"Oh!" delightedly exclaimed the auburn haired Kazakh woman,
shaking my hand vigorously and searching for words to continue. "Pleased...
pleased to ... yoot me!"

There was a dramatic pause, then we both burst out laughing -- she meant, 'pleased to meet you'. But semantics wasn't the issue here: we wanted to
communicate, and with no interpreters around, the message was conveyed
in a big bear hug -- a bit of a feat, squished in as we were in a taxi, me
sandwiched between my new friend and her burly colleague from the
anti-nuclear movement in Kazakhstan.

We were on our way to the plenary session of the 1998 International
Conference Against Atomic And Hydrogen Bombs in Hiroshima, organised
by the Japanese NGO Gensuikyo. As we got out of the taxi, Urkuz Iliyeva
and I were singing 'Ichak dana bichak dana...', the old Indian film song
that many Russian speakers are familiar with. Thank goodness for her
sense of fun, and the songs and the laughter we shared. It lightened
some of the load of the grim subject we were meeting to discuss.

To say that it was a learning experience would be an understatement.
Before landing in Hiroshima and meeting Urkuz (who is active in
the Kazakh womens and anti-nuclear movements) and Maidan Abishev,
acting president of the international organisation Nevada-Kazakh anti-
nuclear movement, I was ignorant about reactions in the central Asian
Republics to the Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests.

Why should they be bothered, I would have asked, had the thought crossed
my mind. But in the ten days that we were together, through interpreters
and visuals, it became clear why the Kazakhs and Russians who were
attending were bothered.

"We are still suffering from the radiation effects of tests done by
China and Russia, and we cannot be indifferent to the tests conducted by
India and Pakistan who have many other problems to solve," says Tatiana
Leschenko, President of the Union of Nuclear Test Victims, Altay. "We have
suffered from the Semipalatinsk test site. We could not be indifferent to
that."

Her husband Alexander Leschenko, a former Soviet army officer, started to
take part in the anti-nuclear movement back in 1989, while still in
service. "I knew about the problems of my fellow army men who served on
the
Semipalatinsk test site, and the illnesses of their children."

He became active in the Nevada-Semipalatinsk anti-nuclear organisation, and
then the Union of Nuclear Test Victims which forced through a law to help
those suffering due to the nuclear testing. Now, some of the officers and
soldiers in Altay region have special ID papers which prove that they
suffer from the tests, and entitles them to receive medical compensation
and care.

Kazakshtan was singled out for testing, but the Semipalatinsk Polygon (the
Russian word for nuclear test site) has also affected people from Altay in
Russia, where Dr Leschenko (she's an eye specialist) lives.. Nor has the
matter ended since the Semipalatinsk test site was closed in1989.

One of the most moving stories Urkuz and Maidan shared
with other delegates, was that of Renata Ismailova, a bright-eyed,
smiling 17-year old -- just 55 centimetres tall: affected by radiation
while still a foetus, her growth was retarded thanks to nuclear tests
conducted by the former USSR.

Another case is that of Berek, a 19-year old boy, who also has stunted
growth because of neoplasma (a typical effect of radiation). He has a
brilliant memory and sense of hearing -- perhaps as compensation for
being blind since birth. His family moved to Kazakhstan from China in
the early sixties, but had already been subjected to large amounts
of radiation, which affected the yet-to-be born Berek. He is now
undergoing treatment in Italy.

"Kazakhstan is full of sick children," said Urkuz, showing us paintings
by children of beautiful green fields and valleys. "This is our
land, once so clean and pure, and now full of environmental hazards."
The vast, underpopulated Kazakhstan steppe, with a population of 17 million
on its 2,700,000 square metres, has been through more
than 400 test explosions above, on and underground between 1949 and 1989.

Since disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1992, studies conducted by
teams sent by the Japan-Eurasia Association and the Gensuikyo show
an unusually high ratio of people with cancers and other soft-tissue
diseases in these areas, as well as nervous system imbalances, neoplasma
and
congenital abnormality. Radiation has also affected agriculture
near the test sites.

Shunji Tsuboi, a member of the Japanese organising committee of the World
Conference led an 18-member study team to Kazakhstan in May to study the
damage of nuclear tests there. He estimates that between 1.2 to 1.5 million
people have been affected by the tests. "The people's struggle led by these
victims has succeeded since Kazakhstan's independence in getting the
president close down the test site. This has begun to gradually lift the
veil of secrecy, and led to a nation-wide movement for denuclearisation."

The group, which stayed in Kazakhstan from May 10-22, divided into two,
one for Serney (former Semipalatinsk) near the Russian border, and the
other for Zharkent near the Chinese border. The team used Kurchatov City,
a secret city constructed 150 km from Semipalatinsk city for the purpose of
keeping military secrets regarding
nuclear testing as a base. Testifies Tsuboi: "We saw the shocking ruins
where the first nuclear test explosion took place, in 1949. People think
that the
A-Bomb Dome in Hiroshima City is the only existing testimony to the damage
caused by nuclear weapons. They should see the Polygon ruins, which have
been exposed to broad daylight. A mountain blown up, its remains lying
around -- it looked like a scene from hell. I am not exaggerating...

"We talked to people who suffered from serious radiation diseases. And
as we interviewed the village people at schools, hospitals, institutes,
we learnt of the terrible consequences of the nuclear tests which
affected virtually everyone in the vicinity of the Polygon."

Maidan Abishev of the Nevada-Semipalatinsk anti-nuclear organisation
refers to the radiation-related illnesses and deaths as a "genocide of
the people of Kazakhstan".

The genocide is not restricted to his area. Across the globe, in what the
former Soviet Union's one-time arch enemy, the effects of the USA's nuclear
tests and its uranium mines are also claiming victims.

Among them is the Navaho Indian from New Mexico, Dorothy Purley,
who worked as truck driver, delivering high-grade uranium ore to the
mill site in order to support her family in the Indian reservation where
she has lived all her life.

"Every day we bury somebody," she says sadly, referring to the deaths by
cancer and other radiation-related diseases that have depleted her
community. Accompanied by her daughter Carlotta, Dorothy speaks of her
three miscarriages, caused, she believes, by eight years of high
exposure to uranium.

"My people have always been poor, like Native Americans throughout the
USA. When the US government in 1935 decided to mine the sacred lands of
our village, Laguna Pueblo, they unhesitatingly agreed. But the Anaconda
mining company never told the Laguna people what the uranium would be
used for. They never informed my people that
mining uranium ore would be dangerous to our health, environment, or
mankind... I guess," she adds, "the mining company was well named:
Anaconda is the name of a snake."

When the USA bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Dorothy, then eight years
old, had already been exposed to radiation. "What makes me so very angry is
that Anaconda and the US government knew even
then that mining uranium ore was hazardous to human life. There is
documentary proof that some scientists had warned the mining company that
exposure to uranium for more than two weeks was not a good idea. But the
company never told my people that."

With the village situated just 1000 yards from the open-pit mine, the
Laguna dwellers still endure its harmful effects. "Now my people and
myself are continuing to suffer as the Japanese Hibakusha do. We are
also Hibakusha," says Dorothy, using the Japanese term for 'witness-
survivors of the atom bomb', which is now seen as encompassing all those
affected by nuclear tests and radiation.

Dorothy, diagnosed cancer of the immune system, has endured
three rounds of chemotherapy. She now lives "for each precious moment"
and to spread the message that no good can come from such mass
destruction. "There are never really any winners, only victims of war," she
says.

Box:
The Chernobyl Hibakusha

Dr Gediminas Rimdieka is the Director of the Sapiega Hospital, set up in
1991 in Lithuania. He says that over 7000 Lithuanian men, aged between 18-
40 years, took part in the decontamination and clean-up operations at
Chernobyl in the Ukraine from 1986-89, after the nuclear power plant
explosion on April 26, 1986. "5,709 of these workers are registered at
Sapiega Hospital," he says, "that is, 79.8 per cent of all Lithuanian
Chernobyl clean-up workers."

According to statistical data and observations collected by Mindaugas
Rusteika, head of the psychosomatic department of Sapiega Hospital, the
1,569 cases of diseases presented to the State Chernobyl Expert Commission,

include 390 cases of psychic disorder related to participation in the
Chernobyl clean up. 259 of the registered Chernobyl clean up workers have
died,
including 48 who committed suicide.

Permanent personality disorders were diagnosed in 26.8 per cent of the
workers who participated in the clean up operation, and 71 per cent had
post-trauma stress disorders.

The Chernobyl clean up workers, says Dr Rimdieka, call themselves
'Chernobyl Hibakusha' and see themselves as a separate group of people –
Hibakusha, the Japanese term for the atomic bomb 'survivor-witnesses' of
1945, is now used world wide for those affected by nuclear tests and
exposure to test sites.

"While treating them, one feels that they think themselves to as 'the
condemned' because of their work at Chernobyl," he says, explaining that
some of these workers were sent on 'military training' as a pretext for
drafting them to Chernobyl without informing them of the real situation.

"Most of them complain of sexual impotence, although the disorders are
more neurotic than physical in character. 51 per cent of them are single,
and 46.4 per cent are unemployed – they say that employers don't want to
hire
'Chernobyl Hibakusha'. There is a widespread prejudice that Chernobyl
clean-up workers have poor health and are often ill, hence are bad
workers."

Dr Rimdieka adds that psychological investigations of these workers
identify them as having serious emotional problems as well as difficulties
in
interpersonal relations which could explain why they tend to gather in
groups.

"The nuclear tests by India and Pakistan, despite the growing world opinion
against such testing, will bring not only physical but psychological harm,
especially for those who have faced the effects of ionising radiation
before," he concludes.