A Japanese delegate addresses the employees of LIC during a campaign against the US attack on Iraq. Picture by Animesh Sengupta

Jamshedpur, April 16 : A rehabilitation centre would soon be opened for the people residing in and around Jadugora uranium mines who are affected by the radiation from the units.

A five-member team from the Global Peacemakers Association in Hiroshima, today surveyed the area where the proposed rehabilitation centre would be established. Chief of the association Haruko Moritaki, who is heading the team comprising radiation experts, told The Telegraph that the association strongly opposes the mining of uranium and its use as an energy source. Uranimum, she said, was harmful to mankind. “Our trip is aimed at collecting funds for the construction of a rehabilitation centre for hundreds of people of Jadugora, who are suffering from various diseases due to uranium radiation,” she said.

The Japanese team also showed a 13-minute documentary on the sufferings of the Iraqi people during the first US-led war on the country in 1991. The short film was screened at Jeevan Prakash Building in Bistupur this afternoon.

“I was told that in the first Gulf war on Iraq, the US used depleted uranium on the people of that country. So last December, I visited Bagdad and Basra with some of the association members and stayed there for 10 days. The documentary was shot in the course of my visit,” said Moritaki.

According to her, she and her family were evacuated to a countryside on August 6, 1945, when the atomic bomb was dropped in Hiroshima. Recalling her visit to Iraq, she said in Basra alone about one lakh people are still suffering from cancer, skin disease and leukemia. “After seeing the sufferings of the people, I made a pledge to work for all those people who have been affected by uranium radiation,” she said.

She said the Global Peacemakers Association was formed after the nuclear tests in India and Pakistan in 1998 with the intention of “educating the people of these two countries” about the adverse effects of nuclear weapons on human population. Dannette Lambert, another member of the association, said: “We are on a fun-raising trip for the construction of a rehabilitation centre at Jadugoda. We also aim togenerate awareness about the ill-effects of nuclear weapons.” The team will visit Ranchi tomorrow and conduct two anti-war awareness programmes at Guru Nanak School and YMCA auditorium. Sree Prakash, a local film-maker who was awarded the Japan Grand Award for Buddha Weeps in Jadugora, is accompanying the team.