| inbluevt | Date: Saturday, 2013/10/19, 1:20 AM | Message # 1 | DMCA |
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TOKYO, Oct 15 2013 (IPS) - Two and a half years ago, Ayako Oga, now 30, found herself helpless as an earthquake and the tsunami it triggered hit Japan and crippled four reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. She and her husband were forced to abandon their village Ookuma Machi, barely five kilometres away.
The once-farmer is a leading activist today in Japan’s growing anti-nuclear movement, joining hundreds of Fukushima residents affected by the Mar. 11, 2011 tragedy to protest
against a government plan to restart Japan’s nuclear reactors.
Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has been aggressively pushing an economic agenda that has come to be called Abenomics, declared at a press conference last month, “We will restart
nuclear power plants on the basis of the world’s strictest safety standards.”
With her worst fears come true, and now living with hundreds of evacuees in Aizu Wakamatsu, a town 100 km from the damaged plant, Oga is determined not to let this happen. “Representing important evidence of the dark side of nuclear power is something I have to do,” she told IPS.Anti-nuclear sentiment in Japan peaked in the wake of the Fukushima incident. An opinion survey conducted by leading daily Tokyo Shimbun in July 2012 showed nearly 80 percent of the 3,000 respondents were opposed to nuclear power. Not surprising, given that the disaster forced
85,000 people to leave their homes, contaminated vast swathes of land and hit incomes of farmers and fisherfolk.
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Japanese protesters are determined to defy efforts to reopen Japan’s nuclear energy installations. Credit: Suvendrini Kakuchi/IPS
Message edited by inbluevt - Saturday, 2013/10/19, 1:21 AM |
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