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An American religious leader has called on the United States
government to “fully pay” for the damage caused by nuclear
tests conducted in the Marshall Islands. “More than half a
century after one of our nation’s most shameful actions, we
must tell the truth, admit our guilt and pay fully for our
actions,” said Bernice Powell Jackson, who heads the Justice
and Witness Ministry of the United Church of Christ in the
US.
“Only if we make amends to the people of the Marshall
Islands can we move forward into the future with integrity
and truth.”
Powell visited the Marshall Islands last year for the
50th anniversary of the March 1954 Bravo hydrogen bomb test
that exposed hundreds of islanders to high levels of
radioactivity.
She criticized the Bush Administration for telling the US
Congress in January that there is no legal basis for a
petition from the Marshall Islands seeking several billion
dollars in compensation for damage from the 67 US nuclear
tests. The interagency report from the Bush Administration
told the US Congress that there was no legal requirement for
Congress to pay additional compensation to the Marshall
Islands.
Through an agreement in 1986, the US government provided
$270 million for compensation and health care.
But Marshall Islands leaders say that was woefully
inadequate and are seeking more than $3 billion in extra
nuclear clean-up funding and compensation payments.
Jackson said that while the Nuclear Claims Tribunal that
has overseen nuclear compensation claims “has awarded over
$1 billion in damage claims, less than one percent of that
money could be paid and there are thousands of claims still
pending.”
Jackson said that the irony of the US government saying
it doesn’t have any further responsibility in the Marshall
Islands “is that the US is telling other governments that
they must take full responsibility for their actions, when
we refuse to take responsibility for ours. “To make whole
the people of the Marshall Islands, to treat their illnesses
and clean up their islands would take only a few days of the
funds we are spending in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Calling the 1954 Bravo hydrogen bomb test one of the US’s
most shameful actions, Jackson said: “Only if we make amends
to the people of the Marshall Islands can we move forward
into the future with integrity and truth.” |
