Any evidence of dumping off the coast of Somalia?

[grude]

In articles about Somalian piracy there is a often made claim of mysterious “European” ships dumping metal drums filled with radioactive or chemical waste off shore.

Is there any evidence photographic or otherwise of this going on?

[jovan]

@grude

In articles about Somalian piracy there is a often made claim of mysterious “European” ships dumping metal drums filled with radioactive or chemical waste off shore.

Is there any evidence photographic or otherwise of this going on?

Well, to get things started:

Pics here, but little detail about exactly who took it and where:
http://somalilandpress.com/somalia-radioactive-waste-surfaces-in-the-coastline-minister-21250

Somalian Ambassador to the UN decrying the dumping:
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gVV_gQDsp1m8v7nPcumVc5McYV-Q

This article brings up a number of relevant observations:

Somalia used as toxic dumping ground

In 1997, in the Italian magazine Famiglia Cristiana, Greenpeace published a landmark investigation into the dumping, which showed that it started in the late 1980s, and exposed Swiss and Italian companies as brokers for the transportation of hazardous waste from Europe to dumps in Somalia. Subsequent research has also shown that the company employed physically to ship the waste was wholly owned by the Somali government.

The Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 served to reinvigorate interest in the continued dumping of hazardous waste in Somalia. Rusting tanks of unidentifiable ooze were washed up on to beaches; villagers began to die of unexplained illnesses and coastal ecosystems collapsed.

In 2005, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) concluded its own on-the-ground investigation in Somalia. Despite being stymied by local political interests and finding no tangible proof, it concluded that the ‘dumping of toxic and harmful waste is rampant in the sea, on the shores and in the hinterland’.

A year later the Somali multi-clan NGO Daryeel Bulsho Guud conducted its own survey. With greater local co-operation, it was able to identify 15 containers of ‘confirmed nuclear and chemical wastes’ in eight coastal areas.

Field research in Somalia by Zainab Hassan, a former fellow at the University of Minnesota and Environmental Justice Advocate, has brought to light a whole range of chronic and acute illnesses suffered by Somalis.

These include severe birth defects, such as the absence of limbs, and widespread cancers. One local doctor said he had treated more cases of cancer in one year than he had in his entire professional career before the tsunami.

[grude]

@jovan

Well, to get things started:

Pics here, but little detail about exactly who took it and where:
http://somalilandpress.com/somalia-radioactive-waste-surfaces-in-the-coastline-minister-21250

Somalian Ambassador to the UN decrying the dumping:
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gVV_gQDsp1m8v7nPcumVc5McYV-Q

This article brings up a number of relevant observations:
Somalia used as toxic dumping ground

Thanks, I had seen the statement from the ambassador but not the photo(even if unsourced) or investigation. I recently read an article that made the claim that Somalians were crossing into Kenya with radiation poisoning so bad they died shortly afterward.

[Princhester]

I don’t doubt that it is possible that this dumping etc is or has been going on, but there is some desperate retconning going on here to try to justify piracy, I think. One of those articles alleges the piracy initially started as some sort of environmental anti-dumping crusade. Working in the shipping industry I’ve been following the explosion in Somalian piracy closely, and this is the first time ever, years and years after the commencement of the phenomenon, that I have heard this said. Indeed the earliest stories all concluded that piracy was started and funded initially by local warlords to finance their wars. It makes me rather doubt this latest “we do it because you dump stuff on us” excuse.