Suffering from U.S. nuclear tests, Marshall Islands asks for more compensation | Nuclear tests | United States
Beijing, July 14 (Xinhua) - Marshall Islands Foreign Minister Jack Aden urged the United States to provide more funding to address the legacy issues caused by dozens of nuclear tests conducted by the United States in this Pacific island country in the mid-20th century.
The United States seeks to expand its influence in Pacific island countries, but refuses to pay any more for this old debt.
This is a scenery shot on September 3, 2013 in Majuro, the capital of the Republic of the Marshall Islands. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Huang Xingwei
On the 13th, Aden called on the US Congress to push the US government to continue negotiations on renewing the Free Association Agreement between the two countries during a hearing of the US Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. "There are still some issues that should be included in the negotiations, especially increasing the funding supply to people affected by nuclear tests," he said.
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From 1946 to 1958, the United States conducted 67 nuclear tests on the flat and open Bikini Atoll and Eniwetok Atoll in the northwest of the Marshall Islands. On March 1, 1954, the United States detonated a hydrogen bomb codenamed "Applause Castle" at the Bikini Atoll. This is the largest nuclear bomb tested by the United States in atmospheric nuclear testing, with a power thousands of times greater than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.
This is the Capitol building captured on January 19, 2023 in the US capital, Washington. Shen Jizhong
The long-term nuclear test by the United States has left a huge trauma on the Marshall Islands, causing thousands of residents to suffer from serious illnesses such as radiation and cancer. The ecological environment has been irreversibly damaged, and local residents still suffer from various sequelae to this day.
The Marshall Islands signed the Free Association Agreement with the United States in 1983, and the United States provided economic assistance to the Malaysian side. The Malaysian side relies on the United States for security. According to Reuters, after the agreement is renewed, the current version of the economic terms will expire on September 30th of this year, the end of the US fiscal year. The two sides reached a memorandum of understanding in January this year to renew the agreement again, and the relevant budget needs to be included in the next fiscal year's US government budget as soon as possible.
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The US government announced in May that it had reached an agreement with two other Pacific island countries, Palau and Micronesia, to renew the Free Association Agreement and hoped to complete negotiations with the Marshall Islands in the coming weeks. The United States plans to provide a total of $7.1 billion in economic assistance to these three countries over the next 20 years.
On February 24th, the Pacific Island Forum Special Leaders Informal Meeting concluded in the city of Nadi, Fiji. The picture shows the outgoing rotating chairman of the Pacific Island Forum and Prime Minister of Fiji, Rambuca, attending a press conference after the meeting. Shen Jizhong
At present, there are differences between the two sides on how to solve the legacy issues caused by the US nuclear test on the Marshall Islands, which has become the main obstacle to the renewal negotiations.
In 1986, the United States attempted to provide approximately $150 million to address the legacy of tuberculosis testing in the Marshall Islands. An independent international court ruled in 1988 that the United States should compensate the Marshall Islands $2.3 billion for the health and environmental damage caused by nuclear tests. This ruling was rejected by the United States. According to US media reports, only a few million dollars are truly used for disaster relief in the United States, and there is a risk of leakage from the US military's concrete dome shaped "sarcophagus" buried in irradiated soil and other nuclear pollutants on Lunette Island in Eniwetok Atoll.
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However, the US President's Pacific Island negotiating envoy, Yin Rushang, insisted that the legacy of nuclear testing had been "resolved" in the 1980s.
On September 28, 2021, Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States, attended a congressional hearing in Washington, D.C. Shen Jizhong
Yin Rushang said at the hearing on the 13th that the position of the Marshall Islands has left him "confused". He stated that the legacy issues of nuclear testing were "resolved" in the 1980s, and according to the memorandum of understanding reached in January this year, the United States will provide Malaysia with $2.3 billion in funding over 20 years, including a $700 million trust fund that can be used for the aftermath of islands and reefs affected by nuclear testing. "I have told my colleagues in the Marshall Islands, listen, there is no more money," Yin Rushang said.
He later told Reuters that the conditions offered by the United States were "very generous", and he was willing to continue discussing with the Marshall Islands side "how to spend this money and where to spend it".
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Yin Rushang also said at the hearing that he believes the Marshall Islands government's settlement of old accounts is due to domestic political needs. Aden refuted Yin Rushang's statement and expressed "sadness and disappointment" towards the US's attempt to reverse the situation.