FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: August 8, 2006
CONTACT: Tara Dorabji, Tri-Valley CAREs, 925-443-7148; cell 925-255-3589
Jackie Cabasso, Western States Legal Foundation, 510-839-5877; cell: 510-306-0119
Chelsea Collonge, Nevada Desert Experience, cell 510-599-7138
ATOMIC BOMB SURVIVOR TO SPEAK AT BECHTEL PROTEST
HIBAKUSHA, INDIGENOUS LEADERS, ALLIED GROUPS OPPOSE BECHTEL’S NUCLEAR PROFITS FROM HIROSHIMA TO YUCCA MOUNTAIN TO THE MIDDLE EAST
August 9 Marks 61st Anniversary of U.S. Atomic Bombing of Nagasaki
and UN’s Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples
WHAT: Rally and ceremony to protest Bechtel’s profiting from war and nuclear weapons
WHEN: Wednesday, August 9 at 10 am
WHERE: Bechtel corporate headquarters, 50 Beale St. San Francisco, near Embarcadero BART
WHO: The Aug 6 and 9, No Nukes! No Wars! Coalition, including the Livermore Conversion Project, Tri-Valley CAREs, Western States Legal Foundation, Greenaction, Global Exchange, International Indian Treaty Council, American Friends Service Committee and Nevada Desert Experience
San Francisco—On Wednesday, August 9, at 10 am, a protest rally and ceremony will be held at Bechtel corporate headquarters in San Francisco to mark the 61st anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Nagasaki. August 9 is also the United Nation’s International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, as declared by the UN General Assembly in 1994.
“The U.S. is leading the world into a new arms race, planning new nuclear warheads and new missiles and long-range bombers to carry them,” said Andrew Lichterman of Western States Legal Foundation. “Bechtel will be in the middle of it all, providing management and engineering services from the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico where nuclear weapons are designed to the Kwajalein Test Site in the Pacific, where U.S. missile tests splash down. Companies like Bechtel are the ‘Merchants of Death’ of the 21st century, making big profits from U.S. policies that promote endless war.”
In the early 1940s, Bechtel built heavy water storage plants for the Manhattan Project, the secret U.S. government program that developed the atomic bomb.
61 years later Mr. Keiji Tsuchiya, an atomic bomb survivor who served as a rescue worker in the week immediately following the bombing of Hiroshima, will speak in front of the San Francisco Bechtel office. “Our strong will and actions are needed now to put an end to the use of nuclear weapons on our planet Earth,” explained Mr. Tsuchiya. “The kind of experience that the Hibakusha [atomic bomb survivors] had to go through should never, under any condition, be repeated to anybody.” Mr. Tsuchiya is available for interviews through Aug. 9.
Bechtel’s influence in the U.S. nuclear weapons complex is growing rapidly. Recently, Bechtel partnered with the University of California to win the management contract for the Los Alamos nuclear weapons lab in New Mexico. The corporation is expected to announce its intent to bid for the Livermore lab contract as well. Both labs are involved in design work, under the “Reliable Replacement Warhead” Program, intended to replace every nuclear warhead in the U.S. arsenal.
“Bechtel is banking on Armageddon,” said Tara Dorabji of Tri-Valley CAREs. “Bechtel has reaped millions of dollars in profits from nuclear weapons testing, production and clean-up. Now Bechtel is poised to bid for the management contract of the Livermore nuclear weapons lab, where it would profit from the creation of a new generation of nuclear bombs. Bechtel’s profits are bombing our world away. On the anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we call on Bechtel to get out of the business of bombs.”
Bechtel until recently managed the Nevada Test Site and currently is a partner in management of the controversial Yucca Mountain project. The Nevada Test Site and the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump are on land that the Western Shoshone Nation holds rights to under the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley. In March, an historic decision by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination urged the U.S. to “freeze,” “desist” and “stop” actions being taken or threatened against the peoples of the Western Shoshone Nation, including activities at Yucca Mountain and the Nevada Test Site.
“Native people have been on the beginning and end of the nuclear fuel cycle. Our people in the Southwest were relocated in order for uranium to be mined. Many of our elder men that worked in the mines died from lung cancer. They were never warned of the health effects from working in the mines. The open pit tailings were blown all over the Southwest, resulting in an organ cancer rate that is 17 times the national average. Birth defects are ten times the national average,” said Morningstar Gali with the Sacred Sites Coalition. “Our people that live in the isolated areas of the southwest, such as near Yucca Mountain and other Western Shoshone lands have been part of what the U.S. government considers the ‘national sacrifice’— their existence inconsequential in the need to store the residual fuel. Our elders entered into treaties with the United States government in order to protect the lands we had left to secure our future. It is our obligation as the seventh generation of young native people to fight for the preservation of our lands for the next seven generations.”
“Bechtel carries responsibility for nuclear weapons tests on Western Shoshone land,” said Chelsea Collonge of Nevada Desert Experience. “If Bechtel wins the contract for Livermore Lab, it is poised to continue to profit from ‘subcritical’ nuclear weapons testing, which provides data for new U.S. nuclear weapon designs and violates the spirit of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. At Yucca Mountain, Bechtel will profit from dumping nuclear waste on indigenous populations, poisoning generations for hundreds of thousands of years. ”
Bechtel also holds major contracts in Iraq. “The Bechtel Corporation has a long history in Iraq – including close working ties with Saddam Hussein’s government,” said Antonia Juhasz, author of The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time. “Bechtel played a lead role in advocating for war against Iraq in 2003 through its former President and current Board Member, George Shultz, and has since profited greatly from that war. Bechtel's nearly $3 billion Iraqi gain has come at great loss to the Iraqi public and the American taxpayer. Bechtel has utterly failed to rebuild Iraq’s water, electricity and sewage systems. While the Iraqis rebuilt these systems three months after the 1991 U.S. invasion, after more than three years Bechtel has not even restored services to pre-war levels. Bechtel’s contracts must be canceled and all unspent and misspent money turned over to Iraqi companies and workers.”
Keiji Tsuchiya, Andrew Lichterman, Tara Dorabji, Morningstar Gali, Chelsea Collonge, and Antonia Juhasz will be among the speakers at Wednesday’s rally at San Francisco Bechtel. The Bay Area action is linked to nationally coordinated actions at nuclear weapon sites and Bechtel offices across the country.
For more information visit: www.trivalleycares.org [1], www.wslfweb.org [2] and www.august6.org [3].