GIJON, SPAIN
Meeting launches movement against depleted uranium
Special to Workers
World
Gijon, Spain
In the north coast city of Gijón in the Asturias
province on Nov. 25-26, some 500 progressives from around Spain
joined about 30 international delegates in a seminar to open a
serious struggle in the country against the use of
depleted-uranium weapons.
Among the participants was a former United Nations official
in Iraq, Dr. Hans Graf von Sponeck, who resigned his post
rather than direct the so-called "Oil for Food" program backed
by the United States, which he saw as continuing the murder of
Iraqi children.
Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, unable to
participate because of a trip to revolutionary-controlled areas
of Colombia, sent a message of solidarity and a call to ban DU
arms internationally.
Since relatively few people in the Spanish progressive
movement were well
acquainted with the use and dangers from DU arms, international
experts introduced these subjects. Others, including Spanish
scientists and organizers, also spoke on the political
implications of DU use.
A special contribution came from those speakers representing
the victims of DU weapons. There was a strong delegation from
Iraq, a speaker from Yugoslavia, and U.S. and British veterans
who suffer from "Gulf War Syndrome," for which they believe DU
poisoning is responsible.
The Committee in Solidarity with the Arab Cause and the
Spanish Campaign for Lifting the Sanctions on Iraq organized
the conference. Gijon and other communities of Asturias hosted
the meeting. The University of Olviedo also supported it.
Asturias has provided medical care for hundreds of Iraqi
children suffering the effects of 10 years of U.S.-led
sanctions.
What is DU?
DU is a waste product of the process that produces enriched
uranium for use in atomic weapons and nuclear power plants.
Much like natural uranium, it is both toxic and radioactive.
Over a billion pounds of DU exists in the United States and
must be safely stored or disposed of by the Department of
Energy. With its half-life of 4.5 billion years, DU's
radioactivity effectively lasts forever.
DU is so abundant the government gives it away to arms
manufacturers. Because it is extremely dense--1.7 times as
dense as lead--when turned into a metal DU can be used to make
a shell that easily penetrates steel. In addition it is
pyrophoric--that is, when it strikes steel, heat from the
friction causes it to burn.
When DU burns, it spews tiny particles of poisonous and
radioactive uranium oxide in aerosol form, which can then
travel for miles in the wind. Humans can ingest or inhale the
small particles. Even one particle, when lodged in a vital
organ--which is most likely to happen from inhalation--can
cause illnesses from headaches to cancer.
The Pentagon tested DU shells at various sites around the
U.S. and used it in combat for the first time against Iraq
during the 1991 Gulf War. It was very effective in destroying
Iraqi tanks, as well as their occupants and anyone in the area.
At least 600,000 pounds of DU and uranium dust was left around
Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia by U.S. and British forces during
that war.
Although the U.S. government and military continue to
minimize the environmental and health dangers from
depleted-uranium weapons, even they have to admit these dangers
exist.
DU is also considered at least a contributing cause to the
130,000 reported cases of "Gulf War Syndrome." The chronic
symptoms of this ailment range from sharp increases in cancers
to memory loss, chronic pain, fatigue and birth defects in
veterans' children.
Canadian DU expert Dr. Rosalie Bertell explained the
similarity between DU used in combat and uranium from a nuclear
disaster like that at Chernobyl. The high temperature forms
tiny particles of uranium oxide in ceramic form, she said,
which can then be more easily transported long distances in the
air and inhaled.
Suffering in Iraq
The damage to the Iraqi people was even more severe. Dr.
Akram Abdel Muhsen, physician and director of the University
Hospital of Basra, Iraq, reported on the higher rates of
childhood leukemia and other cancers found in people living
around Basra. These findings were first made public in a 1998
symposium
Dr. Mona Kammas is a professor of pathology at Baghdad
University and director of a study of the environmental impact
of U.S. aggression against Iraq. At the Gijon symposium, she
reported on a paper that showed an almost five-fold increase in
cancers, a more than three-fold increase in spontaneous
abortions, and a nearly three-fold increase in congenital
anomalies in a study group of those exposed to combat.
The paper also reported on environmental damage due to the
Pentagon's destruction of the water-supply and sanitation
systems and the destruction of oil refineries and factories
that used toxic chemicals in the production process.
Iraqi researchers believe that the different relative
frequency of various types of cancer now as compared with
before 1990 in the Basra region was a significant indication of
a major change, and that this pattern continuing long after the
war indicated that DU's impact was long-lasting.
Dr. Slavko Knezevic, a physician and professor at Belgrade
University in Yugoslavia, reported on the virtual ecocide that
NATO bombers committed against his country by bombing chemical
plants and oil refineries in Kragujevac, Pancevo, Novi Sad and
other industrial centers.
He also said that Yugoslav researchers found evidence that
the U.S. and NATO fired much more than the 31,000 rounds of DU
shells they admitted to after the 1999 aggression against
Yugoslavia.
Is Israel using DU?
A speaker from the International Action Center in New York,
John Catalinotto, told of the Pentagon's wanton testing of DU
in Vieques, Puerto Rico, Okinawa, Japan, south Korea and
Panama, and how the movement against U.S. occupation in each
country protested angrily against DU use.
Catalinotto is co-editor and a contributor to the IAC's book
about depleted uranium, "Metal of Dishonor." Five other
participants at the Gijon seminar, including Dr. Bertell, Dr.
Siegwart-Horst Guenther, Dr. Ashraf al-Bayoumi and U.S. Gulf
War veterans Carole H. Picou and Dan Fahey, contributed to the
book.
In each of the above countries, Catalinotto said, the
Pentagon first denied charges that it used DU. As protests
grew, U.S. spokespeople were forced to admit its use and in
some cases even to apologize and promise cleanups.
Catalinotto then raised the question of Israeli use of DU
weapons in its attempt to suppress the current Palestinian
uprising. He said this was likely given Israeli possession of
DU ammunition and its use of DU-capable tanks and helicopters
supplied by the U.S. The IAC has called for an investigation of
Israeli DU use and a movement to stop it, which would be a way
of showing solidarity with the Palestinian struggle.
The IAC has prepared a paper on the likely use of DU by the
Israeli armed
forces, available on the IAC Web site at
www.iacenter.org.
A session on the media distortion of DU use and war included
British Labor Party Member of Parliament George Galloway and
Madrid television journalist José Manuel Martín
Medem. Galloway pointed out that the first world leader to use
chemical weapons against a civilian population was Winston
Churchill.
Perhaps the strongest evidence of DU's dangers came from
Picou, a retired U.S. Army sergeant who suffers many DU-typical
symptoms, and British Gulf War veteran Ray Bristol, who spoke
from a wheelchair. For both of these veterans, the suppression
of their stories by the military hierarchy virtually forced
them to seek out aid from the progressive movement and from
Iraq, where they developed a strong solidarity with Iraqi
victims.
Stop the sanctions
In the closing session, the emphasis shifted to the grim
results of the 10-year sanctions against the Iraqi people, with
a short message first from Iraqi anti-sanctions leader Dr.
Harith Al-Khashali.
Dr. von Sponeck was warmly welcomed as one of the few
officials--UN or otherwise--who resigned an important post
rather than continue to serve in a criminal, anti-human
situation. He pledged to continue his fight against sanctions,
which he described as a real "weapon of mass destruction."
Carlos Varea, a leader of the organizations responsible for
the conference, read the final declaration. It included demands
that the use of munitions made with DU be considered a war
crime and a crime against humanity, that the sanctions on Iraq
be lifted, that the UN secretary general take steps to analyze
the effects of DU armaments on health and the environment and
prohibit the use of these weapons.
It also declared full solidarity and support to those
persons affected by the use of DU weapons in Iraq and
Yugoslavia including war veterans. The meeting also extended
its solidarity to the Palestinian people.
Other contributors to the conference included Nacho
García Alonso, professor at the Oviedo University; Paz
Andrés Saez de Santa María, professor of public
international law at Oviedo University; Bernice Boermans,
executive director of the International Association of Lawyers
Against Nuclear Arms in Holland; and José Ramón
L. Patterson, journalist and director of the TVE Asturias
Territorial Center in Oviedo, Spain.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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