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Former soldiers who suffered health problems after being exposed to radiation by British nuclear tests in the Pacific in the 1950s are to receive compensation from Fiji, after the country’s leader criticised the UK for refusing to help.
Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama, whose father led a group of around 70 Fijian servicemen sent to Christmas Island during the tests in 1957 and 1958 while their country was a British colony, awarded 24 veterans just over £3,000 each at a ceremony yesterday.
Show all 25 1 /25In pictures: Chernobyl's forgotten victims In pictures: Chernobyl's forgotten victims Chernobyl's forgotten victims An elderly lady wanders into the Exclusion Zone at an informal crossing point between officially contaminated and officially ‘clean’ space. Radiation is not stopped by the fence, and nor are people.
Alexey Furman
In pictures: Chernobyl's forgotten victims Chernobyl's forgotten victims A young girl plays on her grandparent’s small farm near the edge of the nuclear Exclusion Zone. Growing your own food is an important survival strategy for people who live near Chernobyl, despite the risk of contamination.
Thom Davies
In pictures: Chernobyl's forgotten victims Chernobyl's forgotten victims In a village near the Exclusion Zone, a woman holds a photograph of her husband who worked as a liquidator after the 1986 Chernobyl accident. He died soon after the disaster, and she attributes this to exposure to harmful levels of radiation. With no support from the State, she says that the government have “cheated us all the time”.
Thom Davies
In pictures: Chernobyl's forgotten victims Chernobyl's forgotten victims An elderly widow holds a photograph of her husband who worked as a liquidator after Chernobyl and died from exposure to harmful radiation.
Alexey Furman
In pictures: Chernobyl's forgotten victims Chernobyl's forgotten victims An elderly woman stands in her house in a village that borders the Exclusion Zone in north-central Ukraine. A photograph of deposed former President Victor Yanukovich and opposition politician Klitschko are stuck to the wall.
Alexey Furman
In pictures: Chernobyl's forgotten victims Chernobyl's forgotten victims A Soviet War memorial near the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. This landscape has witnessed a lot of suffering with heavy fighting during WW2, as well as acts of atrocity against the Jewish population. The invisible danger of radiation is a less tangible threat, with one war veteran comparing the two traumatic experiences: “At least when the Nazis were in my village you could see them”.
Alexey Furman
In pictures: Chernobyl's forgotten victims Chernobyl's forgotten victims A man holds the blue and yellow flag of Ukraine at a memorial to the Chernobyl catastrophe in downtown Kiev. This weekend marks the 28th anniversary of the world’s worst nuclear accident. As my friend Arthur Bondar said yesterday “Ukrainians and Russians once saved the world from radiation together. Lets save the world now from a new war and commemorate all the victims of Chernobyl”
Alexey Furman
In pictures: Chernobyl's forgotten victims Chernobyl's forgotten victims A man walks past a memorial in Chernobyl
Thom Davies
In pictures: Chernobyl's forgotten victims Chernobyl's forgotten victims A man and his dog stare through the barbed wire fence into the forbidden space of the Exclusion Zone. Many people subsidize their income by illegally entering the Zone to collect scrap metal, which they can then sell. Local border police patrol the fence and occasionally arrest trespassers or demand the payment of bribes.
Thom Davies
In pictures: Chernobyl's forgotten victims Chernobyl's forgotten victims It is common for people to wander through the forbidden forest of the Exclusion Zone to gather wild food such as berries and mushrooms, or to hunt for wild game. Food is both eaten their families and sold informally. Untouched by human activity – apart from invisible radiation - the Exclusion Zone has become a haven for wildlife.
Thom Davies
In pictures: Chernobyl's forgotten victims Chernobyl's forgotten victims The infamous damaged nuclear reactor at Chernobyl. In 1986 a combination of human error and bad reactor design caused a nuclear meltdown that would impact so many people’s lives. A new gigantic sarcophagus is currently being constructed to cover the old reactor and stop further radiation leaks.
Thom Davies
In pictures: Chernobyl's forgotten victims Chernobyl's forgotten victims Aleksander worked for years as a liquidator and driver inside the nuclear Exclusion Zone. He shared many stories about life on the edge of the Zone, and how he would never leave the landscape he grew up in. He once told me “the USSR is something that is now invisible, it is just a concept, where as Chernobyl is everything that you can touch, that you can see, that you can feel”. Aleksander died last year.
Thom Davies
In pictures: Chernobyl's forgotten victims Chernobyl's forgotten victims A man in Stari Sakoli village stands in his field. In the background the Exclusion Zone can be seen beyond the trees.
Alexey Furman
In pictures: Chernobyl's forgotten victims Chernobyl's forgotten victims Alcohol for sale in a shop near the Exclusion Zone. Alcoholism is a big problem in this region, as it is elsewhere in Ukraine. With one in four people in Ukraine struggling below the poverty line and an uncertain future - many men turn to drink. Some here believe it protects them from radiation.
Alexey Furman
In pictures: Chernobyl's forgotten victims Chernobyl's forgotten victims A woman in Krasilivka village cuts grass using a traditional scythe, near the Chernobyl Zone.
Alexey Furman
In pictures: Chernobyl's forgotten victims Chernobyl's forgotten victims An elderly lady who lives near Chernobyl cries while remembering events that followed the disaster. Many people have personal stories of loss and tragedy relating to Chernobyl.
Alexey Furman
In pictures: Chernobyl's forgotten victims Chernobyl's forgotten victims Two mothers and their children wait at a bus stop just west of the Exclusion Zone. There are very few jobs or investment in the region, and little compensation for having to live on contaminated land. With nearly one in four people in Ukraine below the poverty line, and the IMF demanding benefit cuts, life for people near Chernobyl is getting harder.
Thom Davies
In pictures: Chernobyl's forgotten victims Chernobyl's forgotten victims A babushka stands on her small plot of land in a village near Chernobyl. Immediately after the accident the authorities advised people not to eat a variety of homegrown produce, but the Ukrainian State only gives a tiny amount of compensation each month ‘to buy clean food’. Despite the threat of pollution, people here remain very attached to their land.
Alexey Furman
In pictures: Chernobyl's forgotten victims Chernobyl's forgotten victims Kids kill time in Orane village, five kilometers from the Exclusion Zone. There are few jobs or prospects for young people in this marginalized region.
Alexey Furman
In pictures: Chernobyl's forgotten victims Chernobyl's forgotten victims Chernobyl campaigner Sergey Petrovych Krasilnikov holds a photograph of the damaged nuclear reactor in his flat in Kiev. He attributes his disability to radiation from the accident, having been in a wheelchair since the early 1990s. Many people feel abandoned by the state, and do not get paid the compensation that they are owed by Ukrainian law.
Alexey Furman
In pictures: Chernobyl's forgotten victims Chernobyl's forgotten victims Children in a school in Orane village, 5km from the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Each year some children are taken abroad for a month by charities for ‘Chernobyl Children’ based in Spain. As a result, most kids in Orane speak some Spanish.
Alexey Furman
In pictures: Chernobyl's forgotten victims Chernobyl's forgotten victims Five residents of a village near the Exclusion Zone in Ukraine watch the world go by. All of them attribute Chernobyl radiation to a wide range of illnesses from cancer to diabetes, as well as personal stories of loss and bereavement. The number of fatalities from the nuclear disaster is highly debated.
Alexey Furman
In pictures: Chernobyl's forgotten victims Chernobyl's forgotten victims A liquidator holds her medal awarded to her after she helped clean up the highly polluted landscape around Chernobyl after the accident. Despite having the correct documents, many liquidators still fail to receive the compensation that is owed to them.
Thom Davies
In pictures: Chernobyl's forgotten victims Chernobyl's forgotten victims A boy who lives in a village that borders the Exclusion Zone plays in a river that runs through the contaminated territory of Chernobyl.
Thom Davies
In pictures: Chernobyl's forgotten victims Chernobyl's forgotten victims A baby is christened in the only functioning Church in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. After the ceremony the priest said “There is no radiation here”
Alexey Furman
“Fiji is not prepared to wait for Britain to do the right thing,” he said, in comments reported by the AFP news agency. “We owe it to these men to help them now, not wait for the British politicians and bureaucrats.”
Mr Bainimarama said the soldiers who were stationed on Christmas Island – which is now known as Kiritimati and has become part of the nation of Kiribati – to carry out military tests without being told it involved nuclear weapons.
They had suffered from illnesses including leukaemia.
Mr Bainimarama added: “We are righting a wrong. We are closing an unfortunate chapter in our history.”
Thousands of other veterans of the tests from countries including Australia and New Zealand have never received compensation.
The Ministry of Defence said it was grateful to the servicemen who “contributed to important tests that helped to keep our nation secure during the Cold War”.
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