© Photo: EastNews

A former mayor of Futaba, a small town near the notorious Fukushima plant, is beating the drum in order to warn his country that radiation is damaging health of Japan’s greatest treasure – its children.

Katsutaka Idogawa qualifies government plans to relocate the people of Fatuba to the Iwaki city, which is situated inside the Fukushima prefecture, as “violating human rights”.

According to the former mayor of Futaba, radiation levels around Fukushima “are four times higher” those of Chernobyl, RT reports. “It’s too early for people to come back to Fukushima prefecture,” he said. “It is by no means safe, no matter what the government says.”

Idogawa deems that the Japanese government doesn’t take into consideration the radiation danger, encouraging people to return to their towns in contamination zone: “Fukushima Prefecture has launched the Come Home campaign. In many cases, evacuees are forced to return.”

The government doesn’t want to recognize the fact that “all sorts of medical issues” the people of the prefecture are reporting about have certain connection with Fukushima accident, claiming these cases are unrelated. Idogawa says he demanded that the authorities substantiated their statement in writing. However, he has not received an answer to his request.

Again and again Idogawa draws parallels between the Fukushima case and the nuclear tragedy of Chernobyl in April 1986, but only a few of his compatriots seem to defer to his opinion.

“They believe what the government says, while in reality radiation is still there. This is killing children. They die of heart conditions, asthma, leukemia, thyroiditis… Lots of kids are extremely exhausted after school; others are simply unable to attend PE classes. But the authorities still hide the truth from us, and I don’t know why. Don’t they have children of their own? It hurts so much to know they can’t protect our children. They say Fukushima Prefecture is safe, and that’s why nobody’s working to evacuate children, move them elsewhere. We’re not even allowed to discuss this,” complaintsKatsutaka Idogawa.

He stresses that the United Nations released a “completely false” report according to which there have been no radiation-related deaths or acute diseases observed among the workers and general public in Japan.

“When I was mayor,” Idogawa says, “I knew many people who died from heart attacks, and then there were many people in Fukushima who died suddenly, even among young people. It’s a real shame that the authorities hide the truth from the whole world, from the UN. We need to admit that actually many people are dying. We are not allowed to say that but TEPCO employees also are dying. But they keep mum about it.” Read more: http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2014_04_21/Radiation-killing-Fukushima-children-Japan-s-gov-t-violating-human-rights-former-mayor-9277/