Nuclear Free award winners and presenters |
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Photo Brenda Norrell |
Indigenous World Uranium Summit Honors Nuclear Free Heroes
a report by Brenda Norrell
U.N. OBSERVER & International Report
2006-12-04 | Chinese
uranium whistleblower honored on Navajo Nation
WINDOW ROCK, Arizona – Chinese whistleblower Sun Xiaodi, earlier
imprisoned and now under house arrest for exposing massive unregulated uranium contamination in China’s Gansu Province,
was honored with a Nuclear Free Future Award 2006 for Resistance on the Navajo Nation.
Although under Chinese surveillance,
Xiaodi released an acceptance speech to the global awards hosted by the Navajo Nation on Dec. 1. Xiaodi, a former Project
792 worker, has been a whistleblower since 1988, urging the Chinese government to halt the corruption of its nuclear industry.
During
the Indigenous World Uranium Summit, From Salzburg to Window Rock, Nov. 30 – Dec. 2, Xiaodi was honored with fellow
heroes, Gordon Edwards of Canada for educational activism; Wolfgang Scheffler and Heike Hoedt of Germany for global solutions
with innovative green energy reflectors and Ed Grothus of Los Alamos, N.M., for lifetime achievement for creative exposure
of the nuclear industry.
Special recognition awards were presented to Phil Harrison, Navajo, honored for his struggle
for justice for Navajo uranium miners and the Southwest Research and Information Center in Albuquerque for the staff’s
relentless struggle for environmental justice.
Xiaodi sent his message to the awards ceremony in the Navajo capitol,
where Navajos fighting new threats of uranium mining, gathered with 300 participants from 14 countries around the world, including
Western Shoshone, Acoma Pueblo, Laguna Pueblo, Goshute, Pawnee and participants from Wind River, Wyoming, Australia, Brazil,
Canada, India and Africa.
Delivering Xiaodi’s message in Window Rock, Chinese activist Feng Congde of Human Rights
China based in New York, said Xiaodi asked that his $10,000 award be kept for him, in hopes that he can someday be free to
receive the award.
From China, Xiaodi said in his message to the ceremony, “Since my release from detention,
I have been in an extremely insecure situation in which I am threatened, intimidated and harassed. I felt tremendously honored
and touched when I learned that I had been selected as this year’s Nuclear Free Future Award recipient, because I have
seen the great power of world peace and development.
“At the same time, I feel a deep sorrow, because I have
also helplessly witnessed the environmental problems cause by the failure to effectively contain and reduce nuclear contamination.
“Breaking
through fear to fight for a nuclear free environment requires a person to take a path full of hardship, bloodshed and tears,
which could end up in either life or death.
“However, I firmly believe that if all people who are peace-loving
and concerned with human destiny and upholding justice can come together and take action as soon as possible; a nuclear free
tomorrow can become a reality.”
Xiaodi said last year, “The No. 792 Uranium Mine is one of the highest
yielding uranium mines in China. Just a couple of days ago, under the cover of night, while the local Tibetans were all asleep,
the mine as usual dumped untreated irradiated water straight into the Bailong River, a tributary of the Yangtze. At present,
in our region, there are an unusually high number of miscarriages and birth defects, with many children born blind or malformed.
But the mine authorities have military backgrounds; our local Party secretary and mine director once said to me, “Get
on the wrong side of us, and the birds will be picking your bones!”
Sun Xiaodi’s daughter, Sun Haiyan,
said one month ago that her father is now under residential surveillance.
“His health is poor; his teeth are
bad and he suffers from rheumatism; he’s aged a lot. My father thanks you from the bottom of his heart for all your
efforts on his behalf. The terms of his residential surveillance are very strict – he’s not allowed to talk with
anyone on the telephone. He has been deprived of the right to work ever since local officials began retaliating against him
in 1989.”
Sun Xiaodi’s wife, Ms. Hu said, “I feel my husband has done nothing wrong – there’s
no reason for them to detain him like that. Ever since he began reporting the environmental contamination, local officials
have been retaliating against him, and our whole family has been pulled into it. In 1995 I was forced to leave my job.”
Earlier,
the Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in China’s Gansu Province, was a region of green fields and pristine waters, its woodlands
thriving with wildlife, is rich with uranium reserves, the award presentation stated.
One of the largest uranium mining
and milling installations to operate there was Project 792. Opened in 1967, Project 792, run by the military, annually milled
between 140 and 180 tons of uranium-bearing rock until it was officially shut down in 2002, as bankrupt, owing to “ore
exhaustion and obsolete equipment”.
However, secretly rising from its radioactive ashes was a private mine operated
by Longjiang Nuclear Ltd., its shareholders a brotherhood of politicians and members of the nuclear ministry.
“Today,
large sweeps of Ansu Province – dotted with sacred sites – appear to have succumbed to an overdose of chemotherapy.
The Chinese have taken no preventive measures to protect local human and animal life from uranium contamination”, the
award states.
Tibetan medial workers report that an assortment of radioactivity-related cancers and immune system diseases
account for nearly half of the deaths in the region. This remains among the “state secrets” and the patients'
medical histories are manipulated to protect state secrets.
Last year, on April 28, Xiaodi met with foreign journalists
and told them about the frequent discharges of radioactive waste into Gansu waterways. He also told them about the Tibetan
hitchhikers who climb up on trucks transporting uranium ore, happy for a ride. He also exposed that contaminated machinery
was merely “hosed down” and sold to naïve buyers in Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Zhejiang, Human and Hubei.
“These
officials have blood on their hand”, Xiaodi said.
The next day, plains clothesmen “disappeared” him.
He was not heard from for months. Finally, mounting international pressure forced his release from Lanzhou Prison on Dec.
27, 2005.
Xiaodi continued to speak out against Project 792.
“They simply changed a military enterprise
into a civilian enterprise and continued with large-scale mining.”
On April 4th, Xiaodi visited fellow petitioner
Yue Yongjim in prison. Xiaodi found Yongjim emaciated from forced labor on a food allowance of only three steamed flour buns
a day.
Xiaodi joined a protest demanding Yongjim’s release. Xiaodi was again “disappeared”, and is
now under house arrest.
Navajos, like many Indigenous around the world, were sent to their deaths in uranium mines
during the Cold War, without protective clothing. Today, after innumerable Navajo deaths from cancer and lung diseases, there
are still 1,200 unreclaimed radioactive sites on the Navajo Nation. Further, there is the threat of new corporate uranium
mining near Crownpoint, N.M., which, if allowed to proceed, would poison Navajos’ water source.
Navajo President
Joe Shirley, Jr., said, “As Diné people, we’re also looking for friends to help us defend ourselves against those
who would break our laws to get at the uranium ore underneath our lands”, Shirley said during the Summit that continues
today, Saturday, Dec. 2.
“At the same time, they will contaminate our lands, our water and our people. It seems
like some people out there, all they care about is money.”
“The heart of this movement is here,”
said Norman Brown, among the Navajo organizers with the organization Dineh Bidzill Coalition.
“We are at the
center of the heart of this movement today.”
The Nuclear Free Future Awards were presented in cooperation with
the Seventh Generation Fund and the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, based in Germany. The Franz
Moll Foundation for the Coming Generations presented the awards.
Photos of Indigenous World Uranium Summit http://norrellphotos.tripod.com
Brenda Norrell Human Rights Editor U.N. OBSERVER & International Report
Please also see:
DECLARATION
OF THE INDIGENOUS WORLD URANIUM SUMMIT http://www.unobserver.com/index.php?pagina=layout5.php&id=2901&blz=1
Los Angeles Times' four part series on the deadly legacy of uranium mining on Navajoland http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-navajo-series,1,6643736.special |
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