February, 26 2009, 04:48pm EDT

For Immediate Release
Contact:
Linda Gunter, Media Director, 301.455.5655 (cell) 301.270.2209 (o)
Indigenous Leaders Call for End to Discriminatory and Deadly Uranium Mining
Radioactively contaminated air, water and land has led to genocide
TAKOMA PARK, Md.
A group of activist leaders from indigenous communities, including Native American, Australian Aboriginal and Touareg from Niger - spoke out in Washington, DC today against the disproportionate discrimination against Native peoples caused by uranium mining. The group also included a prominent French nuclear scientist and the actor, James Cromwell. They called for an end to uranium mining and the nuclear power programs uranium fuels.
Uranium mining, necessary to extract the metal ore needed to produce nuclear weapons and fuel for nuclear reactors, has, for decades, targeted both low-income and majority indigenous communities around the globe. The Navajo Nation in the American Southwest has been burdened with more than 1,300 uranium mines most of which, now closed, have never been adequately cleaned up and which have left drinking water contaminated and a legacy of fatal illnesses, particularly cancers.
In Niger, close to 140 prospective uranium mines approved by the government threaten to deplete the northern Sahara of its already scarce water supply, threatening an elimination of the traditional nomadic Touareg. The French nuclear company, Areva, has already mined uranium there for 40 years, creating widespread radioactive contamination of the air, sand and water and high incidences of cancers and pulmonary illnesses. The pattern is similar in Australia where the government is attempting to seize Aboriginal land to make way for new uranium mines.
"We have lived through the horrors of conventional mining and milling," said activist and Acoma Pueblo spokesman, Manuel Pino. "They put the Jackpile uranium mine 2,000 feet from the village where many people have died of cancer who never earned one cent from the uranium industry but were victims of where they live. Now we are told the State of New Mexico will allow a uranium mining permit on our sacred mountain, Mt. Taylor where 19 pueblos have voted to ban any form of development. We are not going to let that happen. We will fight that industry tooth and nail to the very end."
"With self-government ripped from us, we will have little choice - either mine or move into the cities," said Mitch, an aboriginal woman who has fought radioactive waste dumps and uranium mining expansion. "Short term monetary gain will leave us with long-term deadly waste for generations to come, severing cultural links to land and customary law for the sovereign owners and non-Aboriginal people alike."
Dr. Chareyron, who has studied radioactivity levels in France as well as traveling to Niger, added: "When my laboratory went to the mining towns in Niger we found radioactive scrap metal from the
uranium mill being sold on the city market; uranium contamination of drinking water that exceeded World Health Organization standards; and radioactive tailings from the uranium mill stored in the open air. The situation is equally bad in France where tailings have been paved into school playgrounds and parking lots. But the French nuclear corporation, Areva, denies in its own press release that there is any contamination from the Niger mines. This is simply not true."
"In Niger we have seen enormous profits from uranium mining go to Areva and the Niger government, while the landscape is devastated, the fauna and flora around the mines destroyed and the land, air and water contaminated with radioactive dust, gases and liquids," said Touareg activist,Sidi-Amar Taoua. "The depletion of already scarce water supplies threatens the very survival of the Touareg as well as the local communities around the mines who are already suffering the many illnesses caused by the uranium mines."
James Cromwell, who lived among the Touareg in the 1970s and is a committed campaigner for the rights of Native Americans, concluded: "Indigenous and under-privileged people around the world suffer similar fates when it comes to uranium mining. They have most often become the unwitting victims of pre-meditated atomic poisoning due to corporate greed and government complicity and have received little or no compensation or medical support."
Cromwell, Chareyron and the indigenous activists will visit elected officials on Capitol Hill on Friday, February 27 and present at a Hill briefing lunch that day from 1pm-2pm at Cannon Legislative Office Building Room 122. In the evening they will be at a screening and discussion of Poison Wind, a 37-minute documentary about Native American uranium miners showing at Busboys and Poets, 14th and V St, NW from 5:30pm-7:30pm. On Saturday, all will present at the PowerShift 2009 youth conference on climate change at the Washington DC Convention Center. The panel, at 9am, is entitled: Human Rights, Uranium Mining and an Unfolding Genocide. Press is welcome at all of these events.
Beyond Nuclear aims to educate and activate the public about the connections between nuclear power and nuclear weapons and the need to abandon both to safeguard our future. Beyond Nuclear advocates for an energy future that is sustainable, benign and democratic.
(301) 270-2209LATEST NEWS
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"It's like the tobacco companies that knew the addictive and lethal nature of cigarettes yet continued to get millions of teenagers hooked on them," said one African critic.
Nov 28, 2023
With the world hurtling toward catastrophic temperature rise, "Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is overseeing a sweeping global investment program" intended to "ensure that emerging economies across Africa and Asia become vastly more dependent on oil" even as the international community tries to phase out planet-heating fossil fuels.
That's according to a sixth-month undercover investigation by the U.K.'s Center for Climate Reporting (CCR) and Channel 4 News, based on regulatory filings, documents from Saudi officials, and secret recordings.
The findings were published Monday in the leadup to the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) set to kick off Thursday in the United Arab Emirates.
As CCR detailed:
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Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Energy—which did not respond to a request for comment—mainly "characterizes the OSP as a sustainable development initiative" to aid developing countries, CCR reported.
However, as the center highlighted, key pieces of the kingdom's plot include plans to promote oil-based power generation, deploy petrol and diesel vehicles in Africa and Asia, work with a global auto manufacturer to make a cheap car, lobby against government subsidies for electric vehicles, and fast-track commercial supersonic air travel.
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Rapid Transition Alliance coordinator Andrew Simms similarly said on social media, "Straight outta the tobacco companies' playbook."
The Saudi investigation was released on the same day that the center and BBCrevealed that Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, CEO of the UAE's Abu Dhabi National Oil Company and president of COP28, used meetings about the summit to push for foreign fossil fuel deals.
"This undermines essential impartiality and the integrity of the talks, and will accelerate devastating global heating," said the Environmental Justice Foundation, pointing to both revelations. "These backroom deals serve wealthy nations and fossil fuel profiteers at the expense of everyone else."
Also noting both reports, American author and climate activist Bill McKibben wrote Tuesday that "the new documents, which really must be read to be believed, perform the same essential task as the revelations almost a decade ago about Exxon's climate lies. They end any pretense that these countries are engaged in good-faith efforts to wind down the industry."
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The kingdom has a long history of impeding climate action—particularly progress at global talks, as three experts laid out in a paper released last week by the Climate Social Science Network at the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society.
"Saudi delegations to the U.N. climate talks are highly skilled, well-organized, and have been extremely successful over decades at slowing the efforts of the world community on climate change to a crawl," the trio wrote. "Saudi Arabia's actions should be seen as part of a wider web of obstruction to an effective response to climate change, which includes fossil fuel industry groups and other (predominantly U.S.-based) political lobbyists and elites, and allied intergovernmental organizations."
As Common Dreamsreported last week, the U.N. has allowed at least 7,200 delegates for fossil fuel companies and industry trade groups to attended climate talks since 2003. This year, attendees must disclose their affiliation under new transparency rules.
The summit comes as scientists warn that 2023 is projected to be the hottest year in 125,000 years and currently implemented emissions policies will likely lead to 3°C of temperature rise by the end of the century—or double the 1.5°C goal of the Paris agreement.
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Nov 28, 2023
United Nations human rights experts have expressed concerns over "alleged human rights violations and abuses" against people living along the lower Cape Fear River in North Carolina due emissions of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, from a Fayetteville chemical plant.
Five U.N. experts signed letters to Chemours—the plant's current operator—as well as DuPont, Corteva, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Dutch environmental regulators. The action marks the U.N. Human Rights Council's first investigation into an environmental problem in the U.S., The Guardianreported Tuesday.
"We are especially concerned about DuPont and Chemours' apparent disregard for the well-being of community members, who have been denied access to clean and safe water for decades," the U.N. experts wrote in the letter to Chemours.
"We hope the U.N.'s action will induce shareholders to bring DuPont and Chemours in line with international human rights law."
The Fayetteville Works manufacturing plant has been releasing toxic PFAS into the environment for more than four decades, according to the allegations detailed in the letter. PFAS dumped in the Cape Fear River have made it unsafe to drink for 100 river miles, and pollution from the plant has contaminated air, soil, groundwater, and aquatic life.
PFAS are a class of chemicals used in a variety of products from nonstick, water-repellent, or stain-resistant items to firefighting foam. They have been linked to a number of health issues including cancers and have earned the name "forever chemicals" for their ability to persist in the environment and the human body. One study found PFAS in 97% of local residents who received testing.
The letter also repeated allegations that DuPont, the plant's previous owner, and Chemours, a spinoff company, had not taken responsibility for cleaning up the local environment and compensating community members, and that DuPont had known about the dangers of PFAS for several years, but chose to hide this information from the public.
"We remain preoccupied that these actions infringe on community members' right to life, right to health, right to a healthy, clean, and sustainable environment, and the right to clean water, among others," the U.N. experts wrote.
The letters were sent in response to a request made in April by Berkeley Law's Environmental Law Clinic on behalf of local environmental advocacy group Clean Cape Fear. In the request, the groups said the matter was particularly urgent because Chemours plans to expand its making of PFAS at the plant.
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Clean Cape Fear said it hopes the letters will put pressure on both the private companies and the government regulators to act.
"We hope the U.N.'s action will induce shareholders to bring DuPont and Chemours in line with international human rights law," the group tweeted, noting that both companies are publicly traded.
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Democratic U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin on Tuesday issued a scathing statement mocking Republicans on the House Oversight Committee after the GOP chair of the panel rejected Hunter Biden's offer to testify publicly next month as part of an ongoing impeachment probe into his father, President Joe Biden.
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"Our lawfully issued subpoena to Hunter Biden requires him to appear for a deposition on December 13," Comer said in a statement, adding that the president's son could get a chance to testify publicly at an unspecified "future date."
Raskin (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said in response that "after wailing and moaning for ten months about Hunter Biden and alluding to some vast unproven family conspiracy, after sending Hunter Biden a subpoena to appear and testify, Chairman Comer and the oversight Republicans now reject his offer to appear before the full committee and the eyes of the world and to answer any questions that they pose?"
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Hunter Biden's offer to appear publicly before the House Oversight Committee came in a letter that his attorney, Abbe Lowell, wrote to Comer. The push for a public appearance stems from concerns that Republicans would selectively leak any closed-door testimony.
"Your empty investigation has gone on too long wasting too many better-used resources. It should come to an end," the letter reads. "Consequently, Mr. Biden will appear at such a public hearing on the date you noticed, December 13, or any date in December that we can arrange."
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