Peace Group remember all who have been killed in Afghanistan 8 December 2009

Rochdale and Littleborough Peace Group held a vigil at the cenotaph opposite Rochdale Town Hall on Tuesday night (8 December 2009). They were mourning the deaths of British soldiers in Afghanistan, including, Adam Drane, the 100th British soldier to be killed there, since 1 January 200 and the deaths of an estimated 300,000 Afghan civilians killed since the NATO invasion in 2001. Members of the group read the names of all 100 British troops killed in Afghanistan since 1 January 2009 and the names of 100 of the Afghan civilians. The latter group included many children, such as Malama aged 10 years, Fatima aged 8 years, Hassana aged 6 years, Zahida aged 5 years, Royana and Ullah aged 3 years and Noora Ali and Sayed Rahman; all of whom were killed in NATO air-strikes.The group observed periods of silence for all the dead and called for British troops to be brought home from Afghanistan.

On behalf of the Peace Group, Philip Gilligan said,

"This is a day which we hoped would never come, but while Gordon Brown

continues to send our young men and women to Afghanistan to kill and be

killed in NATO's disastrous and futile war, it was inevitable that it would

arrive. Meanwhile, more and more Afghan civilians are being killed and 

more and more people in Britain are calling for our troops to be brought

home. The latest poll by the Rochdale Observer showed that more than two

thirds of people in our town think that the decision to send more troops to

Afghanistan is wrong. We must remember all the dead and continue to

demand that the troops are brought home. The killing must stop."

Peace Group joins the Wave against Climate Change

Rochdale and Littleborough Peace Group joined the tens of thousands of marchers in London on Saturday (5 December 2009), as an estimated 50,000 people surrounded Parliament to demand that world leaders, like Gordon Brown, take urgent action to secure a fair international deal to stop global warming exceeding the danger threshold of 2 degrees C.

The Wave demonstration, organised by the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition, called on the UK Government to show leadership at the Copenhagen summit. It wants the United Kingdom to ensure that any international deal protects the poorest people in the world and ensures, not only that an agreement is reached, but that it is fair and effective.

Peace group members from Rochdale joined with other supporters of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in distributing leaflets which reminded their fellow demonstrators of the dangers of nuclear power.

Philip Gilligan said,

“It is essential that relatively rich countries like ours provide our fair share of the resources needed to help people in poor countries adapt to climate change. This will mean increasing our overseas aid. The UK is historically one of the countries most responsible for climate change, and even today Japan, Europe and the US pump out over 40 per cent of global CO₂ emissions. Rich countries like ours need to act first and fastest to cut their emissions.

They also need to ensure that future energy needs are met from renewable sources. We must not be misled by any dangerous and ineffective ‘quick fix’. Whatever the government’s spin doctors and the apologists for the nuclear industry tell us, nuclear power is not the answer to climate change. It is not sustainable and can only make a very small contribution to electricity generation. Nuclear power is dirty and dangerous. It produces enormous amounts of carcinogenic radioactive waste which will remain dangerous for thousands of years. The risk of nuclear accidents, such as those at Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Windscale (Sellafield) hangs over all nuclear power stations, whenever they were built. In 2005, the Thorp reprocessing plant at Sellafield was shut after the discovery of a leak of 20 tonnes of radioactive material which had gone undiscovered for nine months. Nuclear power is not the solution. It is not worth the risk.”

For more information about The Wave campaign, please see http://www.stopclimatechaos.org/the-wave

Rae Street lobbies the world’s governments on uranium weapons in Geneva

Rae Street has returned from Geneva where she has been lobbying delegations at the World Health Organisation to take effective action to deal with the scourge of uranium weapons. The weapons which are often called ‘depleted’ uranium (DU) weapons are manufactured from radioactive waste materials produced during the nuclear fuel chain and the production of nuclear weapons. Rae Street from Hare Hill Road is a member of the UK Campaign Against Depleted Uranium and wants a total ban on all such weapons. She and fellow campaigners from the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons spoke with delegations from countries including Iraq whose delegates were very supportive of a ban, Australia, Egypt, Israel, France, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, Estonia and Macedonia.

Rae Street said,

“Uranium weapons cause widespread and long lasting contamination of the environment. They are radiologically and chemically toxic and many people - innocent civilians especially children, military veterans, industry workers - have illnesses and medical problems, which seem to be due to their exposure to 'depleted' uranium. In areas such as southern Iraq, where uranium munitions were used by the US and the UK, there have been reports of increases in cancers, leukaemia and birth defects. As the Guardian reported earlier this month, doctors in Iraq’s war-ravaged enclave of Falluja are dealing with up to 15 times as many chronic deformities in infants and a spike in early life cancers that seems very likely to be linked to toxic materials left over from the fighting there.

At least 18 countries possess these weapons. They are not yet banned, but, in the view of many, their use is contrary to existing humanitarian law. Therefore the very minimum we want is that governments should exercise the precautionary principle and agree not to manufacture or use them until their full impact is scientifically established.

We need to let governments and the United Nations know that these weapons can have no part in a humane and caring world. We demand an immediate end to the use of uranium weapons. We want all governments, including our own to disclose all locations where uranium weapons have been used and we want them to remove the remnants and contaminated materials from these sites immediately and under strict control. All the people potentially affected – children in Iraq and munitions workers - need health screening, medical treatment and compensation.

In Geneva, we were reminding delegations at the World Health Organization (WHO) that in December 2008, 141 countries supported the resolution at the United Nations’ General Assembly which called on UN agencies to update their positions on the threat to human health and the environment posed by the use of uranium weapons. We urgently need to have an international convention for a total ban in all countries of the world.”

For more information about uranium weapons, please see www.bandepleteduranium.org

For more information about, Falluja please see http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/13/falluja-cancer-children-birth-defects