3. FREEDOM BID THAT SHAMES US

BY

JUAN GONZALEZ

Within minutes, the soldiers opened fire with their tanks and M-16s. By the time the smoke had cleared a few days later in the city of Kwangju, the official body count had passed 500. Some human rights groups have estimated the number of dead as high as 2,000.

No one knows for sure.

What we do know is that young Kim was arrested by soldiers and thrown into prison with hundreds of others, and that Gen. Chun Doo Hwan, who ordered the attack on Kwangju, became the next in a line of South Korean dictators dating to the end of World War II.

The general had assumed power in late 1979 after a previous dictator was assassinated. Instead of allowing democratic elections, he declared martial law. Then in May 1980, he closed the country's universities, arrested all major political opponents and imposed strict press censorship.

Among those he jailed was South Korea's most famous dissident, Kim Dae Jung, who came from just outside of Kwangju.

Thousands of university and high school students poured into the streets of that city on May 18 to demand democratic elections and the release of Kim Dae Jung.

Police violence against the demonstrators resulted in two deaths and scores of injuries. The repression so inflamed the population that hundreds of thousands of residents joined in massive demonstrations that paralyzed the city.

"When we saw all the lies in the media, calling us students thugs and criminals, it made us even angrier," Kim Hyo Seok told me yesterday.

The demonstrators soon overran government buildings and trashed the two main television stations.

On May 22, William Gleysteen, U.S. ambassador to South Korea, wrote in a cable to President Jimmy Carter's security advisers: "Kwangju is ... out of control and poses an alarming situation for [the Korean] military ... at least 150,000 people are involved."

Despite his public policy of supporting human rights, Carter refused to back the massive democracy uprising in South Korea. At that very moment, the United States was facing a huge crisis in Iran, following the uprising that brought Ayatollah Khomeni to power.

In public, the Carter administration condemned the bloody attack on Kwangju. But in private, White House officials feared Korea would spin out of control. Carter's top aides quietly backed Gen. Chun's use of South Korea's Special Forces to gain control of Kwangju.

The full story of this sellout of Korea's democracy movement was uncovered a few years ago in the "Cherokee files," thousands of secret documents about the Kwangju events that our government released in a Freedom of Information request from Journal of Commerce reporter Tim Shorrock.

After democracy finally came to South Korea in the late 1980s, Gen. Chun was put on trial and jailed for treason for his role in the Kwangju massacre.

The protesters who died in the uprising were all declared martyrs for democracy, and the South Korean government has paid compensation to more than 4,000 who suffered injuries.

Kim Dae Jung, the dissident whose arrest touched off the uprising, was elected president in 1997 and won the Nobel Peace Prize a few years later for his efforts to end the divisions between North and South Korea.

As for Kim Hyo Seok, the high school student who was arrested at Kwangju, he now heads Light of May, a Korean human-rights organization, and is co-chairman of his nation's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

This month, on the 25th anniversary of Kwangju, Kim Hyo Seok is touring the United States, telling the story of a fight for democracy few Americans have heard about. One that triumphed even when our government turned its back.

Back to Top

4. "NATIONAL SACRIFICE AREAS"

(The Political Economy of Radioactive Colonialism: Uranium mining on Indian Reservation lands)

BY

WARD CHURCHILL & WINONA LaDUC

A candid (and accurate) appraisal of the situation at Navajo and the Sioux Nation, in view both of current circumstances and of developmental projections, came from the Nixon administration in 1972. At that time, in conjunction with studies of US energy development needs and planning undertaken by the Trilateral Commission, the federal government termed and sought to designate both the Four Corners regions of Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming and South Dakota, and the impacted regions of the Dakotas, Wyoming and Montana as "National Sacrifice Areas." That is, areas rendered literally uninhabitable through the deliberate elimination of the total water supplies for industrial purposes (the aquifers are estimated to take about 5,000 to 50,000 years to effectively replenish themselves) and proliferation of nuclear contamination (much of which carries a lethal half-life of from a quarter to a half-millions years). In other words the destruction anticipated is effectively permanent.

But what of immediate concerns? All uranium-producing American Indian nations, and the individuals who comprise them, are in the position typified by the Navajo's Churchrock community: they are economic hostages of the new colonialism. For example approximately 7,000 acres of the 418,000-acre Laguna Pueblo landholding is leased to the Anaconda Corporation. The tribal posture in entering into the leasing agreement was to secure royalty revenues for the group, and jobs/income for individuals within the group. In effect, the land has passed under Anaconda's eminent domain. Anaconda operated uranium stripping operations at Laguna from 1952 until 1981, when, as in the case of Kerr-McGee's Shiprock mine profitably extractible ore played out. During the operating years, the Laguna Tribal Council negotiated an agreement with the corporation whereby tribal applicants would receive priority hiring to work on the reservation mine. The practice was quite successful, with some 93 percent of the Anaconda labor force ultimately accruing from the pueblo. As the mining operation expanded over the years, so did the work force from 350 in 1952 to a peak of 650 in1979.

Wages to miners, relative to average per capita incomes on reservations are quite high, and the high concentration of miners within the tiny Laguna population established it as one of the "richer" all-round tribal groups in the country by the early to-mid-1960s. Throughout the 1970s, unemployment within the tribal membership averaged approximately 25 percent, quite high by non-Indian standards, but less than half the prevailing average reservation rate nationally. Further, royalty payments and other mechanisms allowed the Lagunas to symbolically break certain important aspects of the typical reorganization-fostered dependency upon the federal government. By 1979, former Laguna governor Floyd Correa was able to state in an interview that, of the tribal unemployed, only twelve were collecting unemployment benefits (as compared to the estimated 20 percent of the total labor force collecting benefits on most reservations at any given moment). Upon superficial examination, the Lagunas seemed well on the road to recovering the self-sufficiency which had long since passed from the grasp of most North American indigenous nations.

The bubble burst when Anaconda abruptly pulled up stakes and left the husk of their mining operation: a gaping crater and, of course, piles of virulently radioactive slag. Over the years, Laguna's negotiating position had steadily deteriorated as the absolute centrality of the Anaconda operation became apparent to the people—and to the corporation. Consequently very little provision was built into lease renewals which would have accommodated clean-up and land reclamation upon conclusion of mining activities. It will likely cost people more to repair environmental havoc wrought by the corporation than it earned during the life of the mining contract. And, unlike Anaconda, the Laguna people as a whole cannot simply move away leaving the mess behind; nor can individual workers. The abrupt departure of Anaconda left the majority of the reservation's income-earners suddenly jobless. Here, a cruel lesson was to be learned. The skills imparted through training and employment in uranium mining are not readily translatable to other forms of employment, nor are they particularly transferable without dissolution of the tribal group itself (i.e., miners and their families moving away from the pueblo in order to secure employment elsewhere). Meanwhile, the steady 30-year gravitation of the Laguna  population toward mining as a livelihood caused a correspondingly steady atrophy of the skills and occupations enabling the pueblo to remain essentially self-sufficient for centuries.

Whether or not the former Anaconda employees can "adjust" to their new circumstances and make a sort of reverse transition to more traditional occupations and/or secure adequate alternative employment proximate to the reservation may be in some respects a moot point. While not as pronounced as in the deep shaft mining areas of the Navajo Nation, the pattern of increasing early deaths from respiratory cancer and similar ailments—as well as congenital birth defects—has been becoming steadily more apparent on the reservation. Most of the afflicted no longer retain the health insurance coverage, once a part of the corporate employment package, through which to offset the costs of their illnesses (and those suffered by relatives within the extended family structures by which the pueblo is organized). Thus , the ghost of Anaconda is eating the personal as well as tribal savings accruing from the mining experience.

It seems safe enough to observe that the short-term benefits perceived at Laguna were more illusory than real. Although a temporary sense of economic security was imparted by the presence of a regular payroll, and the "stability" of a "big time" employer, there was never time to consolidate the apparent gains. Costs swiftly overtook gains although the tribal government was not necessarily immediately privy to the change of circumstances. In the final analysis, the people may well end up much more destitute, and in an infinitely worse environmental position, than was ever the case in the past. As if to underscore the point, water has become a major problem at Laguna, one which may eventually outweigh all the others brought about by its relatively brief relationship with Anaconda. The Rio Paguate River, which once provided the basis for irrigation and a potentially thriving local agriculture, now runs through the unreclaimed ruins of corporate flight. As early as 1973, the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) discovered that the strip-mining operation was contaminating the Laguna water supply.

With agricultural and cattle-raising production withering under the glare of higher paying and more "glamorous" work in the mine, the pueblo converted to ground water in meeting all, rather than a portion, of its potable needs. In 1975, however, the EPA returned to find widespread ground water contamination throughout the Grants Mineral Belt, including that under Laguna. In 1978, the EPA was back again, this time to reassure tribal members that all of their available water sources were dangerously contaminated by radioactivity, and that the tribal council building, community center, and newly constructed Jackpile Housing—paid for in substantial proportion by royalty monies—were all radioactive as well. Additionally, Anaconda had used low-grade uranium ore to "improve" the road system leading to the mine and village.

Hence, even were the Lagunas able to reclaim the land directly associated with what was once the world's largest open pit uranium mine (preceding Namibia's Rossing Mine for this dubious distinction), no small feat in itself, and even if they were somehow able to avert the seemingly impending carcinogenic and genetic crises, restore an adequate measure of employment and tribal income, and clear up at least the direct sources of contamination to the Rio Paguate, they would still be faced with the insurmountable problem of contaminated ground water ( which can accrue from quite far-flung locations). And, if they have had enough of such "progress" and wish to attempt a return to the agriculture and animal husbandry which stood in such good stead for generations? Then they will still have to contend with the factor of disrupted ore bodies which persist in leaching out into otherwise reclaimed soil.

When such leaching occurs, radioactive contaminants are drawn into the roots of plants. Animals, whether human or otherwise, consuming contaminated plants likewise become contaminated. This too may well be an insurmountable problem. It seems like that the damage is done and irreparable, that the way of life the Lagunas have known, and with which they identify and represent themselves as a people is gone forever. And in exchange? Nothing. At least, nothing of value, unless one wishes to place a value on radioactive community centers and road repairs; or unless one wishes to consider as valuable the bitter legacy and lessons learned as an example from which to base future plans and future actions.

Laguna is not unique in the nature of its experience. The examples drawn earlier from the Navajo Nation and the Lakota territory should be sufficient to demonstrate that. Dozens, scores, even hundreds of additional examples might be cited from Hopi, from Zuni, Acoma, Isleta, Crow, Northern Cheyenne, and else where in the US, and from the Cree, Métis, Athabasca, and other territories of Canada, through which to illustrate the point. One other example within the US might be drawn upon to nail things down. This concerns the Department of Energy's nuclear facility at Hanford, on the boundary of the Yakima Nation in central Washington state. Designed on the same pattern as the ill-fated Soviet plant at Chernobyl, Hanford was used for 40 years to produce weapons-grade fissionable material. Finally closed down in 1987, when officials became concerned that a Chernobyl –style disaster might occur there, Hanford was still described by the federal government (in response to growing local concerns about health hazards inherent to the plant) as having functioned in a "safe and essentially accident-free fashion" throughout its operational existence. Finally, in July of 1990, government spokespersons admitted that the weapons facility had been since the early 1950s secretly dumping radioactive wastes into the environment at a level at least 2,000 times great than those officially deemed "safe."

A year later, in April 1991, this was spelled out as meaning that 444 billion gallons of water laced with plutonium, strontium, tritium, ruthenium, cesium, and assorted "rare earth elements" had been simply poured into a hole in the ground over the years. It was admitted that these materials had long since seeped into local ground water sources, and estimated that the contamination will reach the Columbia River by the end of the decade (the local populace needn't worry about health hazards however; "progressive" legislators have managed to prohibit cigarette smoking in all the buildings located above the dump site as a means of sparing health conscious citizens the hazards of breathing such "air pollution"). In sum, the residents of Yakima and the surrounding area have been exposed to greater concentrations of radiation—as a matter of course—than were those Soviet citizens living in or near Chernobyl during the near melt down of the reactor there. Further, they, unlike their counterparts in the USSR, had been unknowingly exposed to the contamination for decades.

It should by now be plain that there is neither short-nor long term advantage to be gained by indigenous nations in entering into energy resource extraction agreements. Advantage accrues only to the corporate and governmental representatives of a colonizing and dominant industrial culture. Occasionally it accrues momentarily, and in limited fashion, to the "Vichy" tribal governments they have reorganized into doing their bidding. For the people, there is only expendability, destruction, and grief under this new colonization. Ironically, the situation was spelled out in the clearest possible terms by Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, the site of the birth of "controlled" nuclear fission, in its February 1978 Mini-Report:

Perhaps the solution to the radon emission problem is to zone the land into uranium mining and milling districts so as to forbid human habitation.

Viewed in this light, the choices for uranium-rich, land-locked reservation populations are clearly defined. For some, there is cause for immediate retreat from engagement in the uranium extraction process. For others, it is a matter of avoiding a problem not yet begun. In either case, such a choice will necessitate an active resistance to the demands and impositions of the new colonizers.

It seems certain that those who would claim "their" uranium to fuel the engines of empires, both at home and abroad, will be unlikely to accept a polite (if firm) "no" in response to their desires. Strategies must be found through which this "no" may be enforced. Perhaps, in the end, it will be as Leslie Silko put it, that "human beings will be one clan again" united finally by the "the circle of death" which ultimately confronts us all, united in putting an end to such insanity. Until that time, however, American Indians, those who have been selected by the dynamics of radioactive colonization to be the first 20^th-century national sacrifice peoples, must stand alone, or with their immediate allies, for a common survival. It is a gamble, no doubt, but a gamble which is clearly warranted. The alternative is virtual species suicide. There are bright spots within what has otherwise been painted as a bleak portrait of contemporary Indian Country. It is to these, the representations of the gable, and what must be hoped are the rudiments of an emerging strategy of resistance, to which we turn in our next and final section. (Part 2, the Conclusion, will appear in the next issue of the Bi-Weekly)

Back to Top

5. BRAZIL'S LOSING BATTLE IN THE AMAZON FOREST

BY

AUTHOR UNKNOWN

In the heart of what is known in Brazil's Amazon as the arc of deforestation, it is clear that the fight to save the jungle is being lost.

From the air, vast tracts could be seen of cleared land with grazing cattle or cultivated fields that have been gouged out of the forest.

The land is irresistible for farmers seeking to expand and benefit from Brazil's agricultural boom.

The arc is the front line in the battle over the Amazon.

In 2004, the government decided to make a stand in this half-moon shaped area stretching along the southern and eastern edges of the Amazon.

A year later, environmentalists and government officials have little to show for the effort.

The government said on Wednesday that deforestation jumped to its second highest level on record in 2003-2004 to 26,130 sq km - an area nearly the size of Belgiumand slightly bigger than the US state of New Hampshire.

World's largest forest:

Just under 20% of the world's largest tropical forest, which is home to an estimated 30% of the world's animal and plant species, has now been destroyed.

Even if last year was below the deforestation record of 29,050 sq km reached in 1994-1995, the deforestation levels during the past three years have never been so consistently high, all above 20,000 sq km.

The Green Party quit President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's centre-left ruling coalition on Thursday in anger at the figures.

"The terrible data reflects not just a failure of implementation of the government's plan but also the contradiction the government has in containing deforestation or promoting agriculture for exports," Greenpeace Amazon coordinator Paulo Adaria said.

Only three employees:

On the ground in Alta Floresta, a hot spot for deforestation in the southern Amazon, the government's environmental agency Ibama has just three full-time employees to monitor an area of 56,000 sq km.

"Since January (the end of the rainy season) the chainsaws have started roaring and we don't have the necessary agility," said Mauro Baldini, an Ibama environmental analyst in Alta Floresta.

"We are arriving after the fish have died and the trees have been felled," he said. An estimated 350 logging companies operate in the region.

A preliminary report by Greenpeace found that just three of 19 Ibama posts earmarked to get extra funding have received anything from the government's plan to fight deforestation since it was launched in March 2004. Baldini's post is one of the three.

Illegal loggers:

Environmentalists say deforestation is driven by illegal loggers first moving in, followed by land speculators or farmers.

In the Alta Floresta region their arrival is spurred by the planned paving of a road linking Cuiaba in Mato Grosso state to Santarem, hundreds of miles further north through virgin forest.  

Environmentalists say the pattern is familiar - when loggers and farmers know roads are coming, they race to cut down forest to get land which they will make a profit on.

The building of a highway from capital Brasilia in the centre of Brazil to Belem on the mouth of the Amazon River several decades ago, led to mass destruction of the eastern Amazon.

The pattern can be seen perfectly in the town of Novo Progresso, just north of Alta Floresta in the state of Para, where an estimated 80% of land registrations are illegal, according to the Greenpeace report.

Logging represents 17% of the poor state of Para's economic output.

Back to Top