The Hindu : Security and censorship

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Feb 05, 2004

Opinion

Opinion - Leader Page Articles

Security and censorship

By Garimella Subramaniam

THE SUPREME Court ruling on the question of the right to information vis-à-vis public safety from radiological and industrial risks is unlikely to end the debate on the issue. This is especially so given the current global and domestic anxieties over the hazards involved in the use of atomic energy. The Court has refused to disclose the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board's findings on violation of safety norms in nuclear plants. The ruling comes within a year of India's worst radiation-related accident at the Kalpakkam atomic power facilities in January 2003.

In the Court's view, such information falls outside the public's entitlement to know as there are national security interests. It justifies the veil of secrecy saying it is a reasonable restriction on the freedom of expression and the right to information guaranteed in Article 19 (1) (a) of the Constitution.

The impugned 1995 report of the AERB had documented 130 instances of equipment failure and human error in atomic power stations and nuclear research establishments. When attempts to get the report made public failed, the People's Union for Civil Liberties and the Bombay Sarvoday Mandal challenged Section 18 of the Atomic Energy Act, 1962, in the Bombay High Court. The High Court dismissed the petition in 1997. In the subsequent appeal, the apex court upheld the impugned Section, maintaining that the contents of the report constituted privileged information and that "the state must have the prerogative of preventing evidence being given on matters that would be contrary to public interest."

The intervening seven years between the judgments of the High Court and the Supreme Court were witness to Japan's worst-ever radioactive fire at the Tokaimura uranium enrichment plant in 1997. Two instances of radioactive heavy water leak at the Kalpakkam atom power facilities also came to light. In the first incident in 1999, at least 50 people were exposed to radiation risk. But it still needed considerable pressure from the media for the authorities to admit that six tonnes of heavy water had leaked, even as a plant emergency was declared and the reactor shut down. In the leakage in January 2003 at the reprocessing facility, six employees were exposed to levels of radiation well in excess of the threshold annual limit. The employees had not been wearing radioactivity readers and the gamma monitors had failed to emit cautionary signals.

There was also the shocking instance in 1989 (reported in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists November/December 1999 Vol. 55, No. 6, pp. 52-57) in which a technician was inadvertently locked up in a shielded room at Dhruva in the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre. A fellow technician who wanted to know why the reactor was continuously shutting down discovered him by chance. He then learnt that the man had caused the reactor to trip in order to save himself from radiation risk.

The performance record of many power stations is hardly enviable. The reactors in Tarapore, Rajasthan and Chennai have, in fact, been de-rated from their original capacity of over 200 MWe. But the standard refrain of the officials of the Department of Atomic Energy to both near mishaps or their mere moderate output is one of outright denial or playing down the magnitude of issues. In fact, the 2003 incident at Kalpakkam was so serious that the reprocessing facility was shut down for six months. All these fall into a familiar pattern of the Indian nuclear establishment's attempts to shore up its safety record with claims of national security as well as the provisions of the Official Secrets Act, 1923. Moreover, a distinction between civilian and military nuclear installations is a prerequisite to bring the former under continuous public scrutiny.

The denial of any information that is basic to the protection of human rights in the name of national security is antithetical to fundamental democratic values. Indeed, considering the inherent hazards of nuclear installations, even non-disclosure can be seen as undermining the provisions of Articles 21 (right to life and liberty), 47 (fundamental duty of the state to improve public health) and 48 A (duty of the state to improve and protect the environment) of the Constitution. Therefore, restrictions on freedom of expression and the right to information must pass the test of reasonableness, understood in terms of their compatibility with basic democratic norms.

Relevant in the context of the recent apex court judgment is the qualification by the European Court of Human Rights that restrictions should serve a pressing social need and must be kept to the minimum. It also points out that measures that prevent the public from learning of illegalities and wrongdoings from whistleblowers fail this test.

Another important contribution in this area is the Johannesburg Principles on National Security, Freedom of Expression and Access to Information. They hold up the right to information on national security as part of the basic right to know. Legitimate restrictions are only those that demonstrably protect a country's existence or territorial integrity. But states cannot categorically deny information on all aspects of national security.

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