The power of the Filipino people and their increasing nuclear-free
consciousness successfully blocked the former Marcos dictatorship's threats and
the schemes of the Aquino and Ramos administrations to force us into accepting
the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant. Through legislation such as Republic Act 6969,
which prohibits the importation and dumping of toxic and nuclear waste on
Philippine territory, we continue to seek ways to permanently denuclearize the
energy plans of the Philippine government for the 21st century.
The No Nukes Asia Forum(NNAF), established five years ago by Asian
grassroots movements struggling against nuclear power plants, adds itself to the
increasing number of regional networks of Asian peoples such as People's Plan
21, Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Movement(NFIP) and the Pacific Campaign
For Disarmament and Security(PCDS) which have made significant gains in the
empowerment of Asian peoples now well-organized around issues. Asian
non-government organizations as well as people's organizations have increasingly
affirmed their role in their respective countries'political and economic lives.
They have forged mutual solidarity against common problems. The tradition
written in the blood and ink of our revolutionary forebears -- Jose Rizal,
Andres Bonifacio, Emilio Jacinto, Marcelo H. Del Pilar and all the great heroes
and martyrs of the 1896 Philippine Revolution are as much Filipino as they are
Asian. The continuing movements articulate an Asian Renaissance that is today
beginning to forge a truly Asian community and identity on the basis of common
anti-colonial history, cultural traditions and common aspirations which are
being rediscovered through our joint struggles and solidarity. I am happy that
the No Nukes Asia Forum has brought together the following grassroots
anti-nuclear movements to share knowledge and experiences and through this
network, we hope to be able to find ways and means to solve our common problems
and advance our struggles in the local and in the international arenas: From
India--the ANUMUKTI; from Taiwan--the Taiwan Environmental Protection Union;
from Thailand-- the Rethink Nuclear Coalition; from Indonesia-- MANI, the Forum
Anti-Nuclear Indonesia, the Anti-Nuclear Mahasiswa Jombang, Mahasiswa Bandung
Anti-Nuclear, the National Network Forum for Indonesia Anti-Nuclear Community;
Korea -- Green Korea , and the Korean Federation for Environmental Movement;
Japan -- the Plutonium Action Network Hiroshima, Citizen's Nuclear Information
Network, No Nukes Asia Forum- Japan; and from the Philippines -- the Nuclear
Free Philippines Coalition, Nuclear Free Bataan Movement, among others.
The process of popular empowerment includes education and organizing,
building self-reliant people's organizations with an appreciation that we have
to rely primarily on our own strength if we want to hold our destiny in our
hands.
But empowerment also means the exploration of alternatives based on the
multiplicity of experiences in the field, diversity of specific contexts and the
plurality of perspectives. These, naturally, do not necessarily fit a single
framework, or one based around a national and class-centric perspective, as we
have seen in the diversity of the anti-nuclear movement. As we seek
alternative sources of safe and renewable energy, or that which we have called
SUSTAINABLE, we are also echoing various practices of ALTERNATIVE DEVELOPMENT.
Critically-conscious people and social movements naturally develop a sprocess of
empowerment that give them the capacity to act upon their lives, actors for
change rather than receptors or passive victims of development. When one moves
from the situation of victimization to one of opposition, proposition and the
building of alternatives, one necessarily experiments on the theme of
alternative visions and alternative development.
We have already heard a lot about small-scale and localized alternative
development initiatives. These have made substantive advances, and yes, based
on Schumacher's concept of "small is beautiful." But like alternative safe and
renewable energy, they still need to reach the "critical standards and scales"
to be able to shape and make a real impact on our societies. The pockets of
local initiatives need to be connected, and we still need to create a viable
system that can flexibly support and expand these initiatives. These local
initiatives which have been consciously kept on a small-scale level still have
to move from their micro to macro level if they aim to make a bigger dent in the
mainstream political economy.
This process of people's empowerment is continuing.
But at no point in its more than 50-year history has the nuclear industry
been more vulnerable than today. In the United States, Japan and Europe, it is
at an all-time low and on the defensive. It is an industry on the retreat, "an
industry on the decline" as Dr. Jinzaburo Takagi of the Citizen's Nuclear
Information Center of Japan described it. Although half of all new plants under
construction are in Asia and Asia is being targeted as a strong market by a
failed nuclear industry, it is also in Asia where the international movement
against nuclear power(and nuclear weapons) is becoming stronger. We must strike
while the iron is hot. Without letup. Strike at the following vulnerabilties
of the failed nuclear industry:
1. FIRST, NUCLEAR POWER IS ONE OF HISTORY'S GREATEST MISTAKES. WE MUST NEVER
LOSE SIGHT OF THE FACT THAT NUCLEAR POWER IS A PRODUCT OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF
NUCLEAR WEAPONS. Almost all the technical processes known and employed by lthe
nuclear industry today were invented at that time with the aim of manufacturing
bombs. The link between nuclear weapons and nuclear power remains because those
who possess the necessary know-how and run nuclear reactors can also manufacture
nuclear weapons. This is vulnerability number one.
2. SECOND, WE MUST TAKE THE INITIATIVE AND OFFENSIVE AGAINST ALL MAJOR CORPORATE
AND BANKING INTERESTS THAT ARE INVOLVED IN AND DOMINATE THE NUCLEAR POWER
INDUSTRY. It is all abosut the pervasive drive of corporate power to dominate
our lives. The nuclear power structure is part of a system of concentrated
global economic power that is out to obtain the largest possible profit margin.
If it can now be shown that they could reap larger profits by investing in
non-nuclear technologies, they might move more rapidly in that area.
Non-nuclear technologies usually fall victim to money and politics because
national energy policies often support the natural gas, oil and nuclear
interests, especially nuclear energy which are even heavily subsidized and which
receive the highest funding outlays for technology-specific outlays. If it were
not for government subsidies, nuclear power would be priced out of the market in
a genuinely "competitive" market environment. In short, we must in the long
run, seek ways to defang and neutralize the profit-driven global nuclear
industry by seeking ways to remove their subsidies or incentive-support.
3. THIRD, NUCLEAR WASTE DISPOSAL AND MANAGEMENT HAS BECOME A SERIOUS
INTERNATIONAL PROBLEM SO MUCH SO THAT OPPOSITION TO THE NUCLEAR INDUSTRY CAN NOW
FOCUS MORE AND MORE ON NUCLEAR WASTES DISPOSAL. I am reminded of Tolkien's "The
Lord of the Rings" where the character Erestor declares that only two courses
are possible for dealing with the menace of the Ring: "to hide the Ring forever
or to unmake it". But, says Erestor, "both are beyond our people." Precisely,
this dilemna applies to nuclear power and nuclear waste. Nuclear waste is
making humankind an endangered species. The large quantities of nuclear waste
produced by the 400 commercial reactors worldwide has put human survival itself
at risk. Nuclear wastes are not only poisoning the earth for us but also
poisoning the future of the unborn generation who have to inherit the earth and
the radioactivity which will be around for thousands of years and which have
spread in the food chains via air and water. The nuclear industry which
produces thousands of tons of high and low-level waste per year have created in
many countries "nuclear sacrifice areas" contaminated with dispersed
radioactivity where possibilities for normal life have been debvastated for the
next tens sof thousands of years. In the 1950s, a nuclear energy critic had
warned, "Nuclear waste is like getting on a plane, and in mid-air you ask the
pilot, 'how are we going to land?' He says we don't know -- but we'll invent the
technology and we'll figure out by the time we get there." Well, 47 years
later, we're ready to land our nuclear plane and we still haven't figured out
how to do it safely.
4.FOURTH, WE MUST SMASH THE MYTH OF LOW-LEVEL RADIATION, OR THE MYTH THAT
BARRING ACCIDENTS, NUCLEAR ENERGY IS SAFE WITH STATE-OF-THE-ART TECHNOLOGIES.
More and more cases of nuclear contamination reveal that the catastrophic
consequences sof exposure to radiation comes not only from nuclear testing and
accidents but even from the so-called "peaceful uses of energy", as shown by
documented cases in France, U.K., South Korea, India, etc..This industry has
long concealed from the public the facts about nuclear safety. If the public
only realized what the risks were, even with low-level radiation, it would
demand an end to nuclear power development and an intensified search for safer
sources of energy. Let's face it: nuclear power has been given its chance. It
has miserably failed and squandered these opportunities to prove itself often
with incalculable and catastrophic consequences, unparalleled in the history of
mankind. Can our societies rely on a technology to which there are
alternatives, on a technology that has to be perfect forever, or the alternative
is massive social disasster? We are not alarmist, but what they try to foist
upon us is a technological holocaust -- with its consequent loss of life and
genetic damage to future generations -- as an acceptable price for a profitable
enterprise euphemistically called progress.
5. FIFTH,WE CANNOT ALSO ALLOW PEOPLE TO GO AROUND WITH THE FALSE CLAIM THAT
NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS ARE NEEDED FOR INDUSTRIALIZATION. There was a time when it
was unfashionable to be opposed to nuclear power plants because the progress
reached by Europe, the United States and Japan were cited as the more important
goal of nuclear-powered industrialization.
But this myth is now being gradually demolished by the devastating nuclear power
plant accidents in the industrialized world. And surely, it is false to claim
that Asia's accelerated industrialization can only be achieved by nuclear power
plants. We must still further demolish and put to rest this argument and
concretely show that nuclear power plants are, on the contrary, detrimental not
only to the world's environment but to prosperity and human life itself.
6. SIXTH, MOVEMENTS STRUGGLING AGAINST NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS MUST SIMULTANEOUSLY
HELP STRENGTHEN AND BROADEN THE BASE OF DEMOCRACY AT THE GRASSROOTS. FOR
POPULAR EMPOWERMENT CAN BE BETTER APPRECIATED IF WE UNDERSTAND THAT DEMOCRATIC
CONTROL OVER OUR LIVES AND DEMOCRATIC CONTROL OF DECISIONS BY OURSELVES MAKE
NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS UNACCEPTABLE. The underlying point here is that the
anti-nuclear struggle is sreally a struggle for people's empowerment. This is
towards the establishment of a truly democratic, political, social and economic
system that,
* respects free and open discussion and decision-making processes which are
responsive to public concerns, allow for self-determination, cultural diversity,
grassroots participation and respects minority and indigenous rights, and are
independent of foreign interference and domination;and
* respects the rights of the common people, long-term ecological
sustainability, cultural and ethnic integrity, and local and national
self-reliance, in order to reverse the devastating environmental, social and
economic impact of exclusively market-driven development schemes.
While striving for the realization of the elimination or conversion of
nuclear power plants, we sincerely hope that this 5th No Nukes Asia Forum will
further cement a solid anti-nuclear front for national and local movements in
Asia, setting aside differences in customs, cultures, beliefs and ideologies, to
encourage the exchange of ideas and learn from the experiences, tactics and
struggles of others while simultaneously strengthening the capabilities of each
national movement against nuclear power plants.
We want this conference to be a springboard for considering issues on a
global scale, for the development of safe and renewable energy sosurces and
advancing common activities at the local and international level so we can
secure a sustainable 21st century for the next generations.
As a nuclear-free country, we unite with our fellow Asians and pledge to
pool our collective efforts for people's self-determination and sovereignty. We
are also committed to end an era of censorship, authoritarianism, official
secrecy, deception and intimidation which are political conditions under which
nuclear power thrives. Because the respect for the dignity of a person is as
inherent and inalienable human right as our natural security in a society upheld
by self-reliant, political, economic and social structures.
My Asian friends: to use the immortal words of the leader of Asia's first
national democratic revolution, Andres Bonifacio as my centennial tribute to
him,
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