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Indigenous Leaders Call For End To Uranium Mining

Indigenous Leaders Call For End To Uranium Mining allheadlinenews.com

Windsor Genova – AHN News Writer 26 Feb 09

Takoma Park, MD (AHN) – Indigenous activists and leaders of Native American, Australian aboriginal and Tuareg communities are in Washington, D.C. Friday to press elected officials at Capitol Hill to stop uranium mining.

Leaders of the group said the extraction of uranium ore needed to produce nuclear weapons and fuel for nuclear reactors are being done in indigenous communities contaminating scarce water supply there and causing cancer to Native Americans, aborigines in Australia and Tuaregs in Niger.

Tuareg activist Sidi-Amar Taoua said uranium mining in Niger has devastated its landscape, destroyed the fauna and flora around the mines and contaminated the land, air and water with radioactive dust, gases and liquids.

“The depletion of already scarce water supplies threatens the very survival of the Touareg as well as the local communities around the mines who are already suffering the many illnesses caused by the uranium mines,” Taoua said.

Dr. Bruno Chareyron, director of the French investigative lab that has conducted radiological testing at nuclear sites in France and around the world, and actor James Cromwell are backing the group and campaign against uranium mining.

“When my laboratory went to the mining towns in Niger we found radioactive scrap metal from the uranium mill being sold on the city market; uranium contamination of drinking water that exceeded World Health Organization standards; and radioactive tailings from the uranium mill stored in the open air,” Chareyron said. “The situation is equally bad in France where tailings have been paved into school playgrounds and parking lots. But the French nuclear corporation, Areva, denies in its own press release that there is any contamination from the Niger mines. This is simply not true.”

Meanwhile, a plan to allow uranium mining in New Mexico’s Mt. Taylor will be opposed, said Acoma Pueblo spokesman Manuel Pino. “We are not going to let that happen. We will fight that industry tooth and nail to the very end,” Pino said. Indigenous Leaders Call For End To Uranium Mining | AHN | February 27, 2009

antinuclear

March 2, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, indigenous issues