Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: nuclear zero

  • Nuclear Zero Profiles: Tony de Brum

    Tony de Brum

    In his own words:

    I am a nuclear witness and my memories from Likiep Atoll in the northern Marshalls are strong. I lived there as a boy for the entire 12 years of the US nuclear testing program and when I was 9 years old, I remember vividly the white flash of the Bravo detonation on Bikini atoll.

    It was in the morning and my grandfather and I were out fishing. Unlike previous ones, Bravo went off with a very bright flash, almost a blinding flash; bear in mind we were almost 200 miles away from ground zero. No sound, just a flash and then a force, the shock wave – as if you were under a glass bowl and someone poured blood over it. Everything turned red: sky, the ocean, the fish, my grandfather’s net. People in Rongelap claim they saw the sun rising from the West.

    My memories are a mixture of awe, of fear, and of youthful wonder. We were young, and military representatives were like gods and so our reactions to the tests as they took place were confused and terrifying. We had no clue what was happening to us and to our homelands. I saw the injuries to our countrymen from Rongelap and to this day cannot recall in words my sense of helplessness and anxiety without severe emotional stress. But for as long as I can remember, the explosions and the bizarre effects that lit up our skies are still a source of pain and anger. How could human beings do this to other humans?

    The emotional and psychological trauma to our people, both young and old, cannot be measured in real terms. The pain is real and the uncertainty is overwhelming. But we will never give up. We have a voice that will not be silenced until the world is rid of all nuclear weapons.

    Sources:
    huffingtonpost.com/…marshall-islands-nuclear-lawsuit
    wagingpeace.org/tony-de-brum-at-the-nuclear-zero-lawsuits-forum/

  • Nuclear Zero Profiles: Rokko Langinbelik

    Rokko Langinbelik

    March 1, 1954 should have been just another ordinary day for Rokko Langinbelik. Instead, it was a day that changed her life. Rokko was 12 years old, living on Rongalap Atoll. Life was simple. But on that morning in March, the U.S. detonated the nuclear test known as Bravo on the Bikini Atoll. It was an explosion that would turn out to be 1,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb.

    “It was like the sun was all around us.  And we heard the big thunder. I was very scared. My parents didn’t understand what was happening,” said Rokko.

    The explosion sent a radioactive cloud some 20 miles into the atmosphere and created a nuclear hurricane that engulfed Rongelap. The Bravo test had been carried out despite a change in the wind’s direction, and the local residents were not warned ahead of time. Fallout rained down on the unsuspecting islanders – men in their fishing boats, others tending or gathering crops, children at play.

    Rokko remembers that after the Bravo explosion, every man, woman and child on Rongelap Atoll was sickened by the yellowish “snow” that fell from the sky and blanketed her island. Both of her parents later died of cancer, as did many other villagers. Rokko herself suffered from thyroid cancer. Two of her children died of complications she believes were associated with the lingering effects of the fallout. The Bravo test was only one of 67 nuclear tests conducted by the U.S. in and around the Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1958.

    Rokko traveled to Washington in 2002 with five other Pacific Islanders to tell Congress about how her people have suffered and to seek aid from the United States, stating that to this day, the fallout effects of those tests have never been fully reported. And the emotional and physical toll on the Marshall Islanders may never be completely known or understood.

    Rokko Langinbelik, now a soft-spoken grandmother, vows to continue to raise her voice in support of nuclear abolition so that no one else in the world will have to suffer as the people of her country have.

    Sources:
    wfn.org
    yokwe.net
    bwcumc.org/survivors
    honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2003/mar/02/in/in05a.html

  • U.S. Judge Dismisses Marshall Islands’ Nuclear Zero Lawsuit

    February 6, 2015 – On Tuesday, February 3, 2015, U.S. Federal Court Judge Jeffrey White dismissed the U.S. Nuclear Zero Lawsuit.

    The Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) filed the Nuclear Zero Lawsuits against all nine nuclear-armed nations in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and separately against the United States in U.S. Federal District Court. The lawsuits call upon these nations to fulfill their legal obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and customary international law to negotiate in good faith to end the nuclear arms race and for total nuclear disarmament.

    Judge White granted the U.S. government’s motion to dismiss the case on the grounds that the RMI, although a party to the NPT, lacked standing to bring the case. White also ruled that the lawsuit is barred by the political question doctrine.

    The Marshall Islands, a former U.S. territory in the northern Pacific, was the ground zero for 67 U.S. nuclear tests between 1946 and 1958 and suffered the equivalent of 1.6 Hiroshima bombs daily for 12 years. The lawsuit, which the RMI plans to appeal, does not seek compensation, but rather, a court order requiring the U.S. to enter negotiations for nuclear disarmament.

    Laurie Ashton, counsel for the RMI, respectfully expressed disappointment with the Court’s ruling, saying, “The next step is an appeal of the Court’s Order to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. As the RMI continues to pursue legal remedies to enforce the most important clause of the NPT, we implore the U.S. to honor its binding Article VI obligations, and call for and pursue the negotiations that have never begun—namely negotiations in good faith relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race and nuclear disarmament.”

    David Krieger, President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and consultant to the RMI noted, “The Court’s decision on this is akin to turning the matter over to the foxes to guard the nuclear henhouse. This will cause many national leaders to reconsider the value of entering into treaties with the U.S.”

    The RMI remains engaged in the three lawsuits for which there is compulsory jurisdiction at the ICJ – those against India, Pakistan and the UK. To learn more about the Nuclear Zero lawsuits, go to nuclearzero.org.

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    Note to editor: to arrange interviews with David Krieger or Laurie Ashton, please call Sandy Jones or Carol Warner at (805) 965-3443. The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation was founded in 1982. Its mission is to educate and advocate for peace and a world free of nuclear weapons and to empower peace leaders. The Foundation is a non-partisan, non-profit organization with consultative status to the United Nations and is comprised of individuals and groups worldwide who realize the imperative for peace in the Nuclear Age.

     

     

     

  • Nuclear Zero Profiles: Jeban Riklon

    Jeban Riklon

    Jeban Riklon was two years old, living life on an island paradise when the Bravo nuclear test was detonated. It was an explosion that would turn out to be 1,000 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

    His family and the entire community on Rongelap were relocated for three years before being allowed back to their home island. Jeban and his family were not informed, however, of the extremely contaminated state of their home upon return.

    From a U.S. official report: “Even though the radioactive contamination of Rongelap Island is considered perfectly safe for human habitation, the levels of activity are higher than those found in other inhabited locations in the world. The habitation of these people on the island affords most valuable ecological radiation data on human beings.”

    Riklon did not read that report until much later in his life, but while at the Second Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons in Mexico, February 2014, Riklon alluded to it when he said,“I grew up to witness and experience the unforgettable human consequences from the fallout. When you spend your whole life seeing that much physical and emotional pain, your tears dry up and you force yourself to question intentions, justice and human value. Many of our survivors became human subjects in laboratories and almost 60 years on, we are still suffering.”

    Jeban Riklon counts himself lucky to be alive today, though he suffers from permanent headaches, nausea, and muscle pain. He pays the price of the Bravo test each day of his life, while also fighting for the rights of his fellow Marshall Islanders. He demands justice for the human rights violations his people experienced and for the promise that has gone unanswered. “People, especially the younger generation, don’t understand the consequences of contamination. We who were under the fallout, we know. We experience it mentally and physically every day of our lives.”

    Sources:
    reddirtreport.com/around-world/marshall-islanders
    counterpunch.org/2012/09/17/nuclear-betrayal-in-the-marshall-islands/
    ipsnews.net/2014/02/nuclear-weapons-leave-unspeakable-legacy

  • Nuclear Zero Profiles: Lijon Eknilang

    Lijon Eknilang

    Lijon Eknilang was just a little girl at the time of the Bravo nuclear test on March 1, 1954. She remembered the snowstorm-like covering of radioactive fallout that plagued Rongelap following the blast. Like so many of her neighbors, Lijon faced long-term health problems following the blast. For Lijon, those terrible health problems came in the form of seven miscarriages, and the inability to have children.

    Lijon’s suffering motivated her to pursue anti-nuclear activism, which brought her to the United States and Europe to draw attention to the health problems experienced by the people of Rongelap. Often referred to as the ‘icon of the Marshall Islands,’ Lijon’s international advocacy for the nuclear test victims at Rongelap has been instrumental in exposing the tragedies that occurred there. Lijon spoke on behalf of the Rongelapese nuclear test victims before the United States Congress and the Advisory Proceedings on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons at the International Court of Justice. She exposed the health problems and gruesome birth defects faced by the Rongelapese women, and in doing so become known for her accounts of ‘jellyfish babies’, which she described as children born with no muscles or bones.

    Lijon Eknilang continued her advocacy throughout her life, participating in many discussions and panels, and submitting her personal accounts to publications such as the Seattle Journal for Social Justice. In August, 2012, Lijon passed away on the island of Majuro. She was 82.

    Sources:
    mstories.org/nuclear-eknilang.php
    youtube.com/watch?v=pN31P8bi_JRI

  • Nuclear Zero Profiles: Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner

    Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner

    In her own words:

    From 1946 to 1958, the United States conducted 67 nuclear tests in my home, the Marshall Islands. The most powerful of those tests was the “Bravo” shot, a 15 megaton device detonated on March 1, 1954, at Bikini atoll – which was 1,000 times the power of the Hiroshima bomb. Since then, the US has continued to deny responsibility while many Marshallese continue to die due to cancer and other radiation related illnesses. In my own family, both my grandparents passed away before I was born due to cancer and just two years ago I lost my ten year old niece Bianca to leukemia. Radiation related illnesses endure into today, and many more of our family members continue to battle with the effects of those tests which took place over 50 years ago.

    We Marshallese grow up with this history and these stories. We know them all too well. Not just stories of cancer, but also stories of babies born with no limbs, of stillbirths and thyroid problems, of families starving on outer atolls after being displaced from their own homes, stories of ash that fell from the sky that looked like snow. And then there are the stories of the land we lost – the beautiful bountiful Bikini atoll, how the elders cried as they were ripped from the shores of their ancestors.

    The hardships which the “nuclear nomads” of the four atolls – Bikini, Rongelap, Enewetak and Utrik – have had to face is all the more horrific when you take into account how strongly our culture is tied to our islands, how peaceful we have been as a people, and how vulnerable we were to the US. As our land and our food became contaminated, we were forced into an increased dependence on imported, canned foods, a major change in our diet and lifestyle – which has contributed to a modern day epidemic of diabetes. It also meant that our people were no longer able to maintain certain cultural traditions, skills and knowledge that depended on close ties to our land. Despite all of these trials, however, our people have survived. And we continue to resist.

    I am proud to say I come from a line of activists who have for many years fought against these atrocities. It is this history which gives us the strength that is needed to continue to remember, recommit, and resist, as we continue the struggle to bring about change for our people.

    Source:
    Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner’s blog piece, Reflections on Nuclear Survivors Day
    huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/23/kathy-jetnil-kijiner_n_5870194.html

  • Nuclear Zero Profiles: John Anjain

    John Anjain

    John Anjain was awake and drinking coffee on the morning of the Bravo nuclear test. What he first perceived to be a brilliant sunrise turned out to be something much more perilous. Following the initial brilliant light came smoke, scorching winds, and a lifetime of pain.

    In his role as magistrate of Rongelap, John recalls warning people not to drink from water catchments as the water had a noticeable yellow tinge. He remembers trying to comfort those whose skin had blistered, whose vomiting wouldn’t stop and whose hair began to fall out in big clumps. Along with witnessing the suffering of his people, John faced tragedies in his own family.

    Four of John’s children developed cancer attributed to radiation. John’s son, Lekoj, was one year old when the Bravo test occurred. He died 18 years later from myelogenous leukemia. Lekoj is officially recognized as the sole casualty of the nuclear tests, although John’s memory of countless miscarriages, cancer developments, and health complications contest this narrative.

    John Anjain’s experience with nuclear testing led him to become a strong anti-nuclear advocate, both for the Marshall Islands and for the entire international community. For years, he appealed to the U.S. to provide aid for the radiation victims. He visited Japan many times to attend rallies and give lectures on nuclear disarmament. And he kept the only medical records of the Bikini Atoll nuclear test victims. At the time of the blast, John recorded the names of 86 victims. By 1997, 38 people on his list had died.

    John Anjain passed away at age 81 in 2004. To this day, his memory survives in his endless work for the people of Rongelap and his impact on the anti-nuclear movement.

    Sources:
    health.phys.iit.edu/extended archive/0407/msg00215.html
    Morizumi-pj.com/bikini/English/en-bikini.html
    yokwe.net

  • Five Million Voices for Nuclear Zero

    For Immediate Release
    Contact:
    Sandy Jones
    (805) 965-3443
    sjones@napf.org

    5,000,000 Voices for Nuclear Zero
    Soka Gakkai Youth in Japan gathers 5 million signatures in support of Nuclear Zero

    Vienna, Austria – December 2014 –– In a remarkable show of strength and unity, the Youth Division of Soka Gakkai in Japan presented to Tony de Brum, Foreign Minister of the Marshall Islands, more than 5,000,000 signatures in support of the Nuclear Zero campaign. The presentation took place in Vienna at the Civil Society Forum sponsored by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).

    The Nuclear Zero petition is part of a global campaign calling for a world free of nuclear weapons. The petition states, “To protect humanity’s future, we support the Marshall Islands, a small island nation that is courageously seeking to enforce the Nuclear Zero promise – a world free of nuclear weapons.” The petition goes on to call upon the nuclear-armed nations to fulfill their moral and legal obligations to begin negotiations for complete nuclear disarmament. To sign the petition and learn about the campaign, visit nuclearzero.org.

    fivemillionSoka Gakkai Youth in Japan is comprised mainly of young men and women in their 20s and 30s. It is an arm of Soka Gakkai International (SGI), a grassroots Buddhist association with 12 million members around the globe who promote the longstanding tradition of Buddhist humanism. Soka Gakkai Youth Leader, Taro Hashimoto, stated, “We are deeply grateful to the efforts of many youth members and their friends who have helped us gather millions of signatures endorsing the Nuclear Zero campaign…Soka Gakkai International President, Daisaku Ikeda, has repeatedly called for a world youth summit for nuclear abolition. We look forward to connecting with young people around the world committed to abolishing nuclear weapons and making sure that the voices of those who will shoulder the future will be heard by the international community.”

    The signatures were collected throughout Japan from July to October 2014 in conjunction with meetings in which members heard the experiences of the hibakusha, survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    Upon receiving the signatures, Tony de Brum said, “I am deeply moved to receive this kind of support from the people of Japan. I know the people of the Marshall Islands will be as well. Our country has suffered terrible devastation from the nuclear weapons testing conducted in and around our islands from 1946 until 1958.” He went on to say, “All we ask is that the nuclear-armed nations fulfill their obligations to begin negotiations for nuclear disarmament. This is the only way we can ensure that no other country will suffer as we have. These signatures give me renewed faith that change is possible.”

    David Krieger, President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, a consultant to the Marshall Islands in their efforts to reach Nuclear Zero, commented, “It is this younger generation that is breaking the bonds of complacency which have been such a serious obstacle to change in the world. They give me hope that people throughout the world will now demand of their leaders the right to live in a world free from the threat of nuclear weapons.”

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    For further information, or if you would like to interview David Krieger or a representative of Soka Gakkai, contact Rick Wayman at rwayman@napf.org or call (805) 696-5159.

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation – NAPF’s mission is to educate and advocate for peace and a world free of nuclear weapons and to empower peace leaders.  Founded in 1982, the Foundation is comprised of individuals and organizations worldwide who realize the imperative for peace in the Nuclear Age. The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation is a non-partisan, non-profit organization with consultative status to the United Nations.  For more information, visit wagingpeace.org or nuclearzero.org.

  • Tony de Brum at the Nuclear Zero Lawsuits Forum

    Tony de BrumFor video of this event, click here.

    I’m proud to be here. I thank everyone in this room and their organizations who have made this possible for my country to be here. And I represent my country while I’m here. But I wanted to also share with you my personal experience so that those of you who have been involved in the law books and in the scientific journals and all the different sources of information that you have amassed to bring us to where we are today, will have a feeling, a direct touch, I hope, with what the Marshall Islands has gone through all these years and what brought us to where we are now.

    The evacuation of the people of Bikini, you know the two – made room for the “peaceful use of the atom” – was in 1946. And even at that meeting when the United States representative told the Bikini people that they were going to be moved for just a while, a short while and that they would be repatriated as soon as possible, because this experiment was for the good of mankind, and it was the will of God – from that day on they started lying and giving us double talk and duplicity in all that they did in the testing period. Beyond and after to this day we are still being denied the information we seek to be educated, to be able to understand what happened to our country.

    When the Enewetak people were forcibly removed in ’47 to make room for further testing on Enewetak, it was the same story. We will take you off on this ship to (this island) and we will bring you right back when we are through. To this day, neither Bikini nor Enewetak can be safely, totally safely resettled.

    My experience with the bomb did not start in ’54. I actually remember as early as when I was four years old listening to the rumbles and the flashes from the west from the island where I lived with my grandfather called Likiep. But the experience of the morning of 1954, March 1st was, I think, the jolt on my soul that never quite left me. Seeing Bravo as a nine year old was an experience I would not recommend to anyone because it still gives us nightmares – the people of my age and younger and around maybe some older from that time.

    So when we had the opportunity to go to school, four years later, 1958 I left home to go to school and did not return until 1968. When we had the opportunity to go to school, we were overwhelmed with having to catch up with civilization, with mathematics, with science, with whatever it took to graduate. And we were not able to access information that would give us more understanding of what we had experienced as children.

    But when we returned we had that opportunity. We had that new license to speak – the fact that we were educated in American colleges was the license that we sought and that the people that we worked for recognized as the ability to speak up on their behalf. Even when I returned from school, the program of so-called “testing’ exposed people was in full swing. Each year, scientists – I call them scientists – though they liked to refer to themselves as doctors – would come in and study our people, take blood samples and other samples and do all kinds of things to keep up, to keep track of the radiation outside and within their bodies. It was not a pleasant experience for our communities, but it was a continuation of what had happened from Bravo and the subsequent years after.

    From the time the testing started in ’47 until Bravo, about half of the 67 “events” were conducted by the United States. And then between ’57 and ’58, 33 or 34 more shots were done in that short period of time, of 2 years. After, the people were removed and were put back on Rongelap to continue the experiments.

    Part of what John was referring to earlier in that interview in the movie, the video, Nuclear Savage, was our attempt to understand documents that had been released by the Clinton administration, pursuant to our requests, for years, for information which demonstrated and proved to us that these doctors that I spoke about were actually conducting human experiments on the people of Rongelap and Utirik. They we not treating them for the anomalies that were coming up, but they were actually studying the affects of radiation on human beings.

    It is unfortunate that between 1954 and 1994 we were not able to access that information. But even after we’ve understood that, there is still denial that Project 4.1, the project I referred to is a project to study the affects of radiation on human beings. It’s still being denied by officials of the United States.

    Our attempts to bring justice to the people of the Marshalls for all that happened to them during this time have been hampered primarily by the withholding of information by the United States on the excuse, and it’s simply an excuse, that it is in the security interest of the United States to do so. How information such as the yield of a particular weapon or the “event” or the “detonation” can be classified on that basis is a mystery to us. But nevertheless, it’s still being used to this day to deny us the information we seek.

    The direct effects of some of the testing, especially Bravo, resulted in various anomalies, birth anomalies and sicknesses that the communities of the Marshalls had never experienced before.
    But because the islands were closed to any interference from outside between 1946 and 1968, there was very little information that flowed out from the Marshalls until then.

    Before 1968 in order, even for some of us to try to leave the Marshalls to go away to school, in order for us to leave our country we needed the permission of the Navy Admiral in Guam to allow us to catch military airplanes out of the Marshalls to Honolulu and on to the US mainland for schooling. So there was already at that time an attempt to decide who amongst us would be allowed to go away to school and who would be denied passage simply because of your family or because of whom you associated with in high school.

    When the opportunity arose for us to seek compensation and seek the truth for the damages we suffered from the nuclear testing it was under the auspices of the negotiations leading to independence. We were concerned that the United States was cutting and running – walking away from a responsibility that it had created for itself and was denying in terms of making sure that we had the right information based upon which we could make the right decisions on how this relationship would proceed.

    Secondly, we were being presented with information that was claimed to be the infinite, total, complete information that the United States was able to provide in a 1978 survey.

    And number three, we were told that if we did not accept the nuclear deal, the 150 million compensation in a trust fund and the establishment of a nuclear claims tribunal, that we would not be allowed independence.

    So regardless of what is said about that deal, it was tied to freedom. And the final decision that was placed on us was  – are you willing to settle for this agreement, this nuclear claims agreement – in return for your freedom? Or, we will keep you as a trust territory for as long as we want because we have that authority under the United Nations.

    The decision was made to be free.

    But to continue to seek information that would give us a final answer to all our concerns about the testing period and what it did to us. We have since found out of course that the information provided to us was also very much, ah, “edited” “abridged” “painted” in a way that we would accept it and with the assurances that the amounts that the United States estimated to be adequate for health care and for compensation for physical injury would suffice. As it turned out, none of these things were true.

    The people of the Marshalls have filed before in times past. Both the people of Bikini and the people of Enewetak have filed cases in US courts for compensation based on information that they were able to garner through the nuclear claims tribunal and experts hired by that tribunal to provide technical information that (assists) to them. These cases have been dismissed, not on any good grounds accept that the time had run out. We were violating, what is the word I’m looking for – we were violating statues of limitations issues and not on the merit of the cases themselves – procedural rather than substantial reasons.

    Today, we have completely run out of funds to address the individual physical injury cases adjudicated by the tribunal and we have not even touched damages to home and property because there are no funds left to address those.

    Under the Compact of Free Association there was an agreement that should the terms of the settlement be proven inadequate that there would be a window of opportunity to revisit the issue between the United States government and the Marshall Islands. This request has gone in, in several forms, over the past twenty years only to be rejected again on the grounds that time has run out and the political settlement had been reached in 1986.

    So, while we still bear the scars and in fact in some cases, still the open wounds of physical harm from the testing period, there is no physical avenue of settlement at the present time. And just within the last five years, the US Supreme Court has rejected the last two attempts by the people of Enewetak and Bikini to seek justice.

    Now, I should say from the beginning here that the lawsuits that I discussed before are different from what we have done now. What we seek now is for the United States and the nuclear powers to abide by the treaty to which they acceded before and for those that did not, by customary law, should also follow. It is an important part of our history because without it, it will remain open-ended – and incomplete. It will not be acceptable for us to leave that open (vacuum?) for our future generations.

    It is also right for us to do that because we have seen first-hand the effects of nuclear weapons on human beings. The scourge of displaced communities within their own homeland – the scourge that the people of Enewetak must now live in an atoll that is half contaminated, half acceptable for habitation, at least by US standards, is not a very comfortable end of a very long hard journey.

    Just recently a professor from Columbia University has written a piece about the Runit Dome, the only nuclear storage area in Micronesia located in Enewetak where the United States pushed and shoved plutonium contaminated material into a bomb crater, then steeled the top with a concrete cap, and said we will keep it away from human beings for 24,000 years. Now, we have seen because of normal wear and tear, and because of higher seas, cracks in the dome and the possibility now appears that some of this contaminated material may permeate into the lagoon and surrounding communities.

    The most recent response from the United States to this concern is as follows: Even if the crater were to be blasted completely open and everything in it were to flow out to the community and the lagoon – what’s in the crater is not as dangerous as what’s outside the crater.

    So much for the clean-up of Enewetak.

    So, in spite of assurances that it is in fact safe for some of our people to live in, say, Rongelap, or Bikini, or Enewetak, it has always been a stressful issue. And neither Rongelap nor Bikini are inhabited and the half of Enewetak that is, in fact, occupied by some people of Enewetak, is very sparsely populated because most of them have left to the other atolls or to the big island of Hawaii where a sizable, meaning a few hundred, Enewetak people now live.

    There is nothing more final in the life of an island person than to be separated from your homeland. It is living hell. It is death while alive. It is impossible to hold your head up as a human being when you cannot ask for your land, ask your land to provide for yourself and must depend on somebody else for that privilege.

    So unless and until some form of settlement is again reached and people are repatriated to their own lands, this nuclear legacy of the Marshalls will continue. And we do not wish this upon anyone else, anyone else in the world.

    I may not look that old but I do have nine grandchildren and four great grandchildren of which I’m very, very proud. And until today, until the very day I left to come on this trip they look up to you and they ask, “What’s going to happen? What are you going to come back with? What are the answers you seek? You’re away too much.” And you must always go back from these ones saying “Very soon, very soon.”

    But we will never give up. And it is the support and the council of the people we have in this room today that gives us that courage and that determination – that through our efforts, as meager as they may be, and as small as we are in the world – we have one vote in the UN – and we have a voice that will not be silenced until the world is rid of all nuclear weapons. Because that’s the cause of this all. Thank you.

  • The Nuclear Zero Lawsuits

    The Nuclear Zero lawsuits, initiated by the Marshall Islands, are about the law, but they are about much more than the law.  They are also about saving humanity from its most destructive capabilities.  They are about saving humanity from itself and about preserving civilization for future generations.  They are incredibly important, and I will try to place them in a broader context.

    Nuclear Zero LawsuitsI will begin by sharing two quotations with you.  The first is by Jayantha Dhanapala, a Sri Lankan diplomat, former United Nations Under-Secretary General, and long-time and committed leader in the area of nuclear disarmament.  He states: “The spectre of the use of a nuclear weapon through political intent, cyber-attack or by accident, by a nation state or by a non-state actor, is more real than we, in our cocoons of complacency, choose to acknowledge.”

    The spectre of nuclear use, even nuclear war, is real and most of the world lives in “cocoons of complacency.”  It is clear that we must break free from those cocoons, which are as dangerous to the human future as are the nuclear weapons that now imperil us.  The Nuclear Zero lawsuits seek to accomplish that.

    The second quote is by His Holiness Pope Francis, the leader of the Catholic Church, who has brought new light and compassion to his office.  He states: “As long as so great a quantity of arms are in circulation as at present, new pretexts can always be found for initiating hostilities. For this reason, I make my own the appeal of my predecessors for the non-proliferation of arms and for disarmament of all parties, beginning with nuclear and chemical weapons disarmament.”  The Pope talks about disarmament in general, but he puts nuclear disarmament, along with chemical weapons disarmament, at the top of his list.

    Pope Francis continues: “We cannot however fail to observe that international agreements and national laws — while necessary and greatly to be desired — are not of themselves sufficient to protect humanity from the risk of armed conflict. A conversion of hearts is needed which would permit everyone to recognize in the other a brother or sister to care for, and to work together with, in building a fulfilling life for all.”

    “A conversion of hearts.”  Can there be any doubt that such conversion is necessary?  Can there be any doubt that traditional diplomacy is not getting the job done?  And that preparations for war and resolving conflicts by means of warfare are moving us farther away from the needed conversion of hearts.

    Disarmament negotiations have been stuck for some 20 years.  The “step-by-step” approach of the nuclear-armed states is not working.  There are no negotiations in good faith for nuclear disarmament, as required by international law.  There are still over 16,000 nuclear weapons in the world.  The use of even a small number of these would destroy civilization or, worse, end complex life on the planet – the only planet we know of in the universe that harbors life.

    Nuclear weapons do not so much threaten our amazing planet itself, as they threaten the future of humanity and all the creatures, which are subject, for better or worse, to our stewardship.  Over geological time with the passing of hundreds of thousands of years, the Earth will recover from the worst we can do to it.  It is ourselves and civilization that we put at risk with our nuclear arsenals.  We must have a “conversion of hearts” if we are to save our world, ourselves, and the human future.

    The Marshall Islands has brought lawsuits against the nine nuclear-armed countries.  They ask only that these nine nuclear-armed states do what is required of them under international law – under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and customary international law.  They ask that the nuclear-armed countries fulfill their obligations under international law to pursue negotiations in good faith for an end to the nuclear arms race and for nuclear disarmament.  They ask only for the fulfillment of unkept promises and unmet obligations.

    The Marshall Islanders are very sympathetic heroes and heroines.  For 12 years, from 1946 to 1958, the United States tested nuclear and thermonuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands, causing untold suffering to the islanders.  The US tested 67 times, in the atmosphere and underwater.  The power of these tests was the equivalent force of testing 1.6 Hiroshima bombs daily for 12 years.  This led to countless health problems and premature deaths from cancer and leukemia.  It also led to many birth defects and stillbirths.   After the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, no place on the planet has suffered more from nuclear weapons than has the Marshall Islands.

    The United States was the trustee of the Trust Territory of the Pacific, which included the Marshall Islands.  In this role, the US was responsible for protecting the life and health of the islanders.  Instead, the US tested nuclear weapons on their islands, conducted secret radiation experiments on the islanders, and hid information from the islanders so as to evade paying them fair compensation for their pain, suffering and premature deaths.  This was criminal behavior; it was certainly not the behavior of a responsible trustee.

    With the Nuclear Zero lawsuits, the Marshall Islanders are acting out of compassion.  They are not seeking compensation.  They are breaking the bonds of complacency.  They seek a conversion of the human heart in order to save their islands and the world from the ravages of nuclear weapons.  They wish that no other country or people will ever suffer as they have.  They have initiated these lawsuits as a public good.

    As Marshall Islands Foreign Minister Tony de Brum put it, “Our people have suffered the catastrophic and irreparable damage of these weapons, and we vow to fight so that no one else on earth will ever again experience these atrocities.  The continued existence of nuclear weapons and the terrible risk they pose to the world threaten us all.”  I should note that this is the same perspective as that of the hibakusha, the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  It is the perspective of all those who have suffered the terrible consequences of nuclear weapons use.

    With regard to the legal aspects of these lawsuits, they are about whether treaties matter.  They are about whether the most powerful nations are to be bound by the same rules as the rest of the international community.  They are about whether a treaty can stand up with only half of the bargain fulfilled.  They are about who gets to decide if treaty obligations are being met.  Do all parties to a treaty stand on equal footing, or do the powerful have special rules specifically for them?  They are also about the strength of customary international law to bind nations to civilized behavior.

    These lawsuits, as I already noted, are about more than just the law.  They are also about breaking the cocoons of complacency and a conversion of hearts.  They are also about leadership, boldness, courage, justice, wisdom and, ultimately, about survival.  Let me say a word about each of these.

    Leadership.  If the most powerful countries won’t lead, then other countries must.  The Marshall Islands, a small island country, has demonstrated this leadership, both on ending climate chaos and on eliminating the nuclear weapons threat to humanity.

    Boldness.  Many of us in civil society have been calling for boldness in relation to the failure of the nuclear-armed countries to fulfill their obligations to negotiate in good faith to end the nuclear arms race and to achieve complete nuclear disarmament.  The status quo has become littered with broken promises, and these have become hard to tolerate.  Instead of negotiating in good faith for an end to the nuclear arms race “at an early date,” the nuclear-armed countries have engaged in massive programs of modernization of their nuclear arsenals (nuclear weapons, delivery systems and nuclear infrastructure).  Such modernization of nuclear arsenals could cost trillions of dollars and ensure that nuclear weapons are deployed through the 21st century and beyond.  The Marshall Islands is boldly challenging the status quo with the Nuclear Zero lawsuits.

    Courage.  The Marshall Islands is standing up for humanity in bringing these lawsuits.  I see them as David standing against the nine nuclear-armed Goliaths.  But the Marshall Islands is a David acting nonviolently, using the courts and the law instead of a slingshot.  The Marshall Islands shows us by its actions what courage looks like.

    Justice.  The law should always be about justice.  In the case of nuclear weapons, both the law and justice call for an equal playing field, one in which no country has possession of nuclear weapons.  That is the bargain of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the requirement of customary international law, and the Marshall Islands is taking legal action that seeks justice in the international community.

    Wisdom.  The lawsuits are about the wisdom to confront the hubris of the nuclear-armed countries.  The arrogance of power is dangerous, and the arrogance of reliance upon nuclear weapons could be fatal for all humanity.

    Survival.  At their base, the Nuclear Zero lawsuits brought by the Marshall Islands are about survival.  They are about making nuclear war, by design or accident, impossible because there are no longer nuclear weapons to threaten humanity.  Without nuclear weapons in the world, there can be no nuclear war, no nuclear famine, no overriding threat to the human species and the future of humanity.

    The dream of ending the nuclear weapons threat to humanity should be the dream not only of the Marshall Islanders, but our dream as well, our collective dream, not only for ourselves, but for the human future.

    The people of the world should follow the lead of the Marshall Islanders.  If they can lead, we can support them.  If they can be bold, we can join them.  If they can be courageous, we can be as well.  If they can demand that international law be based on justice, we can stand with them.  If they can act wisely and confront hubris, with all its false assumptions, we can join them in doing so.  If they can take seriously the threat to human survival inherent in our most dangerous weapons, so can we.  The Marshall Islands is showing us the way forward, breaking cocoons of complacency and demonstrating a conversion of the heart.

    I am proud to be associated with the Marshall Islands and its extraordinary Foreign Minister, Tony de Brum.  As a consultant to the Marshall Islands, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has worked to build the legal teams that support the Nuclear Zero lawsuits.  We have also built a consortium of over 50 civil society organizations and individuals supporting the lawsuits.  We have also created a way for individuals to add their voices of support with a brief petition.  You can find out more and add your voice at the campaign website, www.nuclearzero.org.

    I will conclude with a poem that I wrote recently: “Testing Nuclear Weapons in the Marshall Islands.”

    TESTING NUCLEAR WEAPONS
    IN THE MARSHALL ISLANDS

    The islands were alive
    with the red-orange fire of sunset
    splashed on a billowy sky.

    The islanders lived simple lives
    close to the edge of the ocean planet
    reaching out to infinity.

    The days were bright and the nights
    calm in this happy archipelago
    until the colonizers came.

    These were sequentially the Spanish,
    Germans, Japanese and then, worst of all,
    the United States.

    The U.S. came as trustee
    bearing its new bombs, eager to test them
    in this beautiful barefoot Eden.

    The islanders were trusting,
    even when the bombs began exploding
    and the white ash fell like snow.

    The children played
    in the ash as it floated down on them,
    covering them in poison.

    The rest is a tale of loss
    and suffering by the islanders, of madness
    by the people of the bomb.

    This speech was delivered by NAPF President David Krieger at a public forum on the Nuclear Zero Lawsuits in Vienna, Austria, on December 5, 2014.