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Living in the Shadow of an Atom Cloud: The Search for Victims’ Redress after China’s Nuclear Tests

Press Reminder
27 February 2012
Contact:  World Uyghur Congress www.uyghurcongress.org
0049 (0) 89 5432 1999 or [email protected]

The nuclear accident at Fukushima, Japan, has once again shown risks of atomic programmes whether for war or peace. A year after the accident, more than 150,000 have had to flee their homes because of radiation contamination. Fukushima has reawakened international attention and created awareness on the devastating risks last raised by the Chernobyl incident of 1986.

Today, millions of people affected by military atomic tests and civil nuclear accidents over the last 50 years in different parts of the world are awaiting recognition and compensation for the health and environmental effects suffered, among them the predominantly Uyghur population in East Turkestan, China. Three decades of nuclear testing in the Lop Nor testing site have affected hundreds of thousands, and probably millions of people in the area. However, their fate is surrounded by silence.

To help lift this silence, László Tőkés MEP, in cooperation with Kristiina Ojuland MEP and Vytautas Landsbergis MEP, will convene a conference, ‘50 Years After Test 596: China’s Nuclear Programme in East Turkestan and Its Impact Today’ at the European Parliament in Brussels on 29 February 2012 in collaboration with the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO), the World Uyghur Congress (WUC), and the Belgian Uyghur Association.

Among those contributing to the conference will be Enver Tohti (Independent Medical Researcher), Vincent Metten (International Campaign for Tibet), Dominique Lalanne (Nuclear Physicist and Chair of Abolition 2000 Europe), Robert Knoth and Antoinette de Jong (Authors of “Certificate no.  000358, Nuclear Devastation in Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Belarus, the Urals and Siberia”), Hanno Schedler (Society for Threatened Peoples), and a FIDH Representative. WUC Secretary General, Dolkun Isa, and Marino Busdachin, UNPO General Secretary, will contribute to the Opening Remarks.

The Lop Nor testing site, located in East Turkestan (also known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region), was used for a total of 46 individual nuclear detonations over three decades (1964–1996).  These were the largest series of tests to be carried out in a populated area. Since the termination of the tests in 1996, the environmental and health impact of radioactive contamination in the area has never been fully known and Lop Nor remains largely inaccessible.

More information on the conference is available from

www.uyghurcongress.org/en/?p=13832 and www.unpo.org/article/13835

For media queries please contact:

Andrew Swan (English)
+32 (0)472 577 518
[email protected]

Abdulmuttelip Imerov (French)
+32 (0)488 048 655
[email protected]

Details of the event:

Wednesday, 29 February 2012, 9.30 – 12.30
Room P7C050, Paul-Henri Spaak Building, European Parliament
60 Rue Wiertz, Brussels, Belgium

For registration and information please contact: [email protected]

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