Chile declares huge Easter Island marine reserve

Yahoo – AFP, Dave Clark, 6 Oct 2015

With its new marine reserves Chile now has a million square kilometers of sea

 under protection from commercial fishing -- "one of the biggest in the world"

(AFP Photo/Todd Essick)

Viña del Mar (Chile) (AFP) - Chile declared huge new marine reserves in the Pacific in water off Easter Island on Monday as it hosted a major conference on protecting the world's oceans and fisheries.

The host's announcement came as the United States unveiled two smaller protected areas and a major global initiative to better police over-fishing and track illegal catches.

Chile's President Michelle Bachelet opened the Our Ocean conference by declaring a 243,630-square-mile (631,368-square-kilometer) sanctuary around iconic Easter Island.

Taken together with its existing marine reserves, Bachelet said, Chile now has a million square kilometers of sea under protection from commercial fishing -- "one of the biggest in the world."

Easter Island's waters are a spawning ground for tuna, shark, marlin and swordfish and a food source for the Rapa Nui people of the island, who were involved in designing the reserve.

It joins reserves declared by the United States, Britain and New Zealand off the US Pacific Islands, Pitcairn and the Kermadecs, as areas protected from the depredations of unregulated fishing.

A member of the Easter Island delegation dances next to US Secretary of State 

John Kerry (C) and English businessman Richard Branson (L) during the "Our Ocean" 

summit in Vina del Mar, Chile, October 5, 2015 (AFP Photo/Martin Bernetti)

Charitable institutions the Pew Charitable Trusts and The Bertarelli Foundation welcomed the decision, which they said would protect 27 endangered species and the people who fish there.

And Pedro Edmunds Paoa, the mayor of Easter Island's Rapa Nui community, came to the mainland to thank the conference and welcome the news that his people would be involved in the plan.

"We must think of optimizing our resources. Our resource is the sea and the future of Rapa Nui is the sea," he said.

Chile hosted Our Ocean in the picturesque Pacific port city of Valparaiso, a second annual day-long get-together for states and foundations to pledge support for the marine ecosystem.

President Barack Obama addressed the meeting in a video message to announce two new US National Marine Sanctuaries.

An 875-square-mile (2,300-square-kilometer) area of Lake Michigan in Wisconsin that holds dozens of historic wrecks will be protected, US officials said.

Mallows Bay on the Potomac River in Maryland, a tidal wetland and a graveyard for scuttled warships since the Revolutionary War, will also become a reserve.

"And, in the coming months, I will look for even more opportunities to protect our waters," Obama said.

"We will leave our children a planet as full of possibilities as the one we inherited."

Several more countries and foundations pledged funds and proposed initiatives to fight pollution, overfishing and the acidification of the ocean by carbon emissions.

Last year's conference in Washington saw $800 million pledged to support various environmental initiatives and this year's host Chile hoped for similar success.

But perhaps the initiative with the most long-term potential is a US plan to regulate the world fish trade.

According to a 2014 study by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, 29 percent of the world's fish stocks which have been adequately studied are overexploited.

Regulation and quota systems vary wildly around the world and some countries -– particularly in Southeast Asia -– have been accused of allowing large-scale unregulated fishing.

Fishing regulation and quota systems vary wildly around the world and some

 countries -– particularly in Southeast Asia -– have been accused of allowing

large-scale unregulated fishing (AFP Photo/Jay Directo)

Targeting 'hot spots'

Part of the US plan, dubbed Sea Scout, will seek to unite governments around the world in the fight to identify illegal fishing vessels and fleets and bar them from landing catches.

Under the plan, experts will identify regional fishing "hot spots" and target them for enforcement by member states' fisheries protection teams, the White House said.

The US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration will track suspicious fishing boats by satellite and alert authorities in Indonesia, the Philippines and other countries.

Meanwhile, Washington will make its own fishing industry and importers serving its huge market –- Americans eat 4.6 billion pounds of seafood per year -– track products from their origin.

US Secretary of State John Kerry was in Chile to present the US plan, and took the time to talk to a group of students about the challenge of allying technology and law enforcement.

"The problem is there are people fishing illegally, unregulated, vast areas of the ocean where people use fishing methods that have been prohibited," he said.

Kerry said governments need "the technology, the armed forces of countries, the navies, coast guard; we need police and major commitment by countries to come together to focus on enforcement."

The conference will also take on the problem of pollution from the land -- such as agricultural pesticide and fertilizer run-off and waste plastics -- hurting the sea.

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Nauru opens gates at refugee detention center

Nauru has said that it will allow refugees held at a controversial Australian detention center to move freely around the tiny island. But the move has not allayed human rights concerns about conditions in the camp.

Deutsche Welle, 5 Oct 2015

The Nauru government said on Monday that asylum seekers at the center would no longer be kept locked up, but given complete freedom of movement on the Pacific island, which has an area of some 21 square kilometers (8.1 square miles).

It also said it would ensure that all asylum applications by the 600 refugees still living on the island would be processed by the end of this week.

"The start of detention-free processing is a landmark day for Nauru and represents an even more compassionate program, which was always the intention of our government," said Justice Minister David Adeang.

Widespread condemnation

The United Nations and human rights groups have strongly criticized the harsh conditions at the camp on Nauru, which was set up as part of Canberra's hardline asylum-seeker policies, under which people trying to reach Australia by boat must have their asylum claims processed outside Australian territory.

Another camp has been established on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea.

An independent UN investigator last month postponed a fact'finding trip toAustralia, complaining that the government was not cooperating in helping him gain access to the offshore camps.

'Fundamental problems remain'

Adeang said Australia, which welcomed Nauru's announcement, was providing more police support and health care for the asylum seekers to aid the transition to an "open center."

Refugee advocates, who have alleged that a number of human rights violations, including rape and child abuse, have occurred at the offshore camps, say the change coincides with a court case this week in Australia in which the legality of Canberra's refugee policy is being challenged.

Rights groups say children in the
camps are at especial risk

A spokesman from the Melbourne-based Human Rights Law Center said the move did little to help the cause of people detained on the island.

"A transition to an open center [is] and important and hard-won improvement, but letting people go for a walk does not resolve the fundamental proglems caused by indefintely warehousing them on a tiny remote island," Daniel Webb said, calling the camp environment "clearly unsafe for women and children."

Compassionate approach?

Australia has defended its harsh policy, which has also seen boats carrying refugees turned back to Indonesia or other countries of departure, as being necessary to stop people drowning at sea. No one processed at the Nauru or Papua New Guinea camps is eligible to move to Australia, even if their asylum claims are adjudged to be valid.

New Australian Prime Minster Malcolm Turnbull last month voiced concern about conditions in the camps, but did not indicate any major change in policy.

tj/msh (AFP, Reuters)

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Canadian wins Swedish prize for fight for Inuit rights

Yahoo – AFP, 1 October 2015

The Inuit culture in the Arctic is acutely threatened by climate change," according

to the Right Livelihood jury (AFP Photo)

Stockholm (AFP) - Inuit and Arctic activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier of Canada on Thursday won the 2015 Right Livelihood Award, the jury for the Swedish human rights prize announced.

Watt-Cloutier was honoured for her "lifelong work to protect the Inuit of the Arctic and defend their right to maintain their livelihoods and culture, which are acutely threatened by climate change," the jury said in a statement.

Sheila Watt-Cloutier addresses the 

2007 Women Leaders Global
Security meeting in New York 
(AFP Photo/Don Emmert)

She shared the prize with two other laureates: Ugandan activist Kasha Jacqueline Nabageserales, who fights for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and intersexual (LGBTI) communities, and Italian doctor Gino Strada who founded the medical charity Emergency that helps rehabilitate war victims.

The three laureates will share the 3.0-million-kronor (320,00-euro, $358,000) prize sum.

The foreign minister of the Marshall Islands, Tony de Brum, and the islands' entire population meanwhile won the Right Livelihood Honorary Award for their "their vision and courage to take legal action against the nuclear powers for failing to honour their disarmament obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty."

Swedish-German philatelist Jakob von Uexkull founded the donor-funded prize in 1980 after the Nobel Foundation behind the Nobel Prizes refused to create awards honouring efforts in the fields of the environment and international development.

They were introduced "to honour and support those offering practical and exemplary answers to the most urgent challenges facing us today," according to the Right Livelihood Award Foundation, which oftens calls its distinction the "alternative Nobel prize."

Related Article:

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New Zealand to create massive marine sanctuary

Yahoo – AFP, 29 Sep 2015

A spotted black grouper is seen in the waters of the Kermadec Islands, off of 

New Zealand's northeast coast (AFP Photo/Malcom Francis)

Wellington (AFP) - New Zealand has unveiled plans to create a South Pacific marine sanctuary the size of France, saying it would protect one of the world's most pristine ocean environments.

Prime Minister John Key said the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary would cover an area of 620,000 square kilometres (240,000 square miles) about 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) off New Zealand's northeast coast.

Announcing the plans at the United Nations in New York on Monday, Key said the Kermadec area was home to thousands of important species, including whales, dolphins, seabirds and endangered turtles.

"(It) is one of the most geographically and geologically diverse areas in the world," he said in a statement.

Conservation efforts are underway in 

the Pacific to create a network of 

marine parks across the region

(AFP Photo/Todd Essick)

"It contains the world's longest underwater volcanic arc and the second deepest ocean trench at 10 kilometres deep."

The sanctuary will prevent fishing and mineral exploitation in an area where scientists regularly discover new marine species.

Conservation groups applauded the move, saying it added to a network of protected areas in the Pacific that now covered more than 3.5 million square kilometres.

"We congratulate the government for taking decisive action to protect this incredibly special area from mining and fishing," World Wildlife Fund New Zealand chief executive Chris Howe said.

"This decision puts New Zealand back at the forefront of marine protection on the global stage."

Globally important

Scientists also applauded the decision to ban all forms of resource extraction from the marine zone, which is remote and largely unsurveyed or scientifically sampled.

"The Kermadec region is an exceptional place and is very much in need of protection before large-scale exploitation really commences," said Jonathan Gardner from Victoria University's school of biological sciences in Wellington.

"As a contribution to large scale marine conservation the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary is globally important."

The variation in the area, which spans from tropical to sub-tropical waters, means it boasts a high diversity of habitat types including active undersea volcanoes, ridges and the Kermadec Trench itself, said Malcolm Clark from New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research.

Some organisms are only found in that part of the world while others, such as whales, include it in their migration routes, he said.

"We are just beginning to understand the abundance of life there," said Bronwen Golder from the Pew environmental organisation.

"But we know that creating this marine sanctuary will safeguard rare habitats and species critical for healthy ecosystems throughout the South Pacific."

New Zealand's Environment Minister Nick Smith said oceans were the new frontier for environmental protection, making up 72 percent of the globe and home to half of the world's species, but with only two percent protected despite pressures from over-fishing, mining and pollution.

Conservation efforts are underway in the Pacific to create a network of marine parks across the region to ensure one of the world's last pristine ocean ecosystems is managed sustainably.

In 2012 the Cook Islands unveiled a 1,065 million square kilometre marine park while Kiribati and Tokelau have also declared huge protected zones.

New Zealand said it hoped to have legislation enacted in parliament to ensure the sanctuary in place by October 2016.

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Easter Island’s Carnival Magic Seduces Tourists

Jakarta Globe, Mike Leyral, Feb 22, 2015

People take part in dance contest in Hanga Roa on Chile's Easter Island (or Rapa
 Nui as its inhabitants call it) in the Pacific Ocean on Feb. 10, 2015 as part of the 47th
 edition of Tapati, an all-out 15-day contest between rival teams to crown a new monarch.
(AFP Photo/Gregory Boissy)

Far from home on Chile’s Easter Island for Carnival festivities, one middle-aged American woman throws caution to the wind. Stripped down to a thong, she lets a local reveler paint her chest.

“If someone had told me I would end up walking down the street almost naked, I would never have believed it,” the woman, who only gave her first name Susan, said.

Susan is one of a few thousand tourists who joined the Pacific island’s 9,000 residents for Tapati, an exuberant mix of music, dance and traditional sports that takes place for two weeks every February.

In the island’s only town Hanga Roa, revelers wait in a long line under the blistering tropical summer sun to take part in a time-honored ritual — a plunge in an old tub filled with clay.

A man known as Ale then spreads with his hand this reddish-brown natural paint on the bodies of other locals — and any tourist ready to participate.

Then, other lines form in front of tubs filled with white and yellow paint.

It’s time for the Rapa Nui — the Polynesian word for both the island and its residents — to paint symbols, inspired by the local Birdman legend, or characters from the long-lost Rongorongo system of writing.

Shortly after 5:00 p.m., a warrior blows into an enormous shell, signaling the start of the nightly parade, which features colorful floats and dancers in elaborate costumes, not unlike the massive Carnival celebrations in Rio de Janeiro.

The Tapati festival is at once a test of masculine strength and feminine grace celebrating Polynesian pride.

Easter Island is at the southernmost point of the so-called Polynesian Triangle — a Pacific region with Hawaii and New Zealand at the other corners.

The Unesco World Heritage Site is famous for its nearly 900 massive stone monuments — the Moai, carved by the Rapa Nui hundreds of years ago.

Rival teams are locked in an all-out contest to crown a new Tapati queen, who reigns for a year.

Numerous races and other contests take place — including reed board surfing, underwater fishing, fruit-carrying, a triathlon and horse races — but the nightly parades and dance competitions are the highlight.

Locals spend months carving out large wooden statues for the parade floats from Eucalyptus trees representing deified ancestors, such as the mystical Moai stone giants or the Birdman.

One night, a man draped in animal skins leads the way on his motorcycle, featuring a bull’s skull on the steering wheel.

Behind him, a woman dressed as a mermaid — her costume made of all-natural materials including a tail taken from a tuna caught just that morning — poses on a float decorated with huge wooden octopuses.

People originally from the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia play large pahu drums, while the Rapa Nui prefer horse jaws that make a light sound close to maracas when the teeth hit one another.

Some of the Tapati activities reflect a more Latin vibe taken from Chile — the elderly do battle to be the accordion king, as young people display their tango skills.

But the Polynesian dance competitions are fierce.

At the Hanga Vare Vare, the main festival stage in Hanga Roa, dancers sway sensually to the Polynesian drum rhythms.

Agence France-Presse

Related Article:

The Mysteries Revealed of Rapa Nui (5) - Oct 18-21, 2014 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll)

"The Timing of Creation" – Aug 12, 2012 (a message from Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll)

Payouts promised to Fijian veterans of British nuclear testing

Fijian victims of British nuclear testing in 1958 are to get compensation, according to Fiji's government. Seventy military personnel were taken to Christmas Island, a test site in the Pacific, more than 50 years ago.

Deutsche Welle, 27 Jan 2015

Fiji's government said on Tuesday that military veterans exposed to radiation 56 years ago or their families are to get compensation for subsequent health problems, including cancer of the blood.

The Fiji Sun newspaper quoted the country's National Security and Defense Minister Timoci Natuva as saying Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama would outline compensation details on Friday.

Maleli Naigulegu, now aged 80 and one of the surviving veterans who has campaigned for decades for assistance, told the Fiji Sun it was "the greatest news."

"At last my group has been recognized," the former laboratory technician said.

During British Cold War nuclear testing in 1957 and 1958, some 70 Fijian military personnel were sent to Christmas Island on board New Zealand naval ships.

The island is now part of the Pacific nation of Kiribati.

Naigulegu said the Fijian personnel were not briefed on the purpose of their deployment to the test zone.

Several Pacific test zones

Last year, a lawsuit was filed at the International Court of Justice by another Pacific nation, the Marshall Islands, where the US conducted 60 nuclear tests between 1946 and 1958.

The Marshalls, with a population of 70,000, became fully independent in 1986 after being administered in the past by the United States.

The lawsuit seeks to hold the US and eight other nuclear-weapon nations accountable for breaching or allowing violations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Nuclear weapons have been used twice - at Nagasaki and Hiroshima in Japan by the US, near the close of World War Two in the Pacific region.

Several thousand tests

From 1946 until the 1990s nuclear powers conducted more than 2,000 nuclear tests worldwide.

A French 'test' over Mururoa in 1971

The United State's largest was at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific in 1954. The former Soviet Union's largest test "Tsar Bomba" took place in 1961.

France conducted tests in French Polynesia in the 1970s and 1990s, prompting strong protests from New Zealand, Australia and environmental rights group Greenpeace.

Last year, remote southern Australian land used by Britain to test atomic bombs in the 1950s and 1960s was handed back to its Aboriginal owners, the Maralinga Tjarutja, after attempts to decontaminate it.

Around 16,300 atomic bombs remain, held mainly by the US and Russia, despite the various versions of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START).

Some 70,000 to 80,000 had existed at the height of the Cold War.

ipj/jlw (AFP, IPS)

A huge dome is shown in 1980 covering a crater left by one of the 43

nuclear blasts on Runit Island, in the Marshall Islands, the fallout from

which is expected to last 25,000 years (US Defence Nuclear Agency/AFP)

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Rising sea levels unearth 'WWII Japan soldiers' in Pacific

The West Australian – AFP, June 10, 2014

Rising sea levels unearth WWII Japan soldiers in Pacific (AFP)

Tokyo (AFP) - The skeletal remains of what are believed to be Japanese soldiers have been exposed on a remote Pacific island where rising sea levels have eroded the seashore, Japanese and local officials said Monday.

The bodies of around 20 men have emerged from the earth at a small coastal cemetery because of the action of the ocean on the Marshall Islands, a place scientists have long warned is vulnerable to rising sea levels caused by climate change.

"The government of the Marshall Islands has informed us that remains of about 20 human bodies have been exposed on the seashore of Enniburr island," said a Japanese official, referring to one of the small islands that forms part of the Pacific nation.

"The remains, believed to be those of Japanese soldiers, surfaced after waves eroded a cemetery built on the seashore, according to the Marshall Islands government," he said.

Annual peak tides in February and March have caused heavy shoreline damage in Majuro, Kwajalein and other atolls in the Marshalls in recent years, exposing graves and damaging houses.

In 2008, a cemetery on the Majuro shoreline was badly damaged when it was battered by high tides and ocean surges.

The low-lying Marshall Islands, a Pacific atoll chain that sits barely a metre above sea level, announced plans at the time for a wall to hold back rising seas.

Japanese artefacts

"The remains appear to all be male between the ages of 18-40 and strongly appear to be of Asian descent," Michael L. Terlep, chief archaeologist at the Marshall Islands Historic Preservation Office, told AFP on Monday.

"This is supported by the Japanese artefacts at the site (including a soy sauce bottle, military buttons, and Japanese coins) as well as historical data that suggest United States forces confronted Japanese resistance at the northern end of Enniburr."

The Marshall Islands, like other Pacific island nations, are increasingly being threatened by rising sea levels, which have left previously safe parts of the shore at risk from erosion.

"In the tropical western Pacific where a large number of small island communities exist, rates (of sea-level rise) up to four times the global average (approximately 12 millimetres a year) have been reported between 1993 and 2009," according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

"It is important to note... rising sea level will incrementally increase the rate and extent of erosion in the future," added the report, which was issued in March.

Japan controlled the Marshall Islands from 1914 until the final stages of the war, when they were taken by the United States.

The island country, made of more than two dozen atolls, became independent in 1986, but part of it -- Kwajalein Atoll, where Enniburr island also sits -- remains under the control of the US military, the Japanese official said.

"Japan will probably send a research team for the exposed human remains, but no concrete plan has been made yet since it is under the management of the US military," he said.

Japan has for decades been trying to retrieve the remains of millions of Japanese nationals -- including soldiers -- scattered throughout the Asia-Pacific, swathes of which were controlled by the Japanese military until the later years of World War II.

Marshall Islands sues nine nuclear powers over failure to disarm

Pacific nation that was site of 67 nuclear tests between 1946 and 1958 accuses states of 'flagrant denial of human justice'

theguardian.com, Julian Borger, diplomatic editor,  Thursday 24 April 2014, 11.11

Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands, where a 15-megaton device equivalent to a thousand
Hiroshima blasts, detonated in 1954. Photograph: US Air Force - digital version

The Marshall Islands is suing the nine countries with nuclear weapons at the international court of justice at The Hague, arguing they have violated their legal obligation to disarm.

In the unprecedented legal action, comprising nine separate cases brought before the ICJ on Thursday, the Republic of the Marshall Islands accuses the nuclear weapons states of a "flagrant denial of human justice". It argues it is justified in taking the action because of the harm it suffered as a result of the nuclear arms race.

The Pacific chain of islands, including Bikini Atoll and Enewetak, was the site of 67 nuclear tests from 1946 to 1958, including the "Bravo shot", a 15-megaton device equivalent to a thousand Hiroshima blasts, detonated in 1954. The Marshallese islanders say they have been suffering serious health and environmental effects ever since.

The island republic is suing the five "established" nuclear weapons states recognised in the 1968 nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) – the US, Russia (which inherited the Soviet arsenal), China, France and the UK – as well as the three countries outside the NPT who have declared nuclear arsenals – India, Pakistan and North Korea, and the one undeclared nuclear weapons state, Israel.

The NPT, which came into force in 1970 is essentially a compact between the non-weapon states, who pledged to not to acquire nuclear weapons, and the weapons states, who in return undertook to disarm under article VI of the treaty.

Although the size of the arsenals are sharply down from the height of the cold war, the Marshall Islands' legal case notes there remain more than 17,000 warheads in existence, 16,000 of them owned by Russia and the US – enough to destroy all life on the planet.

"The long delay in fulfilling the obligations enshrined in article VI of the NPT constitutes a flagrant denial of human justice," the court documents say.

The Marshall Islands case draws attention to the fact that the weapons states are currently in the process of modernising their nuclear weapons, which it portrays as a clear violation of the NPT.

The case against Britain, which has an estimated total inventory of 225 warheads and is in the process of replacing its submarine-launched Trident arsenal, states that: "The UK has not pursued in good faith negotiations to cease the nuclear arms race at an early date through comprehensive nuclear disarmament or other measures, and instead is taking actions to improve its nuclear weapons system and to maintain it for the indefinite future."

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament's general secretary, Kate Hudson, said: "The nuclear-armed states continue to peddle the myth that they are committed to multilateral disarmament initiatives, while squandering billions to modernise their nuclear arsenals. The UK government's plans to replace Trident make a mockery of its professed belief in multilateral frameworks – and now in addition to huge public opposition in the UK, it will also face an international legal challenge to expose its hypocrisy."

A huge dome is shown in 1980 covering a crater left by one of the

43 nuclear blasts on Runit Island, in the Marshall Islands, the fallout

 from which is expected to last 25,000 years (US Defence Nuclear Agency/

AFP/File)

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Islanders afraid to go home 60 years after Bikini Atoll H-bomb

Google – AFP, Giff Johnson (AFP), 1 March 2014

File photo of Rongelap Island, which was engulfed by a snowstorm of

 radioactive fallout on March 1, 1954 following a test by the United States of

a 15-megaton hydrogen bomb (AFP/File)

Majuro (Marshall Islands) — The Marshall Islands marks 60 years since the devastating US hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll Saturday, with angry exiled residents saying they are too fearful ever to go home.

Part of the intense Cold War nuclear arms race, the 15-megaton Bravo test on March 1, 1954 was a thousand times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

It vaporised one island and exposed thousands in the surrounding area to radioactive fallout.

A July 1946 photo of a US atomic test on

Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean (AFP/File)

As those who remember that terrifying day and younger generations gather in the Marshall Islands' capital of Majuro to commemorate the anniversary, many exiles refuse to go back to the zones that were contaminated, despite US safety assurances.

"I won't move there," Evelyn Ralpho-Jeadrik, 33, said of her home atoll, Rongelap, which was engulfed in a snowstorm of fallout from Bravo and evacuated two days after the test.

"I do not believe it's safe and I don't want to put my children at risk."

People returned to live on Rongelap in 1957 but fled again in 1985 amid fears -- later proved correct -- about residual radiation.

Rongelap, one of more than 60 in a necklace of coral islands, has been cleaned up as part of a US-funded $45 million programme, but Ralpho-Jeadrik has no intention of going back.

"I will be forever fearful. The US told my mother it was safe and they returned to Rongelap only to be contaminated again," she said.

It is not just their homes which have been lost, says Lani Kramer, 42, a councilwoman in Bikini's local government, but an entire swathe of the islands' culture.

"As a result of being displaced, we've lost our cultural heritage -- our traditional customs and skills, which for thousands of years were passed down from generation to generation," she said.

Bikini islanders have lived in exile since they were moved for the first weapons tests in 1946, when Kramer's own grandparents were evacuated.

When US government scientists declared Bikini safe for resettlement, some residents were allowed to return in the early 1970s.

But they were removed again in 1978 after ingesting high levels of radiation from eating local foods grown on the former nuclear test site.

- 'The sky turned red' -

"After they were exposed like that I can never trust what the US tells us (about Bikini)," said Kramer who says she wants justice for the generations forced to leave.

"We need to go to the US Congress. But no one, not my local government or the national government, is engaged with the US Congress on this issue right now."

The US has expressed regret about islanders' exposure to high doses of radiation during the Bravo test.

"While international scientists did study the effects of that accident on the human population unintentionally affected, the United States never intended for Marshallese to be hurt by the tests," the US embassy in Majuro says on its website.

Acting US under secretary of state Rose Gottemoeller is participating in remembrance day activities in Majuro.

Also attending the week-long commemorations, which include a parade on Saturday, is 80-year-old Matashichi Oishi -- one of 23 fishermen aboard the Japanese Lucky Dragon boat, which was 60 miles (100 kilometres) from the bomb.

"I remember the brilliant flash in the west, the frightening sound that followed, and the extraordinary sky which turned red as far as I could see," he said.

All of the crew became sick and many died from their illnesses -- their plight is well-known in Japan, with echoes of the victims at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

A visiting group of Japanese students from the Fukushima nuclear disaster zone have also been sharing their experiences.

A huge dome is shown in 1980 covering a crater left by one of the

43 nuclear blasts on Runit Island, in the Marshall Islands, the fallout

 from which is expected to last 25,000 years (US Defence Nuclear Agency/

AFP/File)

"The government says 'don't worry' (about radiation exposure) but recently we've seen many cases of thyroid problems be confirmed in the Fukushima area," said Kai Sato, a Fukushima University student.

"People don't know what is the correct information to believe."

US nuclear experiments in the Marshall Islands ended in 1958 after 67 tests.

But a UN report in 2012 said the effects were longlasting.

Special Rapporteur Calin Georgescu, in his report to the UN Human Rights Council, said that "near-irreversible environmental contamination" had led to the loss of livelihoods and many people continued to experience "indefinite displacement".

The report called for the US to provide extra compensation to settle claims by nuclear-affected Marshall Islanders and end a "legacy of distrust".

The Nuclear Claims Tribunal awarded more than $2 billion in personal injury and land damage claims arising from the nuclear tests, but stopped paying after a US-provided $150 million compensation fund was exhausted.

Related Article:

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