radioactive drink to kill the
cancer cells but we refused. My husband has heart problems and his
family members died from leukemia too. Sometimes people die from
‘unknown causes’.
We
learned that the effects of radiation can pass from one generation to
the other and can also ‘jump further’ to the third one. I have
been teaching about bush foods for a long time. I felt terribly
guilty when I found out about the contamination of the soil. When I
spoke to our doctor he simply said that I should carry on teaching
about traditional food because we could not do anything about the
contamination.”
Entertaining
workers of the nuclear program
British
servicemen
could
feel at home among friendly people from the Kokatha-Mula nation.
Soldiers were accompanied to the beach during their holidays and Sue
vividly remembers those encounters. “They were just ordinary
soldiers, away from home and lonely. We became simply friendly with
them. Also they had been misused as guinea-pigs. We had no clue that
dying might have been already begun.
We
were just innocent. We
were not allowed to go to Maralinga. I know that the area was
poisoned yet we did not know a lot. The old people could feel it, I
guess.” -
Recently,
“a […] case-control study examined miscarriage in wives and
congenital conditions in offspring of the 2007 membership of the
British Nuclear Test Veterans Association, a group of ex-servicemen
who were stationed at atmospheric nuclear weapon test sites between
1952-67 [was conducted]…”
No
suitable information
“My
people are still living on contaminated land, because clean-up
operations were not sufficient. Before testing, many Aboriginal
people to the north of where my family live had to leave their
territories. Officials told us that the displacement is for
governmental purposes. We had no idea what really was going on in
terms of nuclear explosions. After testing people were sent back, for
instance to a place called ‘Oak Valley’ on Maralinga lands but
Maralinga village was closed off. The government is now thinking to
open it as a tourist site.
http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/travel/destinations/2010/05/gallery-woomeras-prohibited-area/
In
terms of measuring radioactivity we are totally cut off from
acquiring information because it is illegal to have a Geiger counter!
We are particular concerned of the uranium mining industry,
exploiting sands found near the former testing site. Plutonium
testing took place at the Woomera rocket range site. The place is
military territory and we do not know what actually is going on
there.”
Overturning
the doctrine of terra
nullius (land belonging to no-one)
“There
was a fellow called Eddie Koiki Mabo fighting for that the native
Australians had
a prior title to land” ‘taken by the Crown since Cook's
declaration of possession in 1770’.
“Normally rules are not very nice for Aboriginal people. Property
rights are splitting communities and devastate families. The
government wanted us to prove that we had lived on our land for the
last two hundred years. I said no, because this land was given to me
by birth and not by the British government. So finally we could seek
recognition but the minerals belong to the Crown.”
“Our
alliance is well connected and once a month the community leaders
link up by phone and we talk about what to do next. During meetings,
governmental people are absent. We have international visitors from
France, Japan and so on. People from all over the world should know
that we do exist, that we are humans (laughter).
We
want to stop uranium mining, let us start with banning it for a year
first. Then we could probably breathe better…and of course, I do
not want any nuclear weapon testing. Nuclear weapons should not
exist.
In
order to understand our complex societies, it is best to be with us
for a while. Our strong connection to the land might be valuable for
you to experience. We do not own the land, the land owns us. Come
over, a week is plenty of time to convert you into one of us.”
Oslo,
January 2015
Sources:
ANFA
meeting statement 2014. “The meeting heard that around 40,000
rounds of depleted uranium weapons have been deployed in Australian
military training exercises. This raises serious concerns about where
they were used and any subsequent health impacts from these weapons.
We recognize the intergenerational health impacts from nuclear
weapons testing as well as the documented use and impacts of depleted
uranium weapons. The meeting called for all uranium weapons and
nuclear weapons to be banned.” http://anfa.org.au/.
