Australia Must Not Sell Uranium To India
By Sunny Amanda
14 October, 2012
Countercurrents.org
Dear journalist and media colleagues,
I am writing to you from Australia where we are concerned that our Prime Minister Julia Gillard is breaking with a 40 year precedent and selling uranium to India, a nuclear weapon state who has neither signed the Nuclear Non Proliferation treaty or the Comprehensive Test Ban treaty.
We are concerned that selling uranium to India will fuel military and nuclear tensions in SE Asia. We are concerned that India, like Australia is being obliged to sign up to the American military alliance to isolate China, also a nuclear state, to push China further into a corner from where it might be tempted to lash out over a border dispute. Continuing dialogue should be the order of the day, not isolationism and an expanding nuclear programme on India's part.
Continuing instability in the region could quickly escalate to nuclear war. We note ongoing border tensions between India and China since the border war of the 1960's. We are concerned that Pakistan, a nuclear weapons state and India have periodic clashes which can only worsen with population growth and shrinking natural resources due to ongoing climate change crises.
As ordinary Australian citizens who feel disenfranchised like the people of Kudankalum, we ask: Why is Australia throwing gasoline onto the already lit nuclear fires of the world by providing uranium to India's expanding nuclear power programme thus freeing India to use its own uranium for the production of more nuclear weapons? Can we trust the non signatory state of India to not use Australian uranium for weapons manufacture when we see how the Central government treats its own people?
We feel shame that our Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, particularly being a Labour party Prime Minister has forsaken the old but solid values of the Australian Labor party which stood for and represented the cause for world peace, for speaking out on behalf of the people, not multi national corporations. Julia Gillard is selling us out. Both the Australian people and Mother Earth. That is just not cricket!
We are particularly concerned that the ordinary people of India are not being listened to by their Central Government in Delhi. We note with rising concern the continuing repression of peaceful disobedience by the villagers surrounding Kudankalum NPP. We follow what's happening there with disbelief given the protesters and their leaders are committed to the principles on non violence as espoused by your very own charismatic leader himself, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi which lead to the birth of the Indian nation.
We read in very limited news reports in Australia about the shooting of two native fishermen from the Kudankalum area by police. We read with concern that religious tolerance is no longer a respected right of Indian people with the contemptuous urinating on the statue of the Virgin Mary by police in the St Lourdes church after police had lathi charged the peaceful protestors which included women and children. We read of the isolation of the village of Idinthakakarai from water, electricity and food supplies noting that this is a village of peaceful fisher folk with a large population of children.
How can a government that calls itself 'democratic' treat its own people like this? Our Prime Minister Gillard claims Australia can sell uranium to India even though it is not a signatory to the Non Proliferation treaty because India is a modern democracy which respects the rights of its people. This seems contradicted by the evidence on the ground.
We feel the real concerns of the people of the Kudankalum region that the two nearing completion power plants could turn into another Fukushima. As ordinary Australians who have no say in what our Government does, we feel real shame to discover all five reactors at Fukushima were fuelled by Australian uranium - confirmed in the Australian Parliament.
We note that the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 hit that very southern most coast of India where the power plants are built at sea level. We note that an independent assessment of the safety factors operating for the Kudankalum power plant assess that in the event of a nuclear core meltdown or interruption to the regular grid electricity supply to cool the reactors, there is only two days supply of fresh water on site to cool the nuclear cores. Scientific consensus says there should be a minimum of 10 days water supply on standby guaranteed at ALL times. It was the lack of backup generators and cooling water on hand that lead to the nuclear meltdown in technologically sophisticated Japan at the Fukushima reactors.
Our movement has made this clip to highlight the issues when PM Singh and PM Gillard meet to sign this deal Oct 16th. We believe it is an Unholy Alliance which agitates against world peace and the future of this planet.
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/490/355/838/no-sales-of-australian-uranium-to-india
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kz2_KE0w7eQ&feature=youtu.be
Yours sincerely,
Sunny Amanda is Australian Spokeswoman for A Nuclear Free Planet.
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