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Japan Swedes to take iodine tablets

The Swedish foreign ministry has advised Swedes within a 250 km radius of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant to take Iodine tablets as a preventive measure.

Published: 20 March 2011 07:47 CET
Japan Swedes to take iodine tablets

According to Anders Jörle, the head of information at the foreign ministry, the risk of radioactive fallout reaching the city is now greater than before.

“It is the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority (Strålsäkerhetsmyndigheten) that have made the judgment that there is an increased risk of a change in wind direction,” he said to news agency TT.

On 16 March the foreign ministry advised Swedish nationals against travelling to Japan and urged all Swedes within the radius of 80 kilometres of Fukushima to leave the area.

On Saturday the advice was extended to “ anyone worried to be affected by potential fallout should consider leaving Japan or leave the area within 250 km radius of Fukushima”.

The foreign ministry also advised all Swedish nationals within the area to begin taking iodine tablets as a preventive measure. This includes Tokyo residents.

Swedes in Tokyo were told that they could collect tablets from the Swedish embassy from Sunday morning.

According to the foreign office, all Swedish nationals who have left their contact details with the embassy will receive a text message letting them know how to proceed should the fallout reach their area.

There were not many out of the 500-700 Swedes present in Japan at the time of the accident who chose to leave on the flights the foreign ministry had made available over the weekend.

The foreign ministry had arranged for two Scandinavian Airlines flights over the weekend. Only one Swede travelled on the first flight and 13 with the second. A further 150 had left on a flight leaving Japan on Friday.

It is not known how much the flights will cost the foreign ministry and the Swedish state. No further flights have been planned.

“It was the opinion of the government that they should be given this opportunity,” Pia Roed from the foreign ministry’s information department told TT.

Whether the new advice issued by the foreign ministry will make staying Swedes change their minds is still unknown.

“It is possible that more people choose to leave the country. If that happens we may have to reassess the situation, “ Peter Jörle told TT.

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IMMIGRATION

‘I’d do it again’: Refugees reflect on their journey to Germany five years on

German Gracia Schuette and Syrian Aeham Ahmad both had their lives changed forever by Angela Merkel's decision in 2015 to leave Germany's doors open to hundreds of thousands of refugees.

Published: 30 August 2020 08:41 CEST
'I'd do it again': Refugees reflect on their journey to Germany five years on
Syrian pianist Aeham Ahmad while still living in a hostel in 2016. Photo: Daniel Roland/AFP
In August of that year, Schuette joined thousands of volunteers serving ladles of hot soup to exhausted migrant families arriving at Munich's main train station.
   
Having been held in Hungary after travelling the length of Europe, trains overflowing with refugees from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan had begun arriving at the station in a seemingly endless convoy.
   
Ahmad was a passenger on one of them. The Syrian pianist with Palestinian roots arrived in Munich on September 23.
   
A month earlier, he had left Yarmouk, a sprawling neighbourhood in the south of Damascus, after swathes of the area were occupied by the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group.
   
He left behind his wife and two boys, still too young to embark on such a perilous journey.
   
Now 32, Ahmad has built a career for himself that involves travelling all over Europe and as far afield as Japan to give concerts.
   
At the station in Munich, where the volunteers once served hot soup, a Covid-19 test centre now stands.
 
READ ALSO: 
 
 
Gracia Schuette stands at the main train station in Munich, the arrival place of many refugees in 2015. Photo: Christof Stache/AFP
 
'Gratitude'
 
Schuette, 36, says the experience changed her attitude to life and taught her “gratitude and the awareness that despite everything that happens in Germany, it is still a very safe country”.
   
Ahmad speaks to AFP from a train heading to the north of Germany, where he is due to give a concert.
   
He remembers his first days in Germany as a time of great confusion. Like tens of thousands of other Syrians arriving in the country, he had only one word on his lips: “Alemania!” — Germany.
   
“After I arrived in Munich, I was sent to several emergency reception centres and then to Wiesbaden” near Frankfurt, where he and his uncle were given a room in a hostel, he says in a mixture of English and German.
   
He remembers the “extreme kindness” shown by volunteers like Schuette — “that community of people who said, 'We have to help'”.
   
For Schuette, it was important to feel that she was “not just a spectator” watching events unfold but willing to “act decisively” by helping to distribute basic necessities or set up camp beds.
   
Today, she works as an administrator for a kindergarten. But she has maintained her commitment to helping refugees — so much so that she has even taken three young people into her home, one of whom still lives with her.
   
Having been granted refugee status a year after his arrival in Germany, Ahmad was joined by his wife and children.
   
The family have since moved to Warburg, a town in northwestern Germany, and seven months ago welcomed a new baby girl.
   
While still in Syria, Ahmad had made a name for himself on social media with videos of songs performed amid the ruins of his ravaged home country.
 
 
'No accent'
 
In Germany, he began to sing songs about homesickness, with the aim of raising awareness in his new country and the rest of Europe of “this stupid war” that has devastated Syria for more than nine years.
   
Today, he aspires to “bring cultures together, to create a dialogue between Eastern and Western music”.
   
Having given more than 720 concerts, he has at times felt exhausted. But “anything is better than living off state subsidies” as he did during his first months in Germany, he believes.
   
If Schuette could go back and do it all again, she would.
   
“I don't think I would be someone who just says, 'It's going to work out and everything's going to be great.' You have to be realistic,” she said, pointing to the difficulties of integration. “But there's no doubt about it: I'd do it again.”
   
Ahmad, too, avoids painting a rose-tinted picture of his story. His generation, he says, will be scarred for life by the horrors of war and the  difficulties of adapting to life in exile.
   
But there is pride in his voice as he reveals that his two sons already speak German “without the slightest accent”.
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