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More support should be given to the various environmental groups which are protesting about the siting of the Australian mining company, Lynas Corporation, in Gebeng, Kuantan. If the Australians are smart enough to reject their own company’s proposals and promises, why should the Malaysian cabinet be foolish to accept the radioactive waste from Lynas and dump it on their rakyat’s laps?
So what if the Australians say the radioactive waste will be rendered safe. Why have their own citizens not accepted this argument? Why thrust this monster project onto us?
So what if the plant will generate RM5 billion projected to rise to RM8 billion in the subsequent years? The lives of our rakyat and the safety of our environment and all the living things that thrive in it are more important than seeing the Lynas project in mere ringgits and sens, and profit & loss.
Haven’t our Cabinet ministers learnt from the lessons of the Batu Merah tragedy? Vast areas of Papan and Bukit Merah are out of bounds to the public. Is this what the residents of Gebeng want?
What if the radioactive waste contaminates the groundwater in and around Gebeng? And kills off all the flora and fauna?
What is the point of a picture-postcard-perfect scenery like we have for Papan but the reality is that the area is lethal to humans and animals alike?
Lynas Corp has insisted that the rare earth ore to be refined in Gebeng has only two per cent of the radioactive element thorium that was present in the raw material used in Bukit Merah.
Three decades later, Bukit Merah is still struggling to contain the thorium hydorixide threat. Very few people know about this and hopefully the environmental groups will tell the Gebeng residents that all is not well in Bukit Merah.
If any of the Gebeng residents want proof, just ask any of the people who were originally involved in Bukit Merah.
A student is currently completing a PhD study on this problem. Doctors who treated the sick are also around to talk to. Some people were even locked away under the ISA for protesting about the damage and destruction of Bukit Merah.
It is disingenuous of former Prime minister Mahathir Mohamad to tell us that he disapproves of the Lynas Corp project because of the Asian Rare Earth plant in Bukit Merah.
Why did he set the hounds onto the NGOS and politicians who protested in the late 80s? Is he suddenly feeling guilty?
The Papan-Pusing-Siputeh Anti-Radioacative Waste Dump committee chairman Low Tong Hooi recently said: “Why is it only now that he (Mahathir) has admitted the radioactive dump is dangerous? In 1984, he maintained that the poorly constructed trenches for the waste in Papan in 1984 were safe”.
Low also claimed that Sahabat Alam Malaysia, Consumer Association of Penang and the Environmental Protection Society of Malaysia sought expert help from America, Britain, Canada and Japan to declare the factory and the dump unsafe.
The Malaysian government ignored all these recommendations and started a decommissioning and decontamination exercise in the factory in 2003 and 2005. It was ONLY in January 2010 that they considered building a proper underground storage facility.
For anyone who is interested, the problem at Bukit Merah involves 80,000 drums of radioactive waste which contains thorium hydroxide. Each drum is 200 litres. These 80,000 drums are just ‘kept’ at the dump behind Papan town. They are not buried “deep in the ground” as claimed. It should be, but not yet as investigative reporters uncovered last year.
When Mahathir was Prime minister he deliberately misled us. So what is to stop Prime minister Najib Abdul Razak from deliberately misleading us today.
Against this backdrop why should we believe Lynas and Najib that all will be safe and well?
A massive rare earth ore processing plant is on the cards, but a toxicologist warns that 'low or otherwise', radioactive waste is carcinogen.
KUALA LUMPUR: Undettered by what transpired in the past, the government is embarking on another project which has sparked off health concerns.According to a New York Times (NYT) report, the government is pursuing a multi-billion ringgit investment in rare metals, which were key components in many hi-tech products.
Backed by the investment from Australian mining giant, Lynas, a massive processing plant would be constructed in Kuantan, Pahang, to produce metals used in products such as Apple’s iPhone, Toyota’s Prius and Boeing’s smart bombs.
Malaysian Atomic Energy Licensing Board director-general Raja Datuk Abdul Aziz Raja Adnan told NYT that the project was only approved after an inter-agency review and assurance that the imported ore and subsequent waste would have low enough levels of radioactivity to be manageable and safe.
However, toxicologist Dr T Jayabalan painted a bleak picture.
The doctor, who treated leukaemia victims whose illnesses he and others had attributed to the now-defunct Mitsubishi Chemicals plant in Bukit Merah, said that low or otherwise, exposure to such material remains hazardous.
“The word ‘low’ here is just a matter of perception – it’s a carcinogen,” he was quoted as saying.
NYT said while the new project was expected to generate RM5 billion worth of exports or nearly 1% of the Malaysian economy starting late next year “but as Malaysia learned the hard way a few decades ago, refining rare earth ore usually leaves thousands of tonnes of low-level radioactive waste behind.”
According to the newspaper, the Bukit Merah Asian Rare Earth plant was still quietly undergoing a US$100 million clean-up exercise despite having shut down in 1992.
This might be one of the major setbacks to the idea of building a rare earth ore processing plant in Kuantan but NYT said the Malaysian government gave the green light following assurance by Lynas that it could be done safely.
It further reported that Lynas had been give a 12-year tax holiday.
With the cost for the Kuantan plant estimated to be about RM690 million and with some 2,500 labourers being employed, the project could break China’s dominance of the market.
Ninety-five percent of the world’s rare earth ore comes from China and the plant in Pahang, the homestate of Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak, would be the first rare earth ore processing plant outside of the communist nation in three decades.
NYT said that Beijing’s “chokehold” over global rare metal production had in many instances been used as a “trade weapon”.
China’s two-month embargo on trade with Japan over a territorial dispute and recent moves to limit exports had propelled world prices of the material to record highs, sending industrial countries scrambling for alternatives, added the report.
Industries appear gung-ho about Lynas’ investment in Malaysia as it is expected to meet nearly a third of the world’s demand.
For far too long now, successive Malaysian governments have chosen to ignore the protests of the rakyat. People complain about the lack of transparency in how companies are awarded contracts. Others wonder how a one man outfit with a RM1 paid up capital, can be awarded, or even win contracts, which are worth several hundred million ringgits.
No one is suggesting that Lynas Corp is a two-bit company. Lynas Corporation is a legitimate concern, but what is questionable is how Lynas received approval to build.
First, there had been insufficient public consultation.
Second, the first public meeting was too technical.
Third, there was no follow-up from this first meeting.
Fourth, the two MCA Aduns returned from visiting the Lynas mine in Australia and thought the Lynas rare earth project safe. Did they present their views to the Kuantan residents?
Fifth. There had been no detailed Environmental Impact Assessment presented for public scrutiny.
Sixth. It was only after intense public opposition in Kuantan that the senior management in Lynas Australia felt it necessary to send their top brass to engage with the public. However, this has yet to be arranged.
Governments, both local and in Putrajaya have been known to dismiss the concerns of the residents.
It is not just for a several hundred million ringgit project like Lynas Corp. Even smaller ones are affected.
A good example when residents’ views are brushed aside can be seen in the proposed cable car-project in Maxwell Hill (Bukit Larut).
Perak Menteri Besar Zambry Abdul Kadir, said that the project would boost Perak's tourism industry despite protests from the public, environmentalists and non-governmental organisations that the project would destroy the fragile eco-system, damage the water catchment area and is unsafe because of landslips. .
Zambry said: "Environmental Impact Assessment report was not required as the project did not involve major development -- no trees would be felled or clearing of land and there would be minimal hill-cutting, adding that helicopters would be used during construction".
Perak’s Department of Environment (DOE) director Abu Hassan Mohd Isa echoed his puppet master and said that an EIA on the project was not necessary: “The project does not come under the provisions or conditions where an EIA is required prior to approval.”
Despite protests from the residents and environmental groups, both Zambry and the DOE dismissed the people and brushed aside the need for public consultation. The authorities did not agree with an EIA.
To add insult to injury, Zambry and Abu Hassan would rather listen to the developer than to the public. The authorities chose to ignore the developer’s clear conflict of interest.
Abu Hassan said: “We've discussed with the developer and stressed that development will not cause damage to the hill resort.”
Well two years ago, the residents of Kuantan may have been persuaded by the reassurances of Lynas and the state government.
However, the nuclear power plant disaster of Japan has put paid to that and raised our awareness on all things radioactive.
That is why when the panellists from the Atomic Energy Licensing Board (AELB), DOE and Nuclear Malaysia spoke at the latest public meeting, the officials’ repeated claims that public safety was a priority were greeted with sarcastic “oohhs” of feigned praise.
“I am on your side. I am trying to safeguard your interests,” pleaded the AELB director general Raja Datuk Abdul Aziz Raja Adnan.
If the rakyat refuses to listen, it is not their fault. It is the fault of the BN administration which has always ignored their protests in the past.
"I want people to see," said photographer Paul Fusco. "For Lida, it has to be as painful as possible." Lida is the mother of Aleysa Beoia, a seventeen-year-old girl who Fusco watched die in 2000, as he was shooting a collection of work called Chernobyl Legacy.
His photographs show horror in black and white: An intelligent, lively four-year-old with almost no lymphatic system, his limbs swollen into monstrous trunks; a toddler whose torso blossoms into a tumor that cannot be removed, since his kidneys are contained within it; a baby born with its brain outside its body; children slithering around the floor, wordless pack animals, groaning and rolling, eating from bowls like dogs.
Fusco spent many months, over three visits, exploring state-run facilities dedicated to taking care of children damaged by radiation. They receive suitable care and affection, but no education. Many were born years after the 1986 accident and handed over at birth by devastated parents.
"Everything, anything that can go wrong with a body was there, and more," says Fusco. "It's astonishing the amount, the different kinds of destruction. It was like looking at a different race."
While his work found an audience in Europe, he says it received little attention from the press in the United States. However, after last month's catastrophe at the Fukushima Da-ichi plant in Japan, some have stumbled upon his Chernobyl Legacy slideshow at the Magnum Photos website, with its haunting music and forthright narration, and, trying to make sense of the situation, linked to his photographs online. (Fair warning: The photos are graphic.)
After viewing the slideshow, a blogger comments, "I can't help but have a fearful heart for Japan." Writes another: "This is so shocking! Disturbing! But real, unfortunately! Why doesn't humanity learn from its mistakes?"
The International Atomic Energy Agency views the accident in Japan as one more serious than the partial core meltdown at Three Mile Island, but says it's nowhere near the scale of the disaster that occurred in Ukraine twenty-five years ago. Yet each day, tests detect more contamination. Low levels of iodine-131 and cesium-137 in the drinking water of several prefectures, albeit "at levels far below those that would initiate recommendations for restrictions of drinking water," are high enough to prompt warnings for infants. The Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare has detected very low-level contamination in spinach, leafy vegetables, and some meat. Individuals living within a 20 kilometer radius of the plant have been evacuated, and those who live within 30 kilometers have been asked to leave voluntarily.
The history of nuclear technology is as short as it is inscrutable; victims, witnesses, physicians, and governments can only speak in theory. Only a month after the accident, long-term health risks are described as "patchy" and "unclear," as officials begin testing the playgrounds of schools and nurseries. Just as a precaution.
At three years old, Aleysa Beoia ran out to play in the contaminated rain. At eleven, she was diagnosed with lymphoma, just one of the innumerable, horrific tricks that high-level or long-term radiation can play on the body of a living thing.
Paul Fusco, now 80, spoke to me by phone from his home in San Francisco. He is not a nuclear expert, nor is he an expert on the physical effects of radiation, nor the situation in Fukushima. Rather, he is a professional photographer, and witness to a tragedy that forever changed his life and work. It is from that place he speaks.
"We can't let this happen again, ever," he said. "All these innocent people, all they did was be born and live here. And look at what's happened to them."
His voice still cracks with emotion when he recounts the heartbroken mother sitting at the bedside of her teenaged daughter, so alert, bright, and beautiful just the day before, watching as she slipped into a coma and died.
"I think of Lida a lot," he said. "Because I tried to do her honestly."
He remembers asking her if he could photograph Aleysa, just before she passed away. "Yes," she screamed. "I want everyone to see what they've done!"
"The whole world should see those kids," said Fusco, "Because it's no good for any of us. Everything we make as human beings, nature eventually breaks.
Justice' for Bhopal is just political farce
By M J Akbar
By M J Akbar
Trust me: if thousands of politicians, or their cousins, the nouveau riche, had died on that apocalyptic night in Bhopal, Anderson would still be in an Indian prison, rather than in America, protected by his company, and the company that his company keeps. But only the poor died in Bhopal. We treat our poor as dispensable chattel whose death is meaningless in the economic calculus, since there is no shortage of supply. Bhopal is class war.
Cynicism is never irrational. The irrational, often wrong, sometimes right, are impelled by instinct, heart or even conscience. Cynics are morality-proof. They prefer data to truth.
Delhi has set the gold standard for cynicism. It operates on four axioms: public memory is a dwarf; anger is effervescent; media can be massaged at the appropriate moment; any public crisis can be assuaged with crumbs, while the promotion of private interests continues off-screen.
Jairam Ramesh’s promise of a Green Tribunal in Bhopal is a classical instance of a crumb dipped in the pickle of hypocrisy. Where was this or any other tribunal in the last 26 years when the dead, the deformed and blind babies and the stillborn fetuses were a reminder that justice must be done? Or is this tribunal meant for the next onslaught by the dogs of chemical war upon the sleeping slums of Bhopal? Who was Veerappa Moily trying to fool when he claimed that the case against Warren Anderson had not been closed? Why doesn’t he keep the case open for a few more years, until God closes the chapter by taking Anderson away to whichever destination has been allotted to the butcher of Bhopal? A Group of Ministers has been appointed — merely to buy time until the return of amnesia.
The true Bhopal verdict was delivered within four days of the tragedy, in December 1984, not on June 7, 2010, when Anderson was smuggled out of Bhopal on a state government aircraft and then put on a plane to America. Since then we have witnessed a pretend-justice farce played out by government, police and the judiciary, including the Supreme Court. The last is most culpable, since we hold a Chief Justice of India like A M Ahmadi to higher standards of probity than we do politicians or policemen. Ahmadi got his proper thank you note after he retired.
Chief judicial magistrate Mohan Tiwari’s judgment served only one useful purpose. The sheer scale of its magnanimity towards the accused lit a fuse under the volcano of collective guilt. The lava is spewing from myriad crevices, scorching and burning many-layered masks that have hidden deceit for a generation. As memories were stoked, officials, some perhaps frustrated by the fact that their silence had not been rewarded, revealed how successive governments had intervened to slow down the judicial process and sabotage any chance of Anderson’s extradition. Union Carbide and its collaborators, including Indians of course, have sustained themselves with a lie, that it was an Indian disaster since the plant was built and run by Indians. The design is an exact replica of an American plant, and an American who was terrified of being tried in India was in charge of management.
The political establishment assumed that June 7 would be just another day in a long calendar, possibly punctuated by an occasional, futile scream. The court was fortified, and entry denied to petitioners, victims and media. My one memory of this courtroom, gleaned from television, shall be of the smug grin of an obese policemen laughing at two old women, their faces contorted by rage and frustration, who knew that the system which had stolen their lives had also cheated their children in death.
Trust me: if thousands of politicians, or their cousins, the nouveau riche, had died on that apocalyptic night in Bhopal, Anderson would still be in an Indian prison, rather than in America, protected by his company, and the company that his company keeps. But only the poor died in Bhopal. We treat our poor as dispensable chattel whose death is meaningless in the economic calculus, since there is no shortage of supply. Bhopal is class war.
Is it surprising — or not? — that while even the Obama administration jumped in with some gratuitous advice, Dr Manmohan Singh had nothing to say? Perhaps the Prime Minister would have been repetitive. In essence, the signal from Washington and Delhi is the same: forget the dead, get on with multinational life.
Barack Obama was not elected to ensure justice for the Indian victim. He is in the White House to protect American business, and defend the two-laws theory that motivates American international relations, whether in war or peace. When 11 American workers were killed in an oil rig blow-up in the Gulf of Mexico, Washington demanded $1.5 billion from BP. Nearly 20,000 dead in Bhopal, half a million affected, and the total compensation is $470 million. Do the math. Obama has promised to penalize BP for the current oil spill to the extent of many billions of dollars. Magistrate Manoj Tiwari wants only Rs 5 lakh as reparation from Carbide for mass slaughter.
When Exxon was fined $5 billion for the Alaska oil spill, nearly $40,000 was spent on the rehabilitation of every affected sea otter. The victims of Bhopal are, so far, entitled to $200 each.
Don’t do the math. It may turn you into a cynic.
Chronology
Updated November 2010
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