Indian antinuke film director fighting unjust, radiation

HIROSHIMA, Aug. 5 Kyodo - The sight of an orange liquid draining out of a pipe from a uranium mine in eastern India into nearby fields convinced film director Shriprakash that he should bear witness to the effect on human health of radiation pollution, even if it meant putting his own health in danger.

Shriprakash, 33, spent three and a half years in the village of Jadugoda to document how waste from the mine, which even seeps into the pond where villagers wash, has resulted in serious health problems such as deformities, including babies born with unusually small or large heads.

His 56-minute film, ''Buddha Weeps in Jadugoda,'' was screened Saturday in Hiroshima during an annual antinuclear gathering.

The mine, located about 220 kilometers west of Calcutta, is run by Uranium Corp. of India to produce uranium for India's nuclear weapons development program, according to the film. It is the only such facility in the country.

Shriprakash told Kyodo News on Friday that about 25,000 people living within a 5-km radius of the waste could be affected by radiation.

He said he could not put a figure on what level of radiation villagers are exposed to, but concedes that the long period he spent in Jadugoda must have put his own health at risk.

''I eat there, drink there, and sleep there. I don't know what will be the effect on my life,'' he said.

But the risk is one that he wants to downplay. He calls his own life ''just a small dot'' in the record of human civilization.

Shriprakash was alerted to the story of Jadugoda one day in early 1996, when he says he learned that about 30 houses in the village had been demolished by authorities without advance notice.

He says that when he went to the area to investigate, he found that the houses had gone to make way for a so-called tailing dam for the mine, which began operating about 30 years ago.

In the film, villagers are seen walking on the dried-out bottom of a contaminated pond, which is coated with a white material. A couple of boys play barefoot around containers of uranium.

''The spirit of Buddha is weeping,'' Ghanshyam Beruli, a 36-year-old villager, says in the film in an ironic reference to the nickname ''Smile of Buddha'' that some in India have given to the country's nuclear tests.

Beruli, a former worker at the mine who now leads a civic group seeking redress for the radiation pollution, visited Hiroshima with Shriprakash.

''(Babies with deformation) dream of playing like other boys, and they want to laugh. People in Japan and Hiroshima who have suffered similar types of problem can understand the practical issues,'' Beruli, who has difficulty with English, said through Shriprakash.

Shriprakash said he wants to work for people with ''no voice,'' noting that the villagers, many of whom are illiterate, are not really aware of the dangers of radiation pollution, as he himself was not before he became involved with Jadugoda.

He called on Indian government officials to institute proper health and safety measures for the mine, saying that if they plan to continue with ''such a deadly and dirty type of work, they must follow international norms.''
==Kyodo

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