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July 31, 2023 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Nukewatch Staffer Appeals to European Court, Claims Unfair Trial Court Decisions in Germany

Wearing “Weapons Inspectors” signs, Susan Crane, left, and John LaForge got into Germany’s Büchel air base on Hiroshima Day 2018 and climbed atop one of the bunkers that likely houses some of the US nuclear bombs stationed there.

By Nukewatch Staff

Nukewatch co-director John LaForge has appealed to a European human rights court claiming that his criminal trespass convictions stemming from nuclear weapons protests in Germany were based on unfair judicial errors.

LaForge was convicted of two charges of trespass and damage to property after separate protest actions at Germany’s Büchel Air Force Base, 80 miles southeast of Cologne. The base stations approximately 20 U.S. hydrogen bombs, that German pilots train to use in attacks on Russia, as part of a controversial program called “nuclear sharing.”

Now, in an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France filed June 9, LaForge argues that the ECHR’s rules were violated by German courts which, he claims, effectively denied him the right to present a defense. The ECHR reviews complaints from across the European Union if defendants, who have exhausted their legal alternatives in European member states, can demonstrate that their convictions were made in error. The ECHR will initially consider LaForge’s “application,” and then decide whether it merits formal review, a process that can take many months.
LaForge’s convictions were affirmed by the Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe, Germany’s highest, which over the last 20 years has refused to hear 19 similar appeals by anti-nuclear weapons activists. In January this year, LaForge became the first U.S. citizen incarcerated in Germany in the long-running, international campaign against “nuclear sharing” and the threatened use of the U.S. nuclear weapons at Büchel.

LaForge was sent to Glasmoor prison near Hamburg for 50 days, and was released February 28. A second U.S. citizen, Dennis DuVall, a member of Veterans for Peace who now lives in Germany, finished a 60-day sentence on April 19, 2023 for a similar charge.

In the appeal, filed by attorney Anna Busl of Bonn, LaForge argues that the German courts erred by refusing to consider expert witness testimony, which he says would have corroborated his defense of “crime prevention.” In particular, the courts refused to hear from University of Illinois Professor of International Law Francis A. Boyle, author of The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence, and many other books. “The courts mistakenly neglected to consider international law, binding on the United States and Germany, that criminalizes planning and preparation of nuclear weapons attacks, and which forbid the transfer of nuclear weapons from the United States to Germany,” LaForge said.

The appeal to the ECHR is not altogether new in the campaign to oust the U.S. weapons. In April 2022, Stefanie Augustin and Marion Küpker of Germany’s campaign “Büchel is Everywhere: Nuclear Weapons-Free Now!” filed an appeal which has not yet been answered. In addition, Johanna Adickes of Germany filed an appeal April 26, and two other resisters, Ariane Dettloff of Germany, and Susan Crane of California, intend to appeal later this year.

In a related initiative, while nuclear resisters were facing trial and prison sentences in Germany, Oscar Arias, the former president of Costa Rica and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and Jonathan Granoff, president of the Global Security Institute, recommended in July 2022 that the U.S. withdraw all its nuclear weapons from Europe as a demonstration of good will and trust building that they said could move Russian President Putin to support negotiations leading to a cease fire and eventually an end to the war in Ukraine.

July 31, 2023 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

1945 Infant Mortality Tells the Story of Trinity

By Bernice Gutierrez, Mary Martinez White, Paul Pino, and Tina Cordova

We are the downwinders of New Mexico, victims of the world’s first ever nuclear bomb explosion at the Trinity Site in New Mexico on July 16, 1945. As an added assault on our health, we were also downwind of the Nevada Nuclear Test Site. We ask you to support passage of amendments to the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) which will expand coverage to New Mexico and other forgotten downwinders across the American west and Guam. Currently the RECA only provides payments of restitution to a few counties in Arizona, Nevada, and Utah.
We are three Hispano cousins who have lost more than 50 family members to cancer. In relation to the Trinity bombing, we have endured a sickening spike in infant mortality, as well as highly increased exposures to toxic plutonium that rained down on New Mexico after the bomb was detonated. Now we are fighting for downwinder parity, and ask for your help.

— Bernice Gutierrez, Mary Martinez White, and Paul Pino, Steering Committee of The Tularosa Basin Downwinder’s Consortium.

**Every July, the Tularosa Basin Downwinder’s Consortium holds a candlelight vigil to remember the victims of Trinity, the world’s first atomic bomb detonation.**

The Trinity Site is often described as remote and uninhabited, yet there were families living as close as twelve miles from the bomb site and according to census data there were approximately 500,000 people living within a 150-mile radius of Trinity. In addition, 49,579 New Mexicans fought in World War II. New Mexico had the highest rate of military service and the highest proportion of fatalities among all the states in the U.S. Men were being killed on the battlefields while their families were being killed at home in New Mexico.
The bomb was incredibly inefficient and overpacked with 13 pounds of weapons-grade plutonium, but only three pounds of the plutonium was fissioned. The remaining ten pounds ascended some 40,000 feet in the fireball created by the blast, and then fell from the sky blanketing New Mexico. Plutonium, the most dangerous substance known to humankind, has a half-life of more than 24,000 years.

The plutonium contaminated our soil, water, crops, livestock, grazing land, wildlife and people. Our water sources included rain barrels, cisterns, holding ponds, lakes, streams, and ditches. In July people would have been working outside most of the day. Unknowing, innocent victims were growing their own food, hunting, and working with livestock. Children were playing outside all day. No one was officially warned then, afterwards, or since, of the danger.

Our suffering is obscured on many levels. A heavily footnoted article by Kathleen M. Tucker and Robert Alvarez titled “Trinity: The Most Significant Hazard of the Entire Manhattan Project” in the July 15, 2019 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, reports a horrendous spike in infant deaths after Trinity. The infant mortality rate for 1945 in New Mexico was 100.8 per 1,000 live births, the highest in the country! Prior to 1945, the infant mortality rate had been on a 10-year decline.

Since the federal government refuses to study the deaths of our babies, we are forced to do it ourselves. We have researched available New Mexico death certificates and church records for 1945 and found that hundreds of babies died in 1945. In one instance, in Santa Rita Catholic church in Carrizozo, forty miles from ground zero, we found a 350% percent spike in infant mortality.

What you can do

Help us shine a light on this hidden history. Support the documentary “First We Bombed New Mexico” by Lois Lipman which is nearing distribution and still needs funds to complete. Please also plan to attend our art exhibit “Trinity, Legacies of Nuclear Testing” in Las Cruces, New Mexico July 15 to September 23, 2023. Stand with us in solidarity as we hold our annual Candlelight Vigil on the evening of July 15, 2023. If you cannot be with us in-person please place a luminaria at your home. As the government ignores us, we fear the upcoming movie, Oppenheimer, will ignore us as well. Through the film’s Facebook page, encourage the producers to add a clip of our history after their credit roll. And please encourage everyone to visit our web site at www.trinitydownwinders.com to keep track of our progress, and to make a donation.

July 31, 2023 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Drive for Illegal Uranium Mining in New Mexico; Cleanup Obligations Unfulfilled

By Leona Morgan

Due to the push for climate solutions and the geopolitics currently at work in Ukraine, there is increased interest in producing uranium for both energy and weapons, threatening those living near uranium sites. Regardless of its end use, new or increased uranium mining results in the same death and destruction for frontline communities, with no guarantee of proper cleanup or compensation.

In 2014, the Eastern Navajo Diné Against Uranium Mining with many others successfully prevented new uranium extraction in northwestern New Mexico, a few miles south of the 1979 Churchrock Uranium Spill site.

A warning sign is seen next to the entry to the Northeast Church Rock uranium mine in Pinedale, New Mexico, U.S. July 19, 2018. Picture taken July 19, 2018. REUTERS/Pamela J. Peters.

That project was first licensed approximately 30 years ago, and stopped by decades of community resistance that created layers of Navajo Nation policy: the 2005 Diné Natural Resources Protection Act which prohibits new uranium mining, and the 2012 Radioactive Materials Transportation Act limiting transport of new radioactive products. There is also a 2012 legally binding agreement between the Navajo Nation and the previous company which requires cleanup of existing contamination on other lands before starting new mining activities.

After the mining project was stopped, Laramide Resources Ltd. acquired the land and necessary U.S. federal and state permits to do in situ leach mining near Churchrock, and uranium processing in Crownpoint, New Mexico at its central processing facility.

In late 2022, Diné community members reported that Laramide Resources was illegally drilling for uranium in the Churchrock area. The site was active with equipment and workers, but has since been vacated. Laramide’s drilling samples were transported 40 miles to Crownpoint, for testing in preparation of mining. All these activities now violate Navajo Nation law.

Nearby, separate yet interconnected, the Red Water Pond Road Community Association (RWPR) and others continue to challenge General Electric’s “cleanup” plan, which is to move uranium mine wastes on top of the unlined 1979 Churchrock Uranium Spill site waste, both in close proximity to Diné residents (See Summer 2021 Nukewatch Quarterly for more info). The “cleanup” of more highly radioactive wastes would be to move them to the White Mesa uranium mill in southeast Utah. RWPR demands that uranium wastes be removed from the community completely and not in a way that could possibly set up conditions for a second Churchrock Spill. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued the Final Environmental Impact Statement in January greenlighting the cleanup plan.

Every year, the RWPR hosts a gathering to reflect on the 1979 Churchrock Uranium Spill and ongoing work to protect their community. This year, RWPR invites the public to the Annual Uranium Legacy Remembrance and Action Day on July 15, 2023 starting with a prayer walk at 7 a.m., 12 miles north of Red Rock State Park on State Road 566 near Churchrock, New Mexico.

— NM Political Report, May 1; Counter Punch, April 28; Laramide Resources, March 24; Federal Register, Jan. 13, 2023

— Leona Morgan (she/her) is a Diné activist based in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

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