Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Blog

  • Abolition 2000 at the Year 2000

    Abolition 2000 is rapidly approaching the year 2000, a moment of truth for the global Network. General Lee Butler, a powerful advocate of abolition, offered these observations: “Turning specifically to the agenda, tactics and timetable of the abolition community, I see a widening gulf between its aspirations and their prospects, especially in the near term. That disparity is most immediately obvious in the disjunction between the name of the umbrella organization, ‘Abolition 2000,’ and the self-evident reality that its implied goal is not yet in sight, much less in hand. That is a real Y2K problem that must be addressed to ensure that the vitality of the ongoing work of the organization is not diminished by the intimations of a failed strategic objective.”

    When Abolition 2000 was initiated in 1995, it seemed reasonable to set as our primary goal a treaty by the year 2000 calling for the phased elimination of nuclear weapons. The goal was never to achieve the total elimination of nuclear weapons by the year 2000, but rather to achieve an international treaty leading to the total elimination of these weapons by early in the 21st Century.

    Abolition 2000 was born at the 1995 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review and Extension Conference. It came about as a result of disappointment by many NGOs with the apparent blank check given to the nuclear weapons states when the treaty was extended indefinitely. The extension was given without regard for the widely perceived failure of the nuclear weapons states to act on their Article VI obligations for good faith negotiations on nuclear disarmament. Abolition 2000 sought in some respects to be the conscience of the international community by demanding that Article VI obligations be upheld in the aftermath of the indefinite extension.

    Abolition 2000 began with the drafting of a common Statement by some 60 peace and disarmament NGOs at the 1995 NPT Conference. Supporters of the Statement quickly expanded to about 300 NGOs. Over the past nearly five years, the number of supporters has expanded to 1,358 organizations in 88 countries. As the year 2000 approaches, questions arise as to what will become of Abolition 2000 and its global Network. If an international treaty to ban nuclear weapons is not achieved by the end of the year 2000, will the Network have failed? Will it lose its credibility? Will the Network continue after the year 2000?

    The Network made a bold decision at the outset by adopting the name Abolition 2000. It was prepared to press the issue of moving forward with a nuclear weapons abolition agenda, setting a timeframe for tangible progress. It was not content to leave the timeframe open-ended. It refused to accept vague declarations by the nuclear weapons states that they were for the “ultimate” goal of eliminating their nuclear arsenals. While it may be perceived that it would have been safer for the Network to choose a name that did not force a timeframe for success, the choice of the name serves an important function by making clear that an agreement to abolish nuclear weapons is a matter of urgency. Abolition cannot be put off to some indefinite future time whenever the nuclear weapons states decide they are ready to act.

    Inherent in the name Abolition 2000 is the understanding that we should not cross the threshold into a new century and millennium without a clear commitment to the global elimination of nuclear weapons. Abolition 2000 has taken a stand on the side of morality, legality, and democracy, and has given a voice to the opinion of most of the world’s nations. Abolition 2000 has spoken truth to power.

    The problem is that power, in the form of the governments of the nuclear weapons states, have responded by stonewalling and a continuation of business as usual. These governments seem locked into a Cold War mentality based on the theory of deterrence, despite the fact they can no longer identify who it is they are deterring or from what they are deterring them.

    Since the initiation of Abolition 2000, the Network has opposed continued nuclear testing of all kinds, including sub-critical and laboratory testing. It has called for ending the nuclear threat by taking specific steps such as de-alerting nuclear forces and agreeing to policies of No First Use. It has not only called for a treaty to ban nuclear weapons, but has participated in drafting a Model Nuclear Weapons Convention which Costa Rica has introduced in the United Nations. Abolition 2000 has also mobilized citizen actions throughout the world in favor of abolishing nuclear arms, including the gathering of over 13 million signatures in Japan alone. The Network has also encouraged prominent individuals and municipalities to declare themselves committed to the abolition of nuclear weapons.

    After nearly five years, Abolition 2000 remains committed to the only outcome that can safeguard humanity’s future. But it faces powerful opposing forces in the form of the governments of the nuclear weapons states, the wall of secrecy that surrounds their nuclear policies, and the wall of complacency that engulfs large segments of the public throughout the world.

    Abolition 2000 can help to remind the people of the world that they have choices. They don’t need to leave the fate of humanity in the hands of a small number of leaders of nuclear weapons states. They do not need to sit by while countries such as India and Pakistan test and deploy nuclear weapons, repeating the mistakes made by the five declared nuclear weapons states. They do not need to continue to feed the defense contractors and politicians that remain eager to develop and deploy the Ballistic Missile Defenses – defenses that have little likelihood of working and will actually make the world far more dangerous as other nuclear armed countries respond with stronger offensive capabilities.

    With such dangers as the deployment of Ballistic Missile Defenses on the horizon in the United States, Abolition 2000 is needed more than ever. The year 2000 will be a year of focused actions for the Network throughout the world. The Network has set as goals for itself to grow to 2000 organizations; to identify 2000 prominent supporters of abolishing nuclear weapons; to engage in a week of education and advocacy from March 1-8, 2000; to have a strong and vocal presence at the 2000 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference; and to join in millennial events throughout the world.

    Abolition 2000 will not simply fade away. Its international symbol is the sunflower. Like the sunflower, it has given birth to a thousand seeds of peace, which will be carried by the wind, take root and grow in many places. These seeds will be borne by the winds of change. They will cross boundaries and will be carried over walls of indifference. Abolition 2000 may not fulfill its goal of a treaty to ban nuclear weapons in the year 2000. But it is critical that this grassroots movement stay the course and continue to grow until its goal is achieved.

  • Defended to Death

    India and Pakistan are governed by madmen. The prime ministers are mad, the generals, scientists, civil servants all mad. The proof of their madness is their paranoid obsession with security and nuclear weapons. What, after all, could be more insane than two desperately poor countries, struggling to feed, educate, and house their people spending scarce resources on preparing to murder millions of innocent people, then glorying in their capability and willingness to commit such a monstrous deed. More disturbing still is that while these madmen and their obsessions may mean the death of us, we do next to nothing about them. Perhaps the people, governed by lunatics for so long, have also quietly gone mad, to protect themselves from the consequences of understanding what is happening to them.

    These thoughts have been brought on by India’s recently released nuclear doctrine, and the expectation that the madmen in Islamabad will follow those in Delhi and move a step closer to deploying their nuclear weapons, and a step closer to using them.

    The Indian nuclear doctrine contains no surprises. It is what anyone should have expected from India’s National Security Advisory Board, given that it is a nest of nuclear hawks. Asked to produce a doctrine, no one should have expected reason from them. Each was bound to try to out do the others, and none would relish being found wanting in patriotism or hard-headedness. Then there is the lure of history. The nuclear tests were about science and technology, and the scientists took the credit. As strategic thinkers, the National Security Board will take credit for having made the plan for how India’s weapons are to be used. For some of them, this report is the culmination of decades of writing and arguing for India to have nuclear weapons; it reflects their hopes, dreams, fantasies, of a nuclear India.

    Given how nationalistic these men are, how committed to a kind of independence at any cost, one is reminded, ironically, of Lord Macaulay’s famous 1835 Minute on Education. Writing about British rule in India, he said the aim should be to create “a class of persons Indian in blood and color, but English in taste and opinions, in morals and intellect.” The British succeeded to the extent that a hundred or so years later it was anglicized Indians like Nehru and Jinnah who took over from them. American strategic thinkers, who preside like demented gods over their own nuclear weapons, can boast they have had the same effect in even less time. Despite all their differences, and animosities, within fifty years of inventing nuclear weapons, destroying Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and then claiming that nuclear weapons were for defence, the US nuclear weapons complex has successfully created enclaves of Indians, and Pakistanis, who have exactly their nuclear “morals” and “intellect.”

    The tone and content of India’s nuclear doctrine carries the stamp of the hardest of the hardest liners and their global fears and ambitions. The doctrine declares that “the very existence of offensive doctrine pertaining to the first use of nuclear weapons and the insistence of some nuclear weapons states on the legitimacy of their use even against non-nuclear weapon countries constitute a threat to peace, stability and sovereignty of states.” It is this threat, the doctrine declares, that India’s nuclear weapons are supposed to protect against. But the countries which have said they will use nuclear weapons first are the US, UK, France, Russia, and Pakistan. China has a policy of no-first-use. Israel has never said what it would do, but no doubt will use nuclear weapons whenever it feels like it. It is also the US, in particular, and its NATO allies, who have indicated policies of using nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states.

    The fixation on the US is part of an established pattern. Indian hawks have always had global pretensions. For years, members of the National Security Advisory Board have justified Indian nuclear weapons with reference to the inequities of the international system and US threats to India during the 1972 war with Pakistan. One member of the Board, Bharat Karnad, wrote last year that India’s nuclear weapons should be aimed at “deterring an over-reaching and punitive minded United States leading the Western combine of nations.”

    With this in mind, the doctrine is blunt, India’s nuclear forces are aimed at “convincing any potential aggressor that… India … shall inflict damage unacceptable to the aggressor.” Worst case analysis, the kind of thing that nuclear hawks love, would suggest that India has to build a nuclear force able to retaliate against the US, even after a massive US attack on India. This may seem absurd. The USSR tried it and ended up building over 30,000 nuclear weapons. How could India possibly manage it?

    One way to try would be to follow the Chinese example. Following its first nuclear test in 1964, China is estimated to now have about 400 nuclear warheads. They are on aircraft, missiles, some artillery shells, and a few at sea. The majority are spread over about 20 locations, including some hidden in caves in mountainous regions, in the hope that they would survive an attack and could be used to retaliate – and kill even more people. China has about 20 missiles able to hit the US, each has a single warhead of 4,000-5,000 Kt, (a hundred times more destructive than the hydrogen bomb India claimed to have tested, and a few hundred times more destructive than the simple atom bombs Pakistan claimed it tested).

    It seems Indian hawks are hoping for something like a Chinese style arsenal which is to be developed over a long period of time. The doctrine describes a triad, with warheads on planes, missiles and at sea. Bharat Karnad has talked of 350-400 nuclear warheads and a cost of at least 700 billion rupees over the next thirty years as meeting the aims of the doctrine. It is certain to cost more, take longer, and be more difficult.

    What does the Indian doctrine mean for Pakistan? There are enough madmen in Pakistan who will demand that, no matter what, we must do what India does. If India has a nuclear doctrine with operational nuclear forces we must have one also. We must have the planes, the missiles, the nuclear weapons at sea. They will say this for all the usual reasons – it satisfies their hate for India, feeds their ambition to father another bomb or a missile, guarantees them and their institutions even more money, and gives them more power. In previous situations they have prevailed. If they prevail again the arms race will enter an even more tortuous lap.

    All the elements are there. Last May, Indian weapons scientists claimed that they had tested a Hydrogen bomb. Last week the head of India’s nuclear program claimed not only that India could build a neutron bomb (an advanced kind of hydrogen bomb that generates a higher than usual amount of radiation), but that they could design and build bombs of “any type or size.” Soon after the May tests last year, the managers of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program talked of being able to build a Hydrogen bomb, should they be asked, and provided they were given enough money. Now, it is said, Pakistan can build a neutron bomb also – although this verges on the unbelievable since Pakistan has not yet tested a simple hydrogen bomb.

    The missiles too are being lined up. In April, Abdul Kalam, the head of India’s missile program said that the Agni-II, a 2,000-3,000 km range, was “operationally ready” for deployment with a nuclear warhead. In his independence day speech, India’s prime minister announced that “AGNI-2 has been tested… and will be integrated into our defence arsenal.” India’s space launcher successfully launched three satellites from one rocket, and could be converted into an intercontinental ballistic missile with multiple warheads, given enough time and money. There is no doubt Pakistan’s missile men will say that they too can achieve this, if they are given enough money.

    There is no end to the madness. There is talk of an Indian anti-ballistic missile system that will shoot down incoming missiles. Bhabha Atomic Research Center even claims it is building a device (called Kali-5000) that can be used as a beam weapon which “when aimed at enemy missiles and aircraft, will cripple their electronic systems and computer chips and bring them down.” No doubt Pakistan’s scientists will claim they can match that too – given enough money.

    This is certainly the response from Pakistan that India’s hawks hope for. In early July, the Hindustan Times ran a report “What Should We Do With Pakistan?” The first answer was “smash them.” But it was not with nuclear weapons. General V.R. Raghavan (former Director General of Military Operations) said “Till now, we¹ve borne heavy costs. Now we must impose costs.” A former Foreign Secretary urged “We must hurt them in every single way…” Brahma Chellaney, a member of the National Security Advisory Board, went further: “Hit them when they least expect, ideologically, strategically and economically, with military force being only a small slice of the offensive.” The Hindustan Times reported him as calling for economic warfare.

    The clearest of all was K. Subrahmanyam, the guru of India’s nuclear hawks and head of the National Security Advisory Board. He answered the question of what to do about Pakistan by saying “The perfect war is subjugation of the adversary without going to battle. If India raises its defence expenditure to 3 per cent of GDP from the present 2.3, Pakistan will try to match it and go broke. This was how the US under Reagan precipitated the Soviet collapse.” His plan is simple. Pakistan will be incited into an arms race that it is bound to lose. It will, in effect, defend itself to death. Unless there is war.

    The alternative is to put the madness of the bomb behind us. To give it up while there is time, before the bomb’s hateful machinery and its demented mechanics take complete control of life and death.

    *Zia Mian is a physicist and peace activist from Pakistan, currently on the research staff of the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies at Princeton University. He is a founding member of Abolition 2000, and a member of its Global Council. He is also on the Coordinating Committee of the International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation, and a member of the Board of Directors of the United Nations NGO Committee on Disarmament.

    He is the editor of Pakistan’s Atomic Bomb and The Search for Security (1995) and Making Enemies, Creating Conflict: Pakistan’s Crises of State and Society (1997). Other publications by ZIa Mian include “Diplomatic Judo: Using the NPT to Make the Nuclear-Weapons States Negotiate the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons” by Zia Mian and MV Ramana in Disarmament Diplomacy Issue #36.

  • The Nuclear History of Micronesia and the Pacific

    “The first shot, Bravo, the largest single nuclear explosion conducted by the United States, with a destructive capability more than one thousand times that of the Hiroshima bomb, was detonated on 1 March 1954. The explosion was so powerful it vaporized several small islands …”

    “…To this day, peoples of Rongelap, Bikini, Enewetak, and many in the Marshall Islands continue to suffer from cancer, miscarriages, and tumors.”

    While it is harrowing that Japanese cities became the ultimate target, Micronesians (Marshallese) and French-Polynesians have never really overcome the disastrous consequences of the nuclear testings that made the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki possible. In French-Occupied Polynesia, 180 tests were conducted for over 30 years beginning with atmospheric testing in the Tuamotos in 1966. Only sometime later did the testings move underground in the atolls of Moruroa and Fangataufa; but unlike the Americans, in the case of documentation of test results and effects on environmental and human health, the French have always been and continue to be secretive about their own tests in Polynesia. Tahitians and Marshall Islanders who were exposed, including test site workers, have been dying slow, excruciating deaths. Often they are unable to receive proper medical treatment because French authorities continue to deny officially that the nuclear tests did in fact cause any significant environmental or human damage.

    At the conclusion of World War II after Japan’s defeat, Micronesia was taken by America. In January 1946, the US Naval Military Government selected the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands chain for the first series of nuclear tests–known as Operation Crossroads–which were intended to demonstrate the destructive capacity of the atomic bombs on a fleet of wartime ships (Robie 1989, p.142). In July 1947, the US Government became our “Administering Authority,” with the blessings of the UN. Immediately after the war, eleven territories were under UN supervision. Micronesia became administratively the “Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands,” and consisted of the Marshall Islands, the Caroline Islands (which included the islands of Kosrae, Pohnpei, Truck/Chuuk, Yap, and Belau), and the Marianas Islands (which include Guam, Saipan and Tinian).

    In Belau (Palau), where I come from, we were spared the harrowing experiences of the atomic testings. Kwajalein, Bikini and Enewetak in the Marshall Islands, however, were chosen for a supply base and a smaller command center, respectively, and which were used for the bomb testings. The Marshall Islands suffered the most from these military occupations and tests. Kwajelein also became a vital link in the supply route for American forces during the Korean War as well as a base for missile tests later. On Saipan, the main island of what is now the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas, the Central Intelligence set up a camp which operated a secret training for Chinese nationalist guerillas who were part of an unsuccessful plan to invade the Chinese mainland (Robie p.144).

    Micronesia, therefore, was where the beginnings of important aspects of these US military activities took place. These integral aspects of US military strategy in the western Pacific were the beginnings of a strategic concept at work in U.S. Asia-Pacific policy. Ever since, as Joseph Gerson has written, Micronesia has been shaped and influenced by “the goal of maintaining and increasing U.S. power and advantage in the region.” In the Marshall Islands, the US tested a total of 66 atomic and hydrogen bombs between 1946 and 1958. Six islands were vaporised by nuclear weapons and hundreds of people were irradiated. Today, more than 40 years later, many islands are still uninhabited. Many Bikinians and Rongelapese who were downwind of the bomb explosions remain exiled peoples. (Alexander 1994, pp. 28,30).

    In the book, Blood on their Banner: Nationalist Struggles in the South Pacific, David Robie writes,

    …the more than 2000 islands of Micronesia have played a vital role in modern strategic history. Japanese aircraft launched their attack on Peal Harbor from Micronesia, plunging the United States into the Second World War. And it was from Tinian Island in western Micronesia that the Enola Gay took off with its deadly weapons for the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki which ended the war and ushered in the nuclear age. The islands of Micronesia have been used by Washington ever since as pawns to enhance its strategic posture (Robie, ibid, p.142).

    This ‘strategic posture’ was largely the result of a Cold War strategy that relied on massive military might. It emerged as well from a rational calculation of the use of deadly power. Cold War strategy, Alexander observed:

    …required an assessment of both the political and military potential of the atomic weapon in a strategic sense. While the political assessment was made in the context of East-West rivalry, the military assessment required taking note of both the strengths and weaknesses of the new weapon. Two of these weaknesses, the scarcity of bombs and the limited range of the only available delivery vehicle, the B-29 bomber, served to govern US strategy in the first years after World War II, and prompted an all-out effort for research and development, including an ambitious testing program. At the same time, US confidence in its ability to maintain its nuclear lead was bolstered by a new-found strength, the efficacy of which had been demonstrated by the Manhattan Project (Alexander, ibid, p.18).

    A comprehensive program of nuclear research appeared necessary; however, there had been concerns within the US Congress about safety issues. After considerations, the US Atomic Energy Commission told Congress in 1953 that tests should be held overseas until it (can) be established more definitely that continental detonations would not endanger the public health and safety (Weisgall 1980, p. 76). Micronesia, which was captured from the Japanese, seemed, to the AEC, as the most natural place. Bikini was chosen as one of over 20 atolls scattered over close to 400,000 square miles of ocean which make up the Marshall Islands to carry Operation Crossroads, the first series of tests which were conducted near the surface of the atoll, in July 1946. These first tests consisted of two 23 kiloton detonations, one named Able and the other, Baker.

    The explosions gouged out a crater 240 feet deep and 6,000 feet across, melted huge quantities of coral, sucked them up and distributed them far and wide across the Pacific. The island of Rongelap (100 miles away) was buried in powdery particles of radioactive fallout to a depth of one and a half inches, and Utirik (300 miles away) was swathed in radioactive mist. Also in the path of the fallout was a Japanese fishing boat, Lucky Dragon No 5, and all 23 crew rapidly developed radiation sickness. (Alexander 1994, pp.22,23,24). Jonathan Weisgall, in an article titled “Nuclear Nomads of Bikini” noted that according to one report, “Baker alone left 500,000 tons of radioactive mud in the lagoon” (Weisgall, ibid, p.84.).

    But the “US navy [only] sent ships to evacuate the people of Rongelap and Utirik three days after the explosion. These (and other) Pacific people were used as human guinea pigs in an obscene racist experiment – a particularly sharp snapshot of colonialism and the horrors wrought by the arrogant mindset which goes with it,” as a Peace Movement Aotearoa/New Zealand Action Alert put it (Peace Movement Aotearoa, March 1999).

    These two tests were just two of the total 66 nuclear tests that the Department of Defense announced it conducted between 1946 and 1958, 23 of them at Bikini Atoll and 43 at Enewetak, located in the northern Marshall Islands. Operation Sandstone was the name of the series of tests conducted at Enewetak Atoll between April and May 1948. A 49 kiloton blast code-named Yoke, yielded “an explosion which was more than twice the size of any prior atomic bomb detonation.” There was something significant about Operation Sandstone, as Alexander observed. Partly quoting from Harvey Wasserman’s and Norman Solomon’s book, Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America’s Experience with Atomic Radiation, Alexander wrote,

    Operation Sandstone was significant in that the tests, conducted jointly by the Department of Defense and the Atomic Energy Commission, ‘evidently did result in substantial improvements in the efficiency of use of fissile material,’ and according to Herbert York this ‘success’ ‘boosted morale at Los Alamos and helped garner further support for the laboratory in Washington. As a result, the construction of a new laboratory, located nearby on South Mesa (New Mexico), was authorized as a replacement for the wartime facilities which were still being used.’ This response is an example of the way in which the nuclear industry and nuclear strategists developed their own momentum. Each successful explosion not only helped create the mystique of American nuclear preeminence, but also spoke to the possibility of the development of more and more powerful weapons, resulting in greater insecurity not only for the people involved in the tests, but for the entire world (Alexander, ibid., p. 24).

    Other series of tests, Operation Greenhouse, for example, were conducted at Enewetak in April and May 1951. On November 1, 1952, Mike was exploded on the island of Elugelab. Mike was the name of a cylindrical bomb measuring 22 ft in length and 5-1/2 ft in diameter and weighing 23 tons. Mike’s detonation yielded a force of over 10 megatons, nearly one thousand times that of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The island of Elugelab completely disappeared.

    The US Government listed the Mike explosion as the first detonation of an experimental thermonuclear device (Wasserman and Solomon, pp. 80-84). A total of six islands would simply vanish as a result of further tests of similar magnitude. The Mike bomb paved the way for the development of future hydrogen bombs. Operation Castle tested these bombs between March and May 1954, using Bikini and Enewetak Atolls. The operation included the following detonations: Bravo (15 megaton), Romeo (11 megaton), Union (6.9 megaton), Yankee (13.5 megaton), and Nectar (1.69 megaton).

    Again, according to Alexander:

    The first shot, Bravo, the largest single nuclear explosion conducted by the United States, with a destructive capability more than one thousand times that of the Hiroshima bomb, was detonated on 1 March 1954. The explosion was so powerful it vaporized several small islands and parts of islands in Bikini Atoll and left a hole one-mile deep in diameter in the reef. Years later, some Bikinian leaders would return to Bikini and weep openly at the sight of the sandbars and open water, all that remained of the islands destroyed by the Bravo shot. They would declare that the islands had ‘lost their bones.’

    Bravo coated Rongelap and Utirik Atolls with two inches of radioactive fallout. (Alexander, ibid., 28).

    To this day, peoples of Rongelap, Bikini, Enewetak, and many in the Marshall Islands continue to suffer from cancer, miscarriages, and tumors. Eighty-four percent of those who lived on Rongelap who below 10 years old at the times of the explosions have required surgery for thyroid tumors (Alexander, ibid., p.30).

    Movement for a Nuclear-Free Belau (Palau)

    As someone who is intimately involved in anti-nuclear movements and know of the health consequences of radiation exposure, I grieve today for my Marshallese sisters and brothers. By a kind hand of fate perhaps, my island nation of Belau was spared the harrowing nightmare of nuclear testings. However, we were not spared the full brunt of what is described as nuclear colonialism. By the end of the 1970s, over a decade after the official creation of a larger Micronesian effort to decolonize (Congress of Micronesia), it was clear to us what the monstrous legacy of nuclearism had done just a few thousand miles to the east of us in the Marshall Islands. (Subsequent nuclear catastrophes would contribute to strengthening the anti-nuclear movement). Marshall Islands, the French-Occupied Polynesia, and several places around the world that had been unkindly dealt by nuclearism impressed themselves strongly upon our minds, to say the least.

    In our movement to decolonize, we wrote a Nuclear-Free Constitution in April 1979. Overt and covert American efforts to sidetrack issues and or at the least undermine Belau’s position on anti-nuclearism were unconvincing; via various diplomatic and not-so-diplomatic means, they failed initially to arrest what was quickly becoming a popular movement against what was felt to be outright colonial behavior. The history of the Constitutional Convention that produced the world’s first nuclear-free Constitution offered an explicit rejection of American demands, which were to compel Belau to acquiesce to US military and nuclear requirements. The increasing anti-base movement in the Philippines, where the US maintained its largest foreign military base operation, contributed to the tensions between Belau and America. Belau was always seen as a potential fallback area in the event the Philippine people did successfully evicted the US military. Belau, the Philippines, Guam, Kwajelein and other parts of Micronesia were parts of the network of what was described as a “forward military strategy” which aimed to project US military strength as close as possible to the Asian mainland and throughout the Pacific Ocean. This was part of a grand strategic plan outlined in a US National Security Action Memorandum No. 145 (NSAM-145), signed by John F. Kennedy in April 1962, and designed to formally incorporate all of Micronesia within US’s political and military network in the Pacific.

    NSAM-145 provided the political context in which Kennedy would, over a year later, send a mission to Micronesia to plot the contours of a colonial conspiracy which had been faithfully adhered to by subsequent US administrations. The mission was headed by a Harvard University Business School Professor Anthony M. Solomon. The mission’s report came to bear his name. The Solomon Report, was the blueprint for US neocolonialism in the Pacific [and] provides disturbing reading on American political ambitions (Aldridge and Myers 1990, pp.22, 23). Resisting this grand colonial scheme, we attempted to create a nation-state. The next 15 years proved to be a painful period of radical political and social transformations, as we struggled to preserve our nuclear-free Constitution amidst aggressive US Pentagon attempts to undermine it.

    It is impossible to describe a 15-year movement here in a page or two. I will only refer the reader to the extensive report of the United Nations Visiting Mission to Belau in November 1993. The UN mission was sent there to observe the November 9th 1993 plebiscite on the Compact of Free Association, the treaty negotiated by Belau and the US which details the economic and military conditions of a treaty-relationship between the US and Belau (for more details, refer to UN Trusteeship Council Document T/1978, December 1993). This is the treaty that the United States was adamant in compelling Belau to adopt, and which after 15 years and seven attempts to say NO to it, was finally “approved” in 1993. The treaty has essentially laid to rest the nuclear-free provisions of Belau’s Constitution for 50 years; the US, in return, will give Belau some economic assistance only for 15 years.

    The crucial issues to consider here, or in similar nation-building efforts, are those of democratic principles and military imperatives. Between 1983 and 1993, Belau peoples exercised their democratic right to freely express their common wishes in founding a nuclear-free island nation. In all of these democratic exercises, we said No each time. US military imperatives overrode all of those No’s and undermined democratic practice; but this is not something new. Cultures of militarism and nuclearism are, by nature, cultures of secrecy. They erode openness and democracy and make indispensable a culture of death and terror which legitimizes militarism and production and use of weapons of mass destruction. The theory and practice of nuclear deterrence have been extremely hostile to democratic practice. National military strategies have often required the absence of free democratic thought while, on the other hand, a commitment to nuclear disarmament and demilitarization will allow communities to participate more fully in both the political sphere and civil society” in working to ensure a world free of the nuclear dangers that confront us.

    Belau’s first popularly-elected president, Haruo Remeliik, was assassinated, partly as a result of the intricate web of Compact of Free Association politics and internal power struggles shaped by America’s obstinate military policies.

    As a result of the November 1993 plebiscite, the Compact of Free Association was approved and came into force on October 1, 1994, a day hailed as “Independence Day.” A year later, Belau joined the South Pacific Forum, an organization of Pacific Island Governments. In December of 1995, Belau joined the United Nations. As a result, in the South Pacific Forum and within the United Nations, Belau will assume responsibilities for keeping the issue of nuclear disarmament alive.

    One of the stipulations of the Compact of Free Association which made possible its passage in 1993 was that the United States would only seek to exercise its right to militarize (which implies the stationing of nuclear weapons) “during periods of crisis or hostilities.” To be sure, a May 6, 1993 Letter of Assurances from US Secretary of State Warren Christopher failed to explicitly define what such crisis or hostilities would be. In any event, the stipulations expressed in Secretary Christopher’s letter were incorporated within and legislated into binding Belau law. A greater portion of these assurances would rely on the “good faith” of the United States and the Belau Government, in accordance with the provisions of stated military objectives of the Compact treaty (see Republic of Palau Public Law No. 4-9, Sections 5, 6). Regional peace, we must then conclude, will depend to a greater or lesser extent on the responsibilities of these two nations to decrease (or de-escalate) the potential for actual military conflict or violence.

    It is worth noting that for the basic international legal instrument mandating global nuclear disarmament is the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The NPT forms the integrated network of unilateral, bilateral, regional and multilateral treaties and other standard-setting arrangements that seek to control/curb the proliferation of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. Nuclear disarmament is premised on the good faith efforts by nuclear weapon states to take unilateral or multilateral initiatives to achieve disarmament. Highlighted in Article Six of the NPT, such a premise has been a controversial issue because of lack of action to pursue good faith initiatives to disarm. That premise of good faith, however, was reaffirmed by the International Court of Justice in 1996 and remains vital to the trust that must be built within on-going disarmament efforts.

    The nuclear disarmament challenge in Belau would be to compel a good faith compliance to US and Belau laws.For Belau and the United States, respectively, Republic of Palau Public Law No. 4-9 (signed by our president on July 16, 1993), US Public Law 99-658 (approved on November 14, 1986) and US Public Law 101-219 (approved December 12, 1989) are the American legal mandates of the Compact of Free Association. In addition to this July 1993 Belau law which merely restated some interpretations and positions of the Belau Government vis-a-vis the Compact of Free Association as well as subsidiary agreements to it developed in Hawaii and Guam, and authorized what became the final Compact plebiscite, for Belau’s part, we are bound as well by the legal imperatives elaborated in the two US laws referenced above.

    In January 1997, at its regional meeting in Moorea, French-Occupied Polynesia, the Abolition 2000 network passed a resolution denouncing the military/nuclear option of the Belau/US Compact of Free Association, and the undemocratic process within which it was “approved.” More importantly, the Abolition 2000 resolution stated that any attempt to use the option for nuclear purposes would violate the Pacific nuclear-free zone as well as violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and would risk adding to the genetic damage already perpetuated on the Pacific peoples.

    Not to be forgotten, there were British Tests in Australia, Kiritimati (Christmas) and Malden Islands in the Line Islands. Jacqui Katona (Gundjehmi Aboriginal Organization, Mirrar peoples) from Australia has information on these.

    In French-Occupied Polynesia, the French have conducted a total of 153 nuclear weapons tests, in addition to those conducted in 1995. There is a lack of official information about the tests, so no comparison with how the Americans have done in Micronesia is done. Again, Jacqui Katona may be able to provide information about Moruroa and Fangataufa, and the Te Ao Maohi (French-Polynesians) anti-nuclear movement. And Lysiane Alezard, from Le Mouvement de la Paix in Paris, should also be able to share more information about the French tests.

    The French nuclear test site workers face similar problems that all nuclear test site workers elsewhere face. Amidst the difficulties in Tahiti however, Hiti Tau has worked along with peoples from a university in Belgium to gather personal information and testimonies of previous nuclear test site workers, now published in the book Moruroa and Us: Polynesians’ Experiences during Thirty Years of Nuclear Testing in the French Pacific (See De Vries and Seur 1997). Theirs is a narrative of struggle as well as a triumph of collective grassroots action. It speaks as well to the role of networking within the international anti-nuclear information infrastructure, of which this gathering is part.

    What Can We Conclude From All of This?

    Unfortunate as we Micronesians were for being the unwilling hosts to preparations, testings, and launchings of weapons of mass destruction against civilian populations, over the years within our demilitarization and nuclear-free struggles, we have been constantly reminded of our role within the world-wide struggle for demilitarization and denuclearization. While we grieve for the on-going legacy of human and environmental health resulting from nuclear testings, a greater portion of our nuclear-free Pacific struggles has been inspired by what Betty Burkes described in her talk at an Abolition 2000 conference in Northern California in 1997, that we are constantly making inquiry into the culture of war and violence we inhabit, check out how we participate and are organized to acquiesce in our own exploitation (Burkes 1997). At least we have tried to work along with Japanese, Native peoples, and other victims of the Nuclear Age in forging common struggles of resistance against nuclearization and militarization everywhere.

    We recognize the responsibility for tailoring our struggles in ways that inspire peoples in comparable sites of struggle. As far as we have been able, we have sought to wage our struggles non-violently. Being witnesses to the violence and brutality of nuclearism–and the colonialism which legitimizes nuclear violations of our islands in the first place–Pacific Islanders sensed early on that a struggle for genuine justice had to reject the adoption of violence as a means to end the violence we saw around us. Colonialism provided the ruthless infrastructure from which we yearned to be free from political oppression.

    It was owing partly to the nature of Pacific peoples to reject the principle of violence. Violence killed all in its path, and here we were struggling to survive. Instinctively, decisions were made for a nuclear-free Pacific movement to respond accordingly. A friend in Hawaii, Rolf Nordahl, recently reflecting on this tendency, rejects violence as a means to achieving resolution of the sovereignty movement there and commented to our Allies group, “Violence begets more violence and the resulting desire for revenge leads to twisted thinking such as Milosevic explaining that the reason he can conduct ethnic cleansing is because of what happened 600 years ago.” We need to make the connections between the violence of colonialism and a culture of militarism which allows the militarization/nuclearization of colonial outposts, and funnels resources away from more urgent social needs in Western nations. Moreover, we need to constantly question the many justifications for militarism and its role in economic affairs.

    Writing about the role of weaponry in international trade, John Ralston Saul says in his book Voltaire’s Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West that “We are living in the midst of a permanent wartime economy.” He continues, “The most important capital good produced in the West today is weaponry. The most important sector in international trade is not oil or automobiles or airplanes. It is armaments.” Saul does not necessarily add anything new to what we already know about the trade in weapons; but he does reiterate the backwardness or the lack or higher moral values that ought to influence the trading of goods and services. Among many others, Seymour Melman has been writing about these issues for 20 years; his book The Permanent War Economy is recommended reading. John Stanley and Maurice Pearton, Steven Lydenberg, Robert De Grasse, William Hartung, Carol Evans, James Adams, and Martin Navias also have provided compelling analyses of military spendings and economic waste (there is a list of their books in the Works Cited section at the end). The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute publishes an annual accounting of arms sales, while The Council of Economic Priorities in New York has addressed the subject in a number of reports which hold to the old liberal approach–that arms are a waste of money and that statistics prove it.

    In the preface to their book Resisting the Serpent: Palau’s Struggle for Self-Determination Bob Aldridge and Ched Myers reflect that “For nowhere else are the concrete mechanisms of the military-industrial-academic complex so sanitized, so overlaid with official mystification. How else could the citizenry of the world’s largest debtor nation continue to accept and subsidize such huge levels of military spending? Militarism, to extend the metaphor, has ‘colonized our minds…But our domestication is most troubling when it deludes us to think that militarism, apart from an overt foreign intervention and short of nuclear war, is at best an economic boom and at worst a victimless crime. The fact is, without a strategic missile ever being launched, militarism is wreaking destruction upon human life and culture. Perhaps North Americans might see this more clearly if we suspend our scenarios of what might happen to our world in the event of all-out war long enough to listen to the voice of those whose worlds have already been ravaged” (Aldridge and Myers 1990, p. xx-xxi)

    Beginnings of the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Movement

    The grassroots Pacific anti-nuclear movement was launched at the first Nuclear-Free Pacific conference at Suva [Fiji] in April 1975, backed by the Against Tests on Moruroa (ATOM) committee which had been formed in 1970. It consisted of people from the Pacific Theological College, the University of the South Pacific and the Fiji YWCA. The committee was merged into the Pacific People’s Action Front in the mid-1970s and then the movement went into decline. It surfaced again as the Fiji Anti-Nuclear Group (FANG) in 1983. Other Pacific anti-nuclear groups existed already but the Suva conference established a Pacific-wide network. This movement proved to be a major factor in persuading Pacific governments to take a stronger nuclear-free stand and shaping public awareness and opinion throughout the region.

    A draft People’s Charter for a Nuclear-Free Pacific was produced at Suva and influenced the then New Zealand Prime Minister Norman Kirk to call for a nuclear-free zone treaty at the 1975 South Pacific Forum–an ideal that took a decade to be realized. After the draft was reaffirmed at a second conference in Pohnpei [the capital of what is now the Federated States of Micronesia] in 1978, the third meeting two years later at Kailua [O’ahu], Hawaii, expanded the group’s identity as the Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) movement. Resource centres were set up in Honolulu and Port Vila [Vanuatu].

    The fourth–and biggest–congress was held in Port Vila during 1983 in recognition of the Vanuatu Government’s support of a niuklia fri pasifik, as it is expressed in pidgin (Robie, ibid, p. 146-147). At the opening of this conference in Port Villa, Vanuatu, Deputy Prime Minister Sethy Regenvanu told the delegates that, “We are seeking a Pacific…free of every last remnant of colonialism… [F]reedom and independence will have no meaning if our very existence is threatened by the constant fear of total destruction” (Robie, ibid, p.147).

    In Vanuatu, the People’s Charter for a Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific, adopted in Hawaii, was reaffirmed. The Charter’s Preamble declared the following:

    1. We, the people of the Pacific want to make our position clear. The Pacific is home to millions of people with distinct cultures, religions and ways of life, and we refuse to be abused or ignored any longer;

    2. We, the people of the Pacific have been victimised for too long by foreign powers. The Western imperialistic and colonial powers invaded our defenceless region, they took our lands and subjugated our people to their whims. This form of alien colonial political and military domination unfortunately persists as an evil cancer in some of our native territories such as Tahiti-Polynesia, Kanaky, Australia and Aotearoa. Our home continues to be despoiled by foreign powers developing nuclear and other means of destruction, oppression, and exploitation that advance a strategy that has no winners, no liberators and imperils the survival of all human kind;

    3. We, the people of the Pacific will assert ourselves and wrest control over the destiny of our nations and our environment from foreign powers, including Trans-National Corporations;

    4. We note in particular the racist roots of the world’s nuclear powers. We are entitled to and we commit ourselves to the creation of a just and equitable society;

    5. Our environment is further threatened by the continuing deployment of nuclear arsenals in the so-called strategic areas throughout the Pacific. Only one nuclear submarine has to be lost at sea, or one nuclear warhead dumped in our ocean from a stricken bomber, and the threat to the fish and our livelihood is endangered for centuries. The erection of super ports, Nuclear Testing Stations, may bring employment but the price is destruction of our customs, our way of life, the pollution of our crystal clear waters, and brings the ever present threat of disaster by radioactive poisoning into the everyday life of the peoples;

    6. We, the people of the Pacific reaffirm our intention to extract only those elements of Western civilisation that will be a permanent benefit to us. We wish to control our destinies and protect our environment in our own ways. Our usage of our natural resources in the past was more than adequate to ensure the balance between nature and humankind. No form of administration should ever seek to destroy that balance for the sake of a brief commercial gain;

    7. We, the people of the Pacific will strive to be politically, economically, and spiritually self-determining. This includes the right to secede from oppressing nations.

    The Pacific anti-nuclear movement, like the movement of indigenous peoples to assert their rights, was partly a response to the West’s persistent colonial domination in violation of the United Nations Charter’s call for decolonization at that time and the West’s Cold War pretext for use of the Pacific islands for devastating nuclear testing. By that same year, the United Nations Cobo Report [in Geneva] concluded that discrimination against indigenous peoples was due to their lack of self-determination, that imposed assimilation was a form of discrimination, and that the right of indigenous peoples to cultural distinctiveness, political self-determination and secure land resources should be formally declared by the UN (Blaisdell 1998a).

    As a result of previous work then on-going, the UN created, under the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities of the Human Rights Commission in Geneva, the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations, in order to address, among other things, the continuing abuses of the world’s Indigenous peoples by existing Nation-states. That working group completed, after 12 years of work and intense lobbying in Geneva, the Pacific and around the world, a draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Indigenous peoples are still working to get it passed by the United Nations. More significantly, that working group provided an additional forum wherein we attempted to broaden discussions and debate regarding our anti-nuclear struggle, hoping to develop international consensus for final cessation of foreign domination in our homes. We look forward to the future with hope when all the final vestiges of colonialism will have been eradicated.

    Our anti-nuclear movement has been inextricably linked to our struggle to bring about an end to colonialism and neocolonialism. Had Pacific Islanders been able to freely self-determine their political futures–taking serious consideration of informed consent in a climate devoid of fear and economic blackmail–there would absolutely be no doubt we would have rejected hosting the preparations and testing of other foreign countries’ dangerous nuclear bombs in our island homes.

    On July 9, 1999 which was Constitutional Day in my island nation of Belau, we celebrated the full 20 years since we wrote what was once a nuclear-free Constitution! A mere twenty years have taught us much. A grassroots global nuclear abolition movement has been created and continues to grow. Moreover, a campaign to abolish nuclear weapons within the United States has been created and will be formally launched in October 1999.

    The International Court of Justice, the world’s highest court, issued a legal advisory expressing the general illegality of nuclear weapons. For us in Belau, the struggle was long and painful. Assassinations, killings of innocent civilians, and official involvements (of officials in both the Belau and US governments) in the breakdown of law and order, now vindicate the rightness of the nuclear-free idea, once radical and unrealistic but now chic (See Butler, Edwards and Kirby 1988, “Palau: A Challenge to the Rule of Law in Micronesia,” for a description of the systematic breakdown of law engaged in by “top government officials”). Now a broad spectrum of mainstream organizations and individuals are working to create a nuclear-free world, largely because we have now come to understand the depth of the crisis of relying on weapons of mass destruction to ensure “security.”

    For Micronesians generally, it made sense to do the right thing. For Belau peoples particularly, we must have either been ready and willing to pay the price or crazy enough to stand up to the US Pentagon. Whatever the case may have been, twenty years after we wrote that Constitution, on July 9, 1999, the young peoples of Belau–many of them were the children of those who authored the Constitution as well as our nation’s Founding Fathers–hosted a Constitutional Forum wherein the surviving members of the 1979 Constitution Convention spoke about their experiences during the convention. The Forum addressed the challenges now facing the island nation. With all that we have seen take place in the last twenty years, it was encouraging to know that we had been vindicated.

    In July 1978 however, just a year before we authored our own nuclear-free Constitution, the UN General Assembly was scheduled to hold its 10th Special Session between May 23 to July 1, devoted to disarmament. Surprisingly, and by consensus, the General Assembly adopted a Final Document about 20 days ahead of schedule–something unheard of in current multilateral disarmament forums.

    That Final Document declared:

    Mankind today is confronted with an unprecedented threat of self-extinction arising from the massive and competitive accumulation of the most destructive weapons ever produced. Existing arsenals of nuclear weapons alone are more than sufficient to destroy all life on earth. Failure of efforts to halt and reverse the arms races, in particular the nuclear arms race, increase the danger of the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Yet the arms race continues. Military budgets are constantly growing, with enormous consumption of human and materials resources. The increase in weapons, especially nuclear weapons, far from helping to strengthen international security, on the contrary weakens it. The vast stockpiles and tremendous build-up of arms and armed forces and the competition for qualitative refinement of weapons of all kinds to which scientific resources and technical advances are diverted, pose incalculable threats to peace. This situation both reflects and aggravates international tensions, sharpens conflicts in various regions of the world, hinders the process of detente, exacerbates the differences between opposing military alliances, jeopardizes the security of all States, heightens the sense of insecurity among all States, including non-nuclear-weapon States, and increases the threat of nuclear war… (United Nations Office of Public Information 1978, pp.4-5).

    An accompanying program of action identified several key actions and proposals for disarmament work to proceed. I recount that 1978 declaration on disarmament in order to highlight the fact that nation-states cannot be trusted. Twenty years is a bit too long to wait on a sincere promise made to halt development of weapons of mass destruction. Arguably, since 1978, the world has witnessed an increase of nuclear arsenals and the threats now facing humanity have increased as a consequence of the arms race conducted since that time. We now only have approximately 20 weeks before the new millennium comes, making it ever so crucial that we join together as representatives of civil society to develop a more progressive grassroots agenda for a nuclear-free world.

    Envisioning/Ensuring Our Future — Abolition 2000

    This is the legacy of what we in the Pacific have been witnesses to: the violence of colonial aggressions and nuclear colonialism, and the resulting effort to re-think the whole basis of planetary security. Thinking along shared responsibilities of caring for our planet compels us to network far and wide with sympathetic allies who inspire us and help us in a common effort to bring sanity, every precious bit of sanity, to the way we live on this planet. Genuine peace can come when we allow a sense of justice to guide our affairs vis-a-vis one another, and more crucially, in the way we relate with our precious Mother Earth. “We are a culture organized around death, war, profit, and violence,” Betty Burkes proclaimed, “where power is based on the principle of power-over others.” She explains that power over [another] is the power of punishment, weapons, competition, the power of annihilation that supports all the institutions of domination. Nuclear weapons serve the preservation and continuance of that culture.However, to realize a secure and livable world for our children and grandchildren and all future generations, the stated goal of Abolition 2000 requires that we make some inquiry into the culture of war and violence we inhabit, check[ing] out how we participate and are organized to acquiesce in our own exploitation (Burkes, ibid.).

    Describing what was at stake at a US nuclear disarmament meeting in Chicago last year when the US Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons was being established, Jackie Cabasso, one of Abolition 2000’s founders, wrote in Abolition 2000: Speaking Truth to Power: “We had lots of questions: What exactly does abolition mean. How long would it take?…We recognized that a nuclear weapons free world must be achieved carefully and in a step by step manner, and we spelled out the steps. But we were unyielding in our objective: ‘definite and unconditional abolition of nuclear weapons.’ From the basement of the United Nations in New York we faxed out the Abolition 2000 Statement” (Cabasso 1998, pp.2-3). And the rest is history! Abolition 2000 is now a global movement with more than 1,300 organization members around the world.

    Many individuals who were involved in founding the global Abolition 2000 network have created a US campaign to abolish nuclear weapons. Such a short history, less than 5 years–speaks volumes to what a caring and active grassroots movement can do in 5 years what more than 180 Nation-states cannot do in twenty! But this disparity of action–and excessive amount of rhetoric–on the part of nation-states, must also tell us something fundamental: that there may be an unfortunate lack of concern and or sincerity on the part of governments collectively to achieve anything to reduce the increasing dangers humanity faces. It is up to us then, including all concerned peoples and grassroots movements around the world, to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons. Failing to do so and remaining indifferent to this global effort to rid the world of nuclear arms is to participate in a conspiracy of silence that is ultimately deadly.

    I take this issue very personally, as everything that I and my brothers and sisters in Belau and around the Pacific value politically, culturally, spiritually have been and continue to be challenged in the extreme by the arrogance of power, maintained by the ability to threaten to murder the mass of humanity. Threatening to mass-annihilate peoples in order to defend a certain “way of life” should be crimes against humanity. It is the same logic that inspired colonial excursions across the globe in the past 500 years.

    The excessive amount of financial resources used to sustain nuclear arsenals is a larceny of the mass of peoples who toil daily in America to pay taxes that are then diverted from urgent social needs to maintaining ever-increasing arsenals of weapons of mass destruction. It is a moral bankruptcy that is driving all these policies; the bankruptcy knows no boundaries as we are all deeply impacted in many ways. We have, in essence, all returned to the scene of a crime, and we do so largely to find within ourselves the will to live as human beings.

    * Richard Salvador is currently a doctoral candidate in political science at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in Honolulu, where he lives. He is writing a dissertation on the colonial history of Micronesia and Micronesian decolonization movements. He is also gathering research about Belau (Palau), with the goal of writing about Belau’s effort to produce a nuclear-free Constitution; the American Government’s counter-effort to strike down the nuclear-free provisions of that Constitution; and the subsequent effects of the anti-nuclear movement on society and people. Richard is also active in international anti-nuclear work and currently serves on the coordinating committee of Abolition 2000 representing the Pacific Islands Association of NGOs.

    Works Cited

    “Abolition 2000 Resolution Against the Military/Nuclear Option of the Republic of Palau-United States Compact of Free Association,” (Moorea, Te Ao Maohi, January 20-28, 1997). See website of Abolition 2000: A Global Network for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons

    http://www.napf.org/abolition2000/index.html

    Adams, James. Engines of War. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1990.

    Aldridge, Bob and Ched Myers. Resisting the Serpent: Palau’s Struggle for Self-Determination. Baltimore, Maryland: Fortkamp Publishing Company, 1990.

    Alexander, Ronni. Putting the Earth First: Alternatives to Nuclear Security in Pacific Island States. Honolulu, Hawaii: Matsunaga Institute for Peace, 1994. (ISBN: 9994371576)

    Bailey, Emily, Richard Guthrie, Daryl Howlett and John Simpson, The Evolution of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Regime, 5th edition. (Programme for Promoting Nuclear Non-Proliferation). Southhampton, UK: The Mountbatten Centre for International Studies, 1999.

    Blaisdell, Kekuni. “The Indigenous Rights Movement in the Pacific: 1998 Marks the Centennial of the U.S. Colonial Expansion in the Pacific and Caribbean,” published by In Motion Magazine, 1998a. Available on the Internet: http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/pacific.html

    Blaisdell, Kekuni. “Decolonization: Unfinished Business in the Pacific (Pacific Islands Association of Non-Government Organizations Discussion Paper for the Regional Seminar of the United Nations Decolonization Committee,” Nadi, Fiji, 16-18 June 1998. Published by In Motion Magazine. Available on the Internet: http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/fiji1.html

    Butler, William J. and George C. Edwards and Michael D. Kirby. Palau: A Challenge to the Rule of Law in Micronesia: Report of a Mission on Behalf of The International Commission of Jurists and The American Association for the International Commission of Jurists. New York: The American Association for the International Commission of Jurists, 1988.

    Burkes, Betty, “What can one Abolitionist Movement Learn from Another? Comparing Abolition of Nuclear Weapons with Abolition of Slavery,” Text of speech at a Northern California Abolition 2000 Conference, February 22, 1997.

    Jacqueline Cabasso, “Abolition 2000: Speaking Truth to Power,” Text of speech at US nuclear demilitarization campaign planning meeting, October 9-10, 1998. Chicago.

    Churchill, Ward and Winona LaDuke, “Native North America: The Political Economy of Radioactive Colonialism,” in M. Annette Jaimes (ed), The State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization, and Resistance. Boston: South End Press, 1992.

    De Grasse, Robert, Jr., Military Expansion–Economic Decline. New York: Council on Economic Priorities, 1983.

    Evans, Caron. “Reappraising Third World Arms Production,” in Survival (March 1986).

    Joseph Gerson, “U.S. Asia-Pacific Hegemony and Possibilities of Popular Solidarity, Fresh Look: Re-examining the role and impact of US bases in Asia-Pacific Seoul, South Korea,” June 26-27, 1999.

    Hartung, William. The Economic Consequences of a Nuclear Freeze. New York: Council on Economic Priorities, 1984.

    Lydenberg, Steven. Weapons for the World. New York: Council on Economic Priorities, 1977.

    Melman, Seymour. The Permanent War Economy: American Capitalism in Decline. New York: Simon and Shuster, 1978.

    Moruroa and Us: Polynesians’ Experiences during Thirty Years of Nuclear Testing in the French

    Pacific, published by the Documentation and Research Centre on Peace and Conflict, Lyon, France, 1997.

    Summary: “‘Moruroa and us’ is the final report about the experiences of the Polynesian test-site workers and islanders who lived in the vicinity of Moruroa and Fangataufa. The report is the result of a sociological research conducted by Hiti Tau and the Eglise Evangélique and supported by Pieter de Vries and Han Seur of the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands.

    To see a longer summary of Moruroa and US, please visit: http://www.antenna.nl/ecsiep/resource/moruroa.html

    Navias, Martin. Ballistic Missile Proliferation in the Third World. London: IISS/Brassey’s, 1990.

    Peace Movement Aotearoa (New Zealand), “Action Alert – Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Day,” March 1999.

    Republic of Palau Public Law No. 4-9, Fourth Olbiil Era Kelulau (4th Congress), Third Special Session, May 1993. “An Act to State the interpretations and positions of the Republic of Palau as to the Compact of Free Association between the Republic of Palau and the United States of America…” See especially, Sections 5 and 6.

    Robie, David. Blood on Their Banner: Nationalist Struggles in the South Pacific. Leichhardt, NSW, Australia: Pluto Press, 1989.

    Salvador, Richard N. “Indigenous Peoples Speak Truth to Power: Environmental and Human Health Aspects of the Nuclear Age,” NGO Statement to the Third Preparatory Committee of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty 2000 Formal Review, May 10-21, 1999. New York.

    Salvador, Richard N. “Nuclear Colonialism and Environmental Racism: An Indigenous Perspective,” unpublished NGO Statement to the Second Preparatory Committee of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty 2000 Formal Review, 27 April to 8 May 1998. Geneva, Switzerland

    Saul, John Ralston. Voltaire’s Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West, Toronto and New York: Penguin Books, 1992.

    Stanley, John and Maurice Pearton, The International Trade in Arms. London: International Institute for Strategic Studies [IISS], 1972.

    The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute [SIPRI], The Arms Trade with the Third World. New York: Council on Economic Priorities, 1977.

    Wasserman, Harvey and Norman Solomon, Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America’s Experience with Atomic Radiation, 1945-1982, New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1982.

    Jonathan Weisgall, “The Nuclear Nomads of Bikini,” Foreign Affairs 39, 1980.

    United Nations Office of Public Information, “Final Document of Assembly Session on Disarmament 23 May-1 July 1978,” New York: United Nations Headquarters.

    United Nations Trusteeship Council, “Report of the United Nations Visiting Mission to Palau, Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, 1993.” In Official Records of the Trusteeship Council, Sixtieth Session, Supplement No. 1 (T/1978).

  • Season of Hiroshima

    The season of Hiroshima arrives each August in the heat of summer. The bomb exploded over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and three days later a second bomb exploded over Nagasaki. Total destruction. The flattening of cities, the incineration of all forms of life. It is a season of memory, reflection, and rededication to the future of life.

    Hiroshima was the awakening of the Nuclear Age. It was a moment in history when time stood still. The clocks were frozen at 8:16 a.m. It was not the end of war as had been hoped, but the end of a certain innocence that could never return. Hiroshima taught us that time was not infinite for humanity, that the future was not assured. We had harnessed the awesome and awful power of the atom, and with this the power to destroy ourselves.

    Hiroshima neither was nor is about victory or defeat. Nor is it about the Japanese, the Americans, or the people of any other single country. Hiroshima belongs to all humanity, residing in our collective consciousness. It is universal. We share in its destructive fire. We share in its suffering, its death, and rebirth.

    The spirit of Hiroshima is “Never Again!” The promise on the Memorial Cenotaph at Hiroshima Memorial Peace Park reads “Let All Souls Here Rest in Peace; For We Shall Not Repeat the Evil.” It is a promise to not only those who died, but to those who lived. It is a promise to all humanity and to the future. The “We” in the promise is all of us. It is a promise to ourselves.

    Wherever you live, take note of this season, and spend some time in contemplation on the meaning for humanity of the historic, somber events which took place on August 6 and August 9, 1945.

  • “We, The People”: Weaponization and Citizenship

    “‘We, the people’ who, according to the preamble of our constitution are entrusted with sovereign power, have not been expected to participate in the decision making process on a matter as serious as this. We have been relieved of the responsibility of citizenship, spared the trouble of debating and deciding about the developmental priorities of our poor nation and the desired budgetary allocations across sectors. We have been told and, in turn, accepted that power is defined as domination and war capability and not as empowerment and human capability.”

    A year after Pokharan II nuclear explosions and a few weeks after the publication of India’s draft nuclear doctrine, this note is addressed not to the politicians and policy makers who are directly responsible for conducting those tests or drafting the `nuclear doctrine’, nor to the group of scientists whose active interests and efforts, sadly misdirected, have made such tests possible, nor to the military-industrial complex, national and international, whose vested interests relentlessly fuel the engine of weaponization worldwide. Understandably, a variety of comments and criticisms have been leveled against them and their activities during the course of the year by persons of diverse analytical and political proclivities. Here I intend to divert our attention away from “them” to “us” – to the generic public, to ordinary people, to relatives, friends, colleagues and neighbors who are my fellow citizens on a daily basis.

    Jingoism, Mass-Mesmerization, Powerlessness

    Most of us are not directly involved in the act of weaponization, nuclear or otherwise, but we have an opinion about the nation’s nuclear policies and more particularly about the recent nuclear tests. Very disturbingly, for many of us, this opinion is quite positive, occasionally veering towards a vulgar and alarming tone of jingoism (though the initial euphoria amongst some of us has died down over time). However distressed, one cannot dismiss this hard reality as mere trivia, since it involves a large number of people around us whose views, or more appropriately, blissful indifference, inaction and passificism do create a congenial yet inert public opinion – an ideal atmosphere from which elite-dominated, citizen-irreverent public policies originate.

    While one may retain a basic faith in the old maxim that “all the people cannot be fooled all of the time”, one cannot but acknowledge the dangerous possibility that a sizable number of people can be effectively persuaded within quite a short period of time to suspend their refined common sense and judgments about things that really matter in their day-to-day living and believe instead in the illusion that “military security” will enhance human security, that flexing our nuclear muscles will literally energize the muscles of our teeming millions who are poor, famished and malnourished and help them cope with the perpetual vulnerabilities which adorn their daily existence. Many of us have descended into this disillusionment in recent times. How has a country with a legacy of passive resistance, non-aligned movements and democratic socialism stooped to this level?

    Postponing the examination of this momentous issue for now, here I would like to underline the supreme need to acknowledge the reality of such a mass-mesmerization. As a fellow citizen I find it important to comprehend this not-so-insignificant support for pro-nuclear policies. Such an act of comprehension and serious recognition of the ground reality alone can enable us to launch a strategy of counter-persuasion. The plentiful nuclear-philists amidst us compel a nuclear-phobist, like myself, to take them seriously. However, it is the responsibility of the nuclear-phobist to convince them to think otherwise and help them break free of their brain-washed, pro-nuclear mind set.

    More concretely, I base my appeal to the unconverted audience on three arguments: 1) Weaponization, especially nuclear, is the poorest method of ensuring human security. 2) In uncritically endorsing the “logic” behind nuclear tests then and the nuclear doctrine now, we are playing the role of powerless subjects in the euphemistic guise of citizenship. 3) Unlike many crises that are “more or less” in nature, damages that can be potentially caused by nuclear conflicts are of the kind of “either or”; they contain the germs of total annihilation, leading to points of no return.

    Is there any military answer to the social and economic malaise that plagues the majority of the country? Does the bomb guarantee our security when it is understood in the sense of providing a safety net for all? A pragmatic look at the fragile existence of the mass of the Indian population would suggest the exact opposite.

    Excessive preoccupation with military security in fact undermines human security. Rather, it appallingly detracts our attention from issues related to development, environment and human rights. When the daily existence of a large number of people in the country is subject to calamitous conditions caused by economic, social and political constraints, to speak of bomb-bred security indeed seems to be a bombastic claim! Furthermore, the risks and costs of weaponization are bound to be socialized, though in a very regressive way.

    An oversized military budget, which is a likely fallout of the ongoing trend in armament, and an attendant decline in social sector spending are bound to create new social and economic risks and vulnerabilities for workers, agricultural laborers, slum dwellers, in short, the mass of the people who had nothing to do with the decision to go nuclear. They are the ones who will end up bearing a disproportionate amount of the costs and grievously suffering from the effects, i.e. social expenditure cuts, sanctions and so on, of acquiring the “exotic nuclear endowment”.

    It is indeed ironic that, in the current national and international climate of cost-consciousness, we often hear a clamor for rolling back or even dismantling the state in various sectors of activities. Yet, the same state is expected to be hyperactive in the task of expanding nuclear and other weapons! Let the state take the lead in proliferating the “public bad” of huge military arsenals, its absolute inertia and sloth in providing fundamental “public goods” to citizens notwithstanding! The military budget indeed appears to be a sacred cow, supplying much-needed subsidies to the military-industrial complex, while vociferous advocates of fiscal adjustment selectively target their guns at helpless victims like education and health care spending. The message is clear and simple : austerity in public spending and the “free market” are for the poor, whereas the welfare state is for the rich who will take shelter under the wings of a generous defense expenditure.

    Have the weaponization proponents amongst us noticed this role reversal of the state, while celebrating the nation’s newly acquired nuclear prowess or endorsing the recently published nuclear doctrine which appears to call for a robust nuclear force? Unfortunately, the answer is no. The reason for this is easily found. Recall that the decision to conduct nuclear tests was made in the most undemocratic fashion under tight security and control, without even full cabinet knowledge, let alone public discussions.

    “We, the people” who, according to the preamble of our constitution are entrusted with sovereign power, have not been expected to participate in the decision making process on a matter as serious as this. We have been relieved of the responsibility of citizenship, spared the trouble of debating and deciding about the developmental priorities of our poor nation and the desired budgetary allocations across sectors. We have been told and, in turn, accepted that power is defined as domination and war capability and not as empowerment and human capability.

    Simply put, we have embraced a model of citizenship in the form of subjects who remain at the margin of agenda-setting and decision-making, yet we are happy, docile and proud of the national military prowess. What is more, we are strongly discouraged, penalized, or disregarded when we try to assert our rights of citizenship.

    The ongoing political and electoral drama of coalition-breaking and coalition-making at the center is an utter disregard for popular mandates. We are encouraged to ungrudgingly consume, not to question or debate, the official “logic” of empowerment through armament. This consumer orientation to citizenship is a step towards the marginalization of people, towards denying them some influence over their rights and affairs as citizens. Noam Chomsky’s observed in a different but related context, “The Public are to be observers, not participants, to be consumers of ideology as well as products.” We are the uninformed, subject “citizenry”, the riffraff, flaunting an unexamined faith in the special interests and ambitions of the political, scientific and bureaucratic elite, cleverly camouflaged as the national interest. So much for our well thought-out and informed endorsement of nuclear and arms proliferation!

    One may argue that on an issue as vital and serious as national security, decisions should be left to “experts” alone and kept away from the public. In a deliberative democracy, voters are expected to participate and contemplate serious issues and not simply vote. Norms such as participation and accountability are indeed the bedrock of democracy. The examination of pros and cons of security issues may be conducted by experts, but they are then required to present their views and results for citizens and elected leaders to consider in the context of country’s overall social, economic and political objectives.

    To be sure, people do not speak in a single voice; neither can we assert that deliberation is always the only or the best way to arrive at a political decision. It is precisely because the weaponization issue at hand has wide-ranging ramifications for the public that citizens should have the opportunity for debating the question of its merits. Each accountable representative should justify their views and decisions by giving persuadable reasons. Such collective engagement in the underlying reasoning of divergent views is a vital source of the legitimacy of collective decisions. In the case of the nuclear question, it is precisely the denial of such a scope for public debate and dialogue that has rendered the country’s citizens as subjects and consumers rather than producers of ideas.

    Draft Nuclear Doctrine

    Admittedly, the recently published nuclear doctrine, prepared by the National Security Advisory Board, is a draft document aimed at generating wider public discussions. In principle there is some scope for citizens to deliberate on the country’ s future nuclear policy, practice and posture. Keeping in mind how rhetoric translates into reality, two important issues merit attention here. First, if there were “security” reasons that compelled the concerned authorities to be secretive about the nuclear tests, now there are political and electoral reasons to make the document public, that is to say, to tap into our “Kargil euphoria” for the vindication of a pro-nuclear posture. Second, moving beyond the logic of the timing of the publication and coming to the specifics of the doctrine, the document focuses on “effective credible minimum deterrence”.

    We have tolerated such abject human conditions for a full fifty years of our independent existence, despite pious policy rhetoric to do otherwise. More distressingly, no corrupt practices on the part of the elite, no pilferage of public funds, no flagrant violations of public duties (e.g., the Gaisal rail accident) have been “deterred” on account of their unacceptably deleterious consequences for the well-being of the poor and the unfavored.

    When persistent damages to the lives of “sovereign” people have been routinely and infinitely tolerated by the governing classes of our country as well as those of our neighboring nuclear “adversary”, is it reasonable to expect that jingoistic nuclear behavior of vested interests on either side of the LOC will be deterred by the human costs it entails? Do “We, the people” matter in the calculus of unacceptable damage? Our heritage of deprivation, our social policy failures and our citizenship records reveal quite the opposite.

    Recent debates on the notion of unacceptable damage concentrate mainly on strategic and geo-political considerations, which relatively neglect and threaten, both in times of war and peace, the lives of large segments of the population. In the face of such chronic insensitivity on the part of the political leadership to human security issues, we need to be wary as to whether “We, the people” and our day-to-day vulnerabilities will be factored into the damage assessment of the powers that exist.

    Informed Public and Responsive Governments

    Reclaiming our sovereignty as the people of a democratic nation is, however, not an impossible task. Indeed, when policy making is embedded in consultative and transparent processes, democracy offers a way of rescuing governments that have fallen under t he sway of vested interests. As Churchill once said, “Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others.” Therefore, the real challenge is to encourage the initiatives of the citizens, to harness the power of public opinion and action so that governments become responsive and accountable to the will of the majority and make a real difference in the quality of people’s lives.

    Fortunately, informed public debates have been taking place during the last year in different corners of the country, critically reviewing the `merits’ of the decision to go nuclear. Out of the nuances and well-documented evidence that are being presented in these discourses, what echoes in resounding notes is the unmistakable and plain understanding that we have only one earth to live in and save. The destructive capacity of a nuclear conflict is so catastrophic, so complete and final that it cannot be measured on a scale of “more or less”. It is a judgment call of “either, or”, “preserve or perish”. There are no two ways about it. To take liberty with Gandhi, an eye for an eye, the so-called “mutually assured destruction” will indeed make the whole world blind and a radiated ruin. It is, therefore, futile to endorse a position of the limited use of low-yield nuclear weapons. There is no alternative to developing an absolute nuclear phobia, to admitting that it is an utter prejudice to take pride in nuclear possessions, low-yield or high-yield.

    Why is this prejudice still so prominent in our minds? I take a shorthand to address this profound issue by quoting economist Paul Krugman, “Bad ideas flourish because they are in the interest of powerful groups.” We, the people” are responsible to see through the deceit.

    I would like to conclude this note on a self-policing tone. While making a strong case for nuclear disarmament and abolition, I am willing to concede that many concerns vis-à-vis the de-weaponization path still endure. More concretely, the cautionary views and nagging doubts about the viability of the de-weaponization path now being expressed in light of the recent NATO bombings in Yugoslavia, cannot be left unacknowledged. To do so would be unconvincing to those with whom we disagree on the issue of weaponization. A realist would argue that in a uni-polar world with an overly militarized rogue superpower, it is a compulsion to arm and to even go nuclear in order to protect people’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. Conversely, a proponent of disarmament and peace will have to address this issue squarely. She has to relentlessly search for an alternative to armament which at once engenders peace and protects sovereignty and the right to self-determination of the people in the developing world against the military aggrandizement of the nuclear-rich countries. This is not an easy task; but neither is it impenetrable.

    Sane voices for global peace must converge and raise a clamor for wholesale disarmament and abolition of nuclear weapons, both locally and globally, both in developed and in developing countries. The challenge that lays before us is to find a feasible way of resolving the alleged tension between ensuring global peace on the one hand and local freedom on the other in a highly militarized, geo-political situation. There is surely no magical solution.

    One may also point out that in this age of MNC-dominated globalization, countries — especially the resource poor countries — are vulnerable not just to military threats but more frequently to economic insecurities and predicaments. These political-economic arguments, highlighting the iniquitous nature of the present world economic order, must be factored to ensure a just treatment of the question of global peace.

    An Appeal for International Law

    To be sure, these concerns are not new. They have indeed continued to grip the imagination of nation-states since the Second World War. One thing, however, that has become transparent to peace proponents over time, is that the solution to these entrenched problems must be sought in political and not in military terms. A rule of International Law administered by a supra-national global government is the only viable tool to ensure peace on earth and to tame the extant military and economic hegemonies. To that end, debates, discussions and public action must occur in order to empower the currently atrophied United Nations, revive the moribund non-aligned movement and educate people worldwide about the misleading nature of the deterrence argument. This is an appeal to enact all of the standard democratic practices, debates, deliberations, organizations and protests in order to promote the emergence of a sane and collective wisdom.

    *Manabi Majumdar is a social scientist who works at the Madras Institute of Development Studies in Chennai, India, specializing in political economy. Her research interests include social exclusion, democratic decentralization, and child labor from the human security perspective. Manabi has studied at Presidency College, Calcutta University and University of Maryland. Manabi currently lives in Chennai with her husband.

  • The City of Hiroshima Peace Declaration

    “Today as Hiroshima marked its 54th anniversary of the atomic bombing of our city, we solemnly held the Peace memorial Ceremony in front of the Memorial Cenotaph in Peace Memorial Park, Japan, with thousands of people from Japan and overseas….This Peace Declaration expresses our desire for the abolition of nuclear weapons and the realization of lasting world peace. The situation of the world is still changing suddenly. I would appreciate it if you would read through the Declaration to renew your understanding of the “Spirit of Hiroshma” and convey it to as many people as possible.” -Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba, Hiroshma City

    A century of war, the twentieth century spawned the devil’s own weapons-nuclear weapons -and humankind has yet to free itself of their threat. Nonetheless, inspired by the memory of the hundreds of thousands who died so tragically in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and all of war’s victims, we have fought for the fifty-four years since those bombings for the total abolition of nuclear weapons.

    It is the many courageous hibakusha and the people who have identified with their spirit who have led this struggle. Looking at the important contributions these hibakusha have made, we cannot but express our deepest gratitude to them.

    There are three major contributions:

    The first is that they were able to transcend the infernal pain and despair that the bombings sowed and to opt for life. I want young people to remember that today’s elderly hibakusha were as young as they are when their families, their schools, and their communities were destroyed in a flash. They hovered between life and death in a corpse-strewn sea of rubble and ruin-circumstances under which none would have blamed them had they chosen death. Yet they chose life.

    We should never forget the will and courage that made it possible for the hibakusha to continue to be human.

    Their second accomplishment is that they effectively prevented a third use of nuclear weapons. Whenever conflict and war break out, there are those who advocate nuclear weapon’s use. This was true even in Kosovo. Yet the hibakusha’s will that the evil not be repeated has prevented the unleashing of this lunacy. Their determination to tell their story to the world, to argue eloquently that to use nuclear weapons is to doom the human race, and to show the use of nuclear weapons to be the ultimate evil has brought about this result. We owe our future and our children’s future to them.

    Their third achievement lies in their representing the new world-view as engraved on the Cenotaph for the A-bomb Victims and articulated in the Japanese Constitution. They have rejected the path of revenge and animosity that leads to extinction for all humankind. Instead, they have taken upon themselves not only the evil that Japan as a nation perpetrated but also the evil of war itself. They have also chosen to put their “trust in the justice and faith” of all humankind in order to create a future full of hope. As peace-loving people from all over the world solemnly proclaimed at the Hague Appeal for Peace Conference this May, this is the path that humankind should take in the new century. We ardently applaud all of the countries and people who have written this philosophy into their Constitutions and their laws.

    Above all else, we must possess a strong will to abolish nuclear weapons following the examples set by the hibakusha. If the entire world shares this commitment-indeed, even if only the leaders of the nuclear weapons states will it so-nuclear weapons can be eliminated tomorrow.

    Such will is born of truth-the truth that nuclear weapons are the absolute evil and cause humankind’s extinction.

    Where there is such will, there is a way. Where there is such determination, any path we take leads to our goal of eliminating nuclear weapons. However, if we lack the will to take the first step, we can never reach our goal no matter how easy the way. I especially hope our young people share this will.

    Thus, we again call upon the government of Japan to understand fully the crucial role the hibakusha have played and to enhance their support policies. We also call upon the government to place the highest priority on forging the will to abolish nuclear weapons. It is imperative that the government of Japan follows the philosophy outlined in the preamble of the Constitution to persuade other countries of this course and cement a global commitment to the abolition of nuclear weapons. I declare the abolition of nuclear weapons to be our most important responsibility for the future of the earth, and pay my utmost respect to the souls of the many that perished in the atomic bombings. May they rest in peace.

    Tadatoshi Akiba Mayor, The City of Hiroshima

  • Objections to Nanoose Expropriation

    Background

    I am the president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and have served in this position for 17 years. The Foundation is a non-governmental education and advocacy organization with headquarters in Santa Barbara, California. It has members in many countries throughout the world, including Canada. The Foundation is a United Nations Peace Messenger Organization, and is on the roster in consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council. Our advisors and consultants are some of the great peace leaders in the world, and include the XIVth Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Mairead Corrigan Maguire, and Joseph Rotblat, all Nobel Peace Laureates.

    By training I am a political scientist and lawyer. I have written and lectured extensively throughout the world on nuclear dangers and the need to abolish nuclear weapons. I believe, in fact, that these are not weapons at all, but instruments of genocide and portable incinerators. I serve on the International Steering Committee of the Middle Powers Initiative, an abolition initiative led by Canadian Senator Douglas Roche. I am also on the Coordinating Committee of Abolition 2000, a network of some 1,400 organizations in more than 80 countries seeking the abolition of nuclear weapons.

    It is also relevant that I am a citizen of the United States. While I represent only myself and the organization that I lead, I think you should know that most Americans oppose nuclear weapons and support their global elimination. Some 87 percent of the American public want their government to negotiate a Nuclear Weapons Convention, similar to the Chemical Weapons Convention, leading to the total elimination of nuclear weapons.

    Expropriation Hearings

    I have come to Vancouver to testify in these hearings because I believe that the issue at stake here has global significance. On the surface this is a dispute between the federal government of Canada and one of its provinces about a piece of seabed territory. Beneath the surface, however, the issue at stake here is whether or not ordinary people – the ones referred to in the opening words of the United Nations Charter – are going to have a voice in shaping their own destiny on this planet, or whether national governments are going to usurp the right of the people to create a future that is healthy for children and other living things.

    The issue at stake in these hearings is not the land; it is the intended use of the land. It is the intention of the Canadian government to allow the United States the possibility to bring nuclear weapons into an area that the citizens of British Columbia have declared a Nuclear Weapons Free Zone. This intention is contained in the acceptance by the Canadian government of the U.S. policy to “neither confirm nor deny” whether U.S. Navy ships are carrying nuclear weapons. It is a policy of deliberate ambiguity and deceit.

    In the Notice of Intention to Expropriate the Canadian government said that the seabed areas at Nanoose “are required by Her Majesty the Queen in the right of Canada for purpose related to the safety or security of Canada or of a state allied or associated with Canada and it would not be in the public interest further to indicate that purpose.” This is a statement right out of the Cold War handbook. It provides very little information to citizens. Is the purpose for the safety of Canada or the security of Canada? Or is it for the safety or security of another state that is allied or associated with Canada? If the issue is the safety of Canadian citizens, I’m sure that there has been testimony at these hearings regarding the radiation dangers to the people and environment of British Columbia that are related to possible accidents from nuclear powered submarines and nuclear armed submarines in your waters. It is hard to imagine that it could be in the security interests of the people of British Columbia to invite the targeting of Nanoose Bay by other nuclear weapons states.

    If I were a citizen of British Columbia I would find the Notice of Intention to Expropriate highly insulting. It appears to be purposely vague and ambiguous, similar to the U.S. policy of neither confirming nor denying the presence of nuclear weapons. The worst part of the Notice is the Canadian government telling its citizens that it would not be in their interest for the government to further indicate the purpose of the expropriation. In effect, the Canadian government is telling its citizens to be good children and not ask any more questions. This form of governmental paternalism is unbecoming of a mature democracy.

    Grounds for Objections

    I wish to object to the expropriation of the seabed in Nanoose Bay for three reasons related to the purpose of the expropriation, which is to allow the United States the possibility to bring nuclear weapons carrying submarines into the waters above the expropriated land. These reasons are illegality, immorality, and lack of respect for democratic principles.

    Illegality. The International Court of Justice, the highest international court in the world, stated in its opinion of July 8, 1996 that the threat or use of nuclear weapons is illegal if such threat or use violates international humanitarian law. This means that no threat or use of nuclear weapons can be legal if it would cause or threaten to cause unnecessary suffering to combatants or fail to discriminate between combatants and non-combatants. Since nuclear weapons are weapons of indiscriminate mass destruction, they cannot be used legally under international law and their threatened use for deterrence is illegal as well.

    Should this expropriation occur and the United States bring nuclear weapons into Canadian waters, the citizens of Canada would become accomplices to threatening to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity. These were two of the three crimes, along with crimes against peace, for which Nazi leaders were brought to justice at Nuremberg.

    The Court also stated in its opinion: “There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.” This is the Court’s clarification of the obligation set forth in the 1970 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons to which Canada is a party. By refusing to aid and abet nuclear crimes, Canada would be helping to move the United States and the other nuclear weapons states to fulfill this obligation under international law.

    Immorality. Nuclear weapons threaten the mass murder of millions of innocent people, the destruction of civilization, and perhaps the extinction of the human species and most forms of life. Nuclear weapons place all creation in danger of annihilation for what some states have defined as their national security interests. I believe that the citizens of British Columbia should have the right, indeed the duty, to dissociate themselves from such extreme immorality, and in fact they have done so by declaring their province to be a Nuclear Weapons Free Zone. Now, the government of Canada seeks to expropriate this territory. In doing so, they will also expropriate from the citizens of this province the right to act upon their morals in their own community on this issue of such great importance to the future of life on Earth.

    Democracy. Decisions about the deployment and strategy of nuclear weapons use are being made by only a small number of people in governments aided by the military-industrial-academic complex. Decisions about the actual use of nuclear weapons reside in the hands of even fewer persons, only perhaps a few dozen throughout the world. The people have been cut out of the equation, even though in countries where polling has taken place they overwhelmingly support a treaty to eliminate all nuclear weapons.

    In Canada, 92 percent of Canadians want their government to lead negotiations for a Nuclear Weapons Convention. Canada could lead in this area as it did so ably with the Treaty to Ban Landmines. Yet, rather than doing so, the federal government is seeking to trample on the rights of the citizens of British Columbia in forcing them, through this expropriation, to accept the possibility of nuclear weapons in their midst.

    British Columbia made a seemingly simple request in the negotiations with the federal government to extend the lease for the area in question. They simply wanted “a provision confirming that no nuclear warheads will be present at any time within the licence area.” Rather than championing this cause for the citizens of British Columbia, the federal government of Canada chose instead the route of expropriation. Rather than choosing democracy and listening to the voices of the people, the federal authorities have chosen the sledgehammer of expropriation as the means to resolve this issue. It is behavior unbecoming of a democratic state, and the people of British Columbia and the rest of Canada should oppose it.

    Conclusion

    When Canada took the lead on the treaty banning anti-personnel landmines it was lauded throughout the world for its efforts. Canada could also exert such leadership in creating a world free of nuclear weapons. For it to do so, however, the federal government will need to listen to the voices of its people. What is happening here in British Columbia is a serious test of whether Canada will lead or continue to be – as some have unkindly said – a lapdog of the United States.

    I want to conclude by assuring you that the great majority of citizens in the United States, as in Canada, support a world free of nuclear weapons. These American citizens, if informed of the issues at stake, would strongly support the efforts being made in British Columbia to oppose the expropriation of their land without the assurance that they seek that nuclear weapons will not be brought onto their territory.

    By seeking to expropriate the Nanoose seabed, the Canadian government is crushing not only the dreams of the people here for a nuclear weapons free world, but also the dreams of the great majority of ordinary American citizens who would prefer to live in and leave to their children a world free of nuclear weapons. The fight of the citizens of British Columbia is a fight for global dignity, decency, and democracy. I am here to support your effort.

  • The Spirit of Hiroshima

    I am a hibakusha, a survivor of Hiroshima. In 1945, when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. I was 12 years old, a 7th grader at girls’ junior high school. I was exposed to the A-bomb at a point less than a mile away from the epicenter.

    On the morning of August 6, 1945, the skies were perfectly clear without a sign of clouds. As the sun of midsummer arose, the temperature began to rise rapidly. When the air-raid alarm sounded at 7:09 a.m. and was cleared at 7:31 a.m., the citizens gave a sigh of relief and started their activities. Many people had entered the city from neighboring towns and villages to work at dismantling buildings. About 350,000 people were believed to have been in the city on that day, including more than 40,000 military personnel.

    There was no vacation for students during the war. Students of only 12 years old or so had to work day after day in factories or at building demolition sites. On that day, a total of about 8,400 junior high school boys and girls aged 12 to 14 were working on six building demolition sites.

    After the all-clear signal was issued, we went back to work. A total of 500 girl students, 7th and 8th graders of our junior high school, were serving as mobilized students, clearing away demolished buildings. Forming groups of 4 or 5, we collected broken tile, glass and pieces of wood and carried them in baskets, shouting “Yosha, Yosha,” encouraging each other.

    Suddenly my best friend, Takiko Funaoka, shouted, “I hear the sound of a B-29.” Never thinking it was possible, I looked up and there, high in the sky, the white vapor was trailing.

    Then I caught a glimpse of an airplane flying away to the northwest. I thought I saw some luminous body drop from the tail of the plane. I quickly lay flat on the ground. Just at that moment, I heard an indescribable deafening roar. My first thought was that the plane had aimed at me.

    I had no idea how long I had lain unconscious, but when I regained consciousness the bright sunny morning had turned into night. Takiko, who had stood next to me, had simply disappeared from my sight. I could see none of my friends nor any other students. Perhaps they had been blown away by the blast.

    I rose to my feet surprised. All that was left of my jacket was the upper part around my chest. And my baggy working trousers were gone, leaving only the waistband and a few patches of cloth. The only clothes left on me were dirty white underwear.

    Then I realized that my face, hands, and legs had been burned, and were swollen with the skin peeled off and hanging down in shreds. I was bleeding and some areas had turned yellow. Terror struck me, and I felt that I had to go home. And the next moment, I frantically started running away from the scene forgetting all about the heat and pain.

    On my way home, I saw a lot of people. All of them were almost naked and looked like characters out of horror movies with their skin and flesh horribly burned and blistered. The place around the Tsurumi bridge was crowded with many injured people. They held their arms aloft in front of them. Their hair stood on end. They were groaning and cursing. With pain in their eyes and furious looks on their faces, they were crying out of their mothers to help them.

    I was feeling unbearably hot, so I went down to the river. There were a lot of people in the water crying and shouting for help. Countless dead bodies were being carried away by the water – some floating, some sinking. Some bodies had been badly hurt, and their intestines were exposed. It was a horrible sight, yet I had to jump in the water to save myself from heat I felt all over.

    As I was watching the horrible scene, someone called my name, “Miyoko, aren’t you Miyoko?” But I couldn’t make out who was speaking to me. She said, “I am Michiko.” Her burns were so severe they had reduced her facial features – eyes, mouth and chin – to a pulp.

    Then I realized that bright red flames were blazing in the area from where I had escaped. Fearing that staying where Michiko and I were would mean that we would be trapped by the flames, we climbed up the river bank, helping each other.

    Just as we were about to cross the bridge, we found that A-bomb victims were moving about in utter confusion on the bridge. They reminded me of sleepwalkers.

    We crossed the bridge and on our way we witnessed countless tragedies. Those who drank from the water tank for fire prevention died as they tried to drink. They fell into the water, one on top of each other.

    A bleeding mother was trying to rush into a burning house, shouting, “oh, my boy….” But a man caught her and wouldn’t let her go. She was screaming frantically, “Let me go, let me go, my boy, I must go.” The scene was hell on earth.

    Helping each other, we came to the edge of another bridge. “I cannot run any further,” said Michiko. Yet she pleaded with me with her eyes to take her with me. I could not even give her a drop of water. We had to separate.

    Michiko walked alone to the temple property on the hillside about a half mile away. She was dead when her parents found her three days later. I always thought that if I had been able to help her a little more to reach the rescue center, she might have lived. My heart still aches.

    I managed to get to a first-aid station. I suffered from lingering high fever, diarrhea, vomiting, and bleeding gums. Half of my hair fell out. I was on the verge of death. Keloid scars developed on my face, arms and legs. Someone helped me do knee bends so that my knees would not stiffen permanently.

    I was shocked and filled with sorrow when I looked at my face in the mirror for the first time after eight months. It was disfigured beyond all recognition. I couldn’t believe it was my face. My mother would weep and say, “I should have been burned instead of you, for I am much older than you and will not live long.” She would also say, “It would have been much better if you had died at the moment the bomb exploded.” Seeing mother in such deep sorrow, I made up my mind never to grieve over my fate in her presence.

    After eight months of treatment, I returned to my school only to find that the number of students had been reduced from 250 to about 50. Though I had suffered from the atomic bombing, I did not intend to stop my activities, so I studied very hard.

    The horrible keloids on my face kept me from finding work after graduation. Around that time I began visiting Reverend Kiyoshi Tanimoto’s church, located in Nagarekawa. I faithfully attended his Monday evening gatherings for atomic bomb survivors where, listening to sermons and singing hymns with the others, my heart gradually came to find peace. With the warm help of these people and many others, I became one of sixteen young women known as the “Hiroshima Maidens” who traveled to Tokyo and Osaka for hospital treatment.

    Eight years after the bombing, when I was 20, in May, 1953, I found myself inOsaka where I eventually underwent more than ten operations over a seven-month period. These operations were quite successful and, as a result, I was able to open and close my dysfunctional eyelid and to straighten out my crooked fingers. I was filled with gratitude towards those people who reached out with warm, loving hands and softly stroked my eyelid that wouldn’t shut. I returned to Hiroshima, wishing for a way to express my thanks.

    Reverend Tanimoto established a facility for poor blind children without families. I and two other “Hiroshima Maidens” began work there as live-in caretakers. From morning until night, we were mothers to these children, helping them with homework, meals, going to the bathroom, and changing and washing clothes. Exactly one year later, in May 1955, my two companions left this job to travel to Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York to undergo more cosmetic surgery. For myself, I just didn’t feel right about traveling to the U.S., the country which had dropped the atomic bomb. I was left behind alone.

    My one pleasure each week was attending Sunday morning services at church. The Americans I met there did not fit the image I had formed of them in my mind. They were extremely kind, and deeply regretted their country’s atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One of them was Mrs. Barbara Reynolds who later founded the World Citizenship Center (WCC) in Hiroshima. She was a pious Quaker who devoted her life and all she had to make Hiroshima internationally known. Because of her great efforts of goodwill, she eventually became a special honorary citizen of Hiroshima in 1975. Her hatred of the bombings were so strong and her caring for the victims so real, I often wondered how she could possibly be from the same country as the men who had bombed Hiroshima.

    I owe what I am today to the love of Mrs. Reynolds and many other people. She is the one who persuaded and encouraged me to speak of my experience to foreigners in English even though I had no confidence in my ability nor sufficient knowledge of the English language in my view. She and many kind Americans helped me overcome the fear of speaking about my experience. I am very grateful to all of them.

    Gradually coming to like and trust Americans, I realized that, had the Japanese possessed the A-bomb, we, too, would have used it. The real enemy, therefore, is not America. It is war and nuclear weapons. Those weapons must be abolished.

    Nuclear weapons are manufactured by human beings. War is started by us human beings, too. Peace begins when we share our sufferings with each other. We must all strive to overcome hatred and learn to love one another. The most important task for the peoples of this world is to cultivate friendship through exchanges involving religion, art, culture, sports, education, and economic assistance.

    In March 1962, just before the U.S. resumed nuclear testing and after I had been working at the home for the blind for eight years, I found a way to work at helping to abolish nuclear weapons. Through the help of Barbara Reynolds, I was chosen as a representative of Hiroshima to present the heartfelt message of the survivors of the A-bomb in person to U Thant, the Secretary General of the United Nations at the 18th National Disarmament Conference in Geneva. On the way to New York and Geneva, we visited 14 countries in five months, including the United States, England, France, West and East Germany, and the Soviet Union. Everywhere we appealed for a ban on nuclear testing.

    In April 1964, I joined anther group, the World Peace Study Mission, which traveled to eight countries between April and July. When I returned home, I was shocked to find that my elder brother and his wife had died from the after-effects of the bombing, leaving their three children, who were 6, 8 and 12 years old. The children had moved to our house to live with my aged parents, expecting me to bring them up. Moreover, my father’s health was very poor, due to cancer of the stomach, and the doctor said that he had only three more months to live. Although he was a survivor of the bombing himself, he had taken care of me and had worked at the first aid station treating victims and helping to dispose of dead bodies. I began to take care of my father, and my small nieces and nephew. I devoted my life to this task.

    In April 1982, when the Second Special Session on Disarmament Conference was held in the U.N., I made a third trip to the United States. My journey across America took two months. Barbara Reynolds, my guide and companion, traveled with me to Los Angeles, where we had spent an intense week introducing drawings by survivors to the people and media of Southern California. We were taken by van with those drawings, four films, 400 books, 1,500 pamphlets, 130 slide-sets, etc., from the West Coast of America to New York City. We visited 29 cities in 16 different states and one city in Canada. I made my appeal to more than 110,000 people in sixty-nine gatherings. We showed the drawings by survivors and projected our films about Hiroshima and Nagasaki so that people in North America could hear the story of Hiroshima and nuclear weapons. Three Japanese TV crews followed the exhibition, and recorded the reaction of Americans to the pictures and to my appeal for nuclear disarmament, to show on Japanese television.

    Six years after the trip to the United Nations, in September 1988, I had to take five months’ sick leave in order to have breast surgery. The Director of the National Cancer Research Center said. “At the time the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the radiation released adversely affected human cells undergoing division, especially in the mammary glands where the process of cell division is at its peak when a female is between 10 and 13 years old. In those girls passing through puberty when the bomb was dropped, a cancerous seed was implanted. The female hormonal system acted to promote the growth of this cancer. Forty-three years later, the chances for having breast cancer were four times greater for women who were in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.”

    I may look fine and healthy now, but my old wounds still hurt all the time. I still have the fear that I will soon have the A-bomb disease again and suffer for the rest of my life. When I get depressed and worried about the future, I try to remember my friends who were killed by the bomb when they were young. I’m sure they each had their own dreams. I feel so sorry for them when I think of how much they wanted to live. But at the same time, I can hear them saying to me that I was very fortunate to have lived and I should take care of myself in order to accomplish my mission. My mission is to continue telling my experience as a survivor, a hibakusha, appealing for the abolition of nuclear weapons, talking about the folly of war and the preciousness of life, to as many people as possible. That surely will console their souls.

    I am grateful for being able to live, and do what I can to make peace.

    As a hibakusha, I am determined to continue appealing for the elimination of nuclear weapons from the Earth. That is what I must do. We survivors of the atomic bombing are against the research, development, testing, production, and use of any nuclear arms. We are opposed to war of any kind, for whatever reason.

    I would like to say to young people in the United States and other countries: Nuclear weapons do not deter war. Nuclear weapons and human beings cannot co-exist. We all must learn the value of human life. If you do not agree with me on this, please come to Hiroshima and see for yourself the destructive power of these deadly weapons at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.

    We are at the threshold of the 21st century. It is time for us to change the international trend from confrontation to dialogue, from distrust to reconciliation, and to move towards the solidarity of nations in the world, so that every creature on Earth can live in peace on this beautiful planet. It is war itself that is wrong.

    The inscription on the peace memorial cenotaph in Hiroshima reads: “Let all souls here rest in peace; for we shall not repeat the evil.” That is what the spirit of Hiroshima is all about.

    We must vow to do all in our power that never again will anyone have to face the tragedy that occurred in Hiroshima.

    “We Shall Not Repeat the Evil.” No More Hiroshimas! No More War!

    My only purpose is to appeal to everyone to work for the abolishment of all nuclear weapons, and for a more peaceful world of mutual understanding.

  • Arms Trade Code of Conduct

    As of this writing, about 33 wars are raging across the world and 90% of their casualties are civilians. Over 25 million people have been killed in conflicts since the end of World War II. Yet rather than pursuing real disarmament, governments are spending over $2 billion every single day on armies and weapons. And regimes that abuse human rights are eagerly supplied by the world’s arms producers.

    A global Arms Trade Code of Conduct would prohibit the world’s arms producers, virtually all developed countries, from providing military assistance and conventional arms transfers to foreign governments that do not meet certain requirements. These requirements would include democratic governance, respect for human rights, non-involvement in acts of armed aggression, and participation in the United Nations Register of Conventional Arms, which was established on December 1991.

    Conventional arms include more than rifles and submachine guns. Also included are battle tanks, missiles and landmines. The conventional arms category is broad and ambiguous because it groups many types of dangerous weapons together under the category of “conventional” arms! Sensitive military and dual-use technologies are also included, such as telecommunications systems, sensors, lasers and sophisticated satellites that monitor and prevent unforeseen attacks from other countries. Also, military and security training for expertise in the use of such weapons, munitions, sub-components and sensitive technologies are considered conventional arms. All this can be supplied with little restraint to developing countries, some of which disregard democracy and blatantly abuse human rights.

    The United States is the world’s number one arms exporter. As a democratic nation, it has a responsibility to take the lead in curbing the weapons trade. In 1996, thirty three nations including the Russian Federation, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States (but not China) signed the Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Technologies. This agreement was an important step toward the control of the arms trade. The Wassenaar Agreement was set up to contribute to global security and stability by promoting “transparency” of arms exports. The Agreement requires clear and detailed information about arms exports and imports for each country once a year. The problem is that the Wassenaar Arrangement has been signed by only a few nations. The world needs a global Code of Conduct.

    In the United States, the Executive Office approves which countries receive military assistance and arms. Once a year, the President gives Congress a list of countries which will receive arms shipments from U.S. manufacturers. All U.S. arms transfer decisions take into account the multiple U.S. interests involved in each arms transfer. Sales are approved by the Executive Office on a case-by-case basis. All U.S. arms transfer decisions take into account certain criteria including; “Appropriateness of the transfer in responding to legitimate U.S. and recipient security needs”, “Consistency with international agreements and arms control initiatives”, and “The human rights, terrorism and proliferation record of the recipient and the potential for misuse of the export in question” (Criteria for Decision-making on U.S. Arms Exports, The White House, Feb. 17, 1995).

    Nevertheless, 85% of U.S. arms transfers during 1990-95 went to the nations that did not meet the proposed Code’s criteria. In fact, they went to the Middle East (Egypt, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, Israel and Lebanon) and to 43 of the 53 countries in Africa, the continent with the most violent conflicts. In President Clinton’s first term, over two-thirds of all arms Wes agreements with the Third World went to dictatorships which are still violating human rights. In 19917 Clinton approved $83 billion in military assistance to dictatorships, an all-time record even during the Cold War years.

    More than half of U.S. weapons sales are now being financed by taxpayers instead of foreign arms purchasers. During fiscal year 1996, the government spent more than $7.9 billion to help U.S. companies secure just over $12 billion in agreements for new international arms sales. The largest single subsidy program for U.S. weapons exporters is the Pentagon’s Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program. Another Pentagon’s subsidy is the Defense Export Loan Guarantee (DELG) fund. Furthermore the Pentagon has also been leasing or giving away massive quantities of highly capable U.S. weapons that have been declared “surplus” relative to current needs. In addition to Pentagon programs, other agencies provide subsidies for sales of weapons. After the Pentagon’s FMF program, the second largest subsidy comes from the Economic Support Funds (ESF) program administered by the Agency for International Development. The “Dual Use” Funding of the Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im Bank) is another source of funding for military exports. In addition the Senate and House Armed Services Committees are working hard to increase the Pentagon spending encouraged by the “Big Three’ weapons contractors — Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon.

    Besides the United States, there are other countries that export conventional arms to countries violating human rights. France, for example, sent arms to Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates and Rwanda. Human Rights Watch and media reports indicate that the French government continued to supply arms to Rwanda for at least two months after international news reports of genocide became public knowledge and after the imposition of an international arms embargo on May 17, 1994. Later, during hearings in March-June 1998, Bernard Debré, who was France’s Minister of Cooperation in 1994, acknowledged that the French government had continued to supply arms to the Rwandan government “ten days after the massacres started,” explaining lamely that this was “because France didn’t immediately realize what was happening.”

    Sales of conventional arms bolster repressive dictatorships at the expense of the poor. In Togo and Rwanda, populations are crying out for schools and doctors, not for guns and military training. In July 1999 more than 100 bodies were found along the coastline of West Africa just after Togo’s June elections, during which opposition party members allegedly were shot and dumped into the sea. Their bodies washed up on the shores of neighboring Benin. They were killed with conventional arms, in this case, rifles or hand guns. Throughout sub-Saharan Africa, the AK-47 assault rifle can be purchased on the black market for as little as $6.

    Jose Ramos-Horta, a Nobel Peace Laureate form East Timor”, was affected personally by the danger of arms sales. In August 1977 his 21-year old sister, Maria Ortencia, along with at least 20 young children in a remote village in East Timor, were killed by Indonesian Air Force pilots. His sister and these children were only a few of more than 200,000 civilians who were killed in East Timor from December 1975, when Indonesia invaded and illegally annexed the newly independent land, to 1979. Indonesia waged this war — and continues to wage this war — using an arsenal of weapons imported from the United States and Europe.

    Nevertheless, there are still some people who think that an Arms Trade Code of Conduct is not necessary. Congressman Dan Burton (R-IN), for example, believes that a Code of Conduct “hamstrings the President of the United States in his conducting of foreign policy.” He argues, “If anybody believes that a country that wants to buy weaponry is going to not buy it simply because they cannot buy them from the United States, they are just barking up the wrong tree.” Congressman Mat Salmon (R-AZ) declared that the Code of Conduct is “not about human rights, and is not about foreign policy. This … is about a philosophical difference that exists within the Congress.” I wonder if Jose Ramos-Horta believes that the Arms Trade Code of Conduct is only a big philosophical pillow-fight in Congress!

    There is a boomerang effect on U.S. interests, Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) explained, citing that the U.S. spends twice as much to fight against countries like Yugoslavia, which was initially armed by U.S. arms exporters. McKinney is the Sponsor of the Code of Conduct bill (HR2269), a bill now pending (Nov 99) in the House International Relations Committee and the House Armed Services Committee. (Contact your legislator)

    There are a growing number of people who agree with the establishment of a global Arms Trade Code of Conduct, people who have a very realistic view of the world. Oscar Arias, former President of Costa Rica and 1987 Nobel Peace Prize winner, argues against a “military-dominated mind-set that prevailed throughout the Cold War.” He also states, “It is embarrassing that five permanent members of the UN Security Council are responsible for the largest quantity of arms sales to the developing world. The very countries that should be maintaining world peace and security are the ones most responsible for promoting war and insecurity by producing and selling weapons.”

    I believe that the United States now has an unprecedented opportunity to take the lead in this international effort. In my opinion, if the U.S. leads the way for the establishment of a Code of Conduct, other arms exporters will follow.

    In 1994 alone, the U.S. taxpayer paid more to subsidize weapons sales than they paid for elementary and secondary education programs. The original meaning of the word “subsidize” derives from the Latin word subsidium which means to help each other. To spend billions in weapons subsidies and billions more to fight against soldiers armed with these same weapons is simply bad policy. I agree with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright who pointed out, “All of us whose nations sell such weapons, or through whose nations the traffic flows, bear some responsibility for turning a blind eye to the destruction they cause. And all of us have it in our power to do something in response.” U.S. foreign policy should mirror this statement and reduce weapons sales in order to establish programs that will benefit not only U.S. citizens but also citizens of the global community.

    * Stefania Capodaglio was the 1999 Ruth Floyd Intern in International Law and Human Rights at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation headquarters in Santa Barbara, California. Presently she is completing a Political Science degree at the Catholic University of Milan, Italy.

  • Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Abolish War

    Choose peace and a human future, and make sure that your voice is heard!

    If nuclear weapons are relied upon for security, sooner or later they will be used by accident or design. That we have had these weapons in our midst for some fifty years provides no proof or promise that they will not be used in the future. In fact, if some nations continue to rely upon nuclear weapons for their security, the likelihood is that other nations will choose to do so as well; and the more nuclear weapons proliferate, the greater will be the danger to humanity.

    There is a way out of this dilemma. Nuclear weapons were invented by man. While it may not be possible to “dis-invent” them or, as some say, “to put the genie back in the bottle,” it is possible to abolish them under strict and effective international control. In fact, since nuclear weapons threaten the future of humanity, it is a highly sensible goal for humanity to seek to abolish these weapons. But how can this be done? What are the major obstacles preventing the abolition of nuclear weapons, particularly in light of the decade-old end of the Cold War?

    These are questions we posed to a group of distinguished experts who participated in an Abolition Strategy Meeting in Santa Barbara at the end of April. In conjunction with the strategy meeting, the Foundation presented its 1999 Distinguished Peace Leadership Award to General George Lee Butler for his dedicated efforts to bring about the abolition of nuclear weapons.

    An extraordinary group of leaders — including General Butler, Senator Alan Cranston, Canadian Senator Douglas Roche, Ambassador Jonathan Dean, author Jonathan Schell, and actor and U.N. Peace Messenger Michael Douglas — came to Santa Barbara to discuss obstacles facing the abolition movement as well as current opportunities. The Summer 1999 issue of Waging Peace Worldwide features a special section on this Abolition Strategy Meeting that looks at “The Road Ahead.” It includes remarks by General Butler, Senator Cranston, and Jonathan Schell, as well as selected dialogue that occurred at the strategy meeting.

    That issue also contains the Abolition 2000 “Call for the New Millennium,” which was an outcome of a very productive general meeting in The Hague of over 1,300 organizations that comprise the Abolition 2000 Global Network to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons. There are two articles on The Hague Appeal for Peace Conference, a meeting in The Hague which brought together more than 8,000 peace activists from around the globe; a special section dedicated to Hiroshima and Nagasaki; news of Foundation activities; and much more.

    One of the most inspiring moments at the Hague Appeal for Peace Conference came in the closing ceremony when a group of young people from Sierra Leone – young people who have known the terror and horrors of war in their own country – sang a song they had written especially for the conference called “Bye Bye War.” With a simple melody and lyrics, they moved the entire auditorium at the Hague Congress Center to stand and sway with their rhythm as everyone sang, over and over, “Bye Bye War.”

    The challenge of the 21st century is to abolish nuclear weapons and to say good-bye to war itself. The effort to meet this challenge has already begun. I encourage you to evaluate foreign policy initiatives of your country on the basis of whether or not they contribute to a world free of nuclear weapons and an end to war as a human institution. Choose peace and a human future, and make sure that your voice is heard!