Tokyo (Reuters) – A year after the nuclear crisis of Fukushima Prefecture, the Japan Government remains too slow to provide sanitary controls and information to citizens, leaving them confused and suspicious of authorities, said Human Rights Watch Tuesday.
“A year later, we’re not really seeing basic health services in an accessible manner and we are not seeing people receive information accurate, coherent and not contradictory on a regular basis,” said Reuters Jane Cohen, researcher of the group for human rights based in New York.
“People have to count at least accurate information in order to assess their situation based on real facts”.
The tsunami that struck the coast of the Pacific Japan on March 11, 2011 devastated the nuclear power plant in Fukushima, located 240 km northeast of Tokyo, causing leakage of radiation that they contaminated land, air and water and forced to flee to tens of thousands of people.
Since then, many of the inhabitants of the Fukushima Prefecture have been living with fear of the effects of radiation on their health.
“There should be a plan clear and places to measure radiation around the world in Fukushima”, said Cohen, who studied the situation of the inhabitants. He suggested that the City Council could have to ask borrow medical equipment or bring more optional.
The Government of the prefecture is providing medical check-ups for children and pregnant women, they tend to be more vulnerable to radiation, but the process is taking time.
360,000 Minors of 18 years at the time of the disaster will be subject to analysis of thyroid for the rest of their lives. So far has examined 40,000, said a leader of the Fukushima Prefecture Government.
About 380,000 children and pregnant women have right to to measure them the internal radiation exposure levels and 15.400 as they had done in January, according to the website of the Government.
The concerns of the inhabitants of Fukushima are aggravated by the lack of reliable data on their situation, said Cohen, a problem arose at an early stage of the nuclear crisis.
The Office of the Prime Minister extended gradually the evacuation zone 20 kilometres in the first two days after the crisis. But it did public immediately forecasts by computer – called SPEEDI – showing the direction in which diseminarÃan radioactive material, due to poor internal communication. The result was that thousands of people fled in direction where the radioactive materials were heading.
Former Minister of Commerce Banri Kaieda, who oversaw the energy policy at the time, said he felt a “sense of shame” by the lack of disclosure.
Cohen said that distrust of the authorities had grown, and urged the Government to explain the reasoning for its decisions.
“The people do not believe have a real idea of what their security situation”, said.
“Not to make public information reliable, accurate and in a transparent manner, which is a very important component of the right to health, really are seeing that the Government failed in its duty to protect the right to health of his people”.
