[E-rundbrief] Info 134 - Alternative Nobelpreistraeger 2004
Matthias Reichl
mareichl at ping.at
Di Sep 21 19:08:42 CEST 2004
E-Rundbrief - Info 134 - Alternative Nobelpreistraeger 2004: Swami Agnivesh
and Asgar Ali Engineer (India), Memorial (Russia), Bianca Jagger
(Nicaragua), Raul Montenegro (Argentina)
Bad Ischl, 21.9.2004
Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
www.begegnungszentrum.at
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2004 Right Livelihood Awards Highlight Human, Social and Environmental
Rights Worldwide
PRESS RELEASE 20.9.2004
The 2004 Right Livelihood Honorary Award goes to two distinguished Indian
religious figures who have worked unceasingly for social justice and
communal harmony for more than two decades. The Right Livelihood Award Jury
honours Swami Agnivesh, a leading Hindu social reformer, and Asgar Ali
Engineer, a prominent Muslim scholar and activist, "for their strong
commitment and cooperation over many years to promote the values of
co-existence, tolerance and understanding in India and between the
countries of South Asia".
Three recipients share the Right Livelihood cash Award, totalling 2 million
Swedish kronor:
Memorialís work in Russia and surrounding countries to document past human
rights violations and protect civil liberties today is both unique and
exemplary. The Jury honours Memorial, its members and staff "for showing,
under very difficult conditions, and with great personal courage, that
history must be recorded and understood, and human rights respected
everywhere, if sustainable solutions to the legacy of the past are to be
achieved".
Bianca Jagger, (Nicaragua), has shown over many years how celebrity can be
put at the service of the exploited and disadvantaged. The Jury recognizes
"her long-standing commitment and dedicated campaigning over a wide range
of issues of human rights, social justice and environmental protection,
including the abolition of the death penalty, the prevention of child
abuse, the rights of indigenous peoples to the environment that supports
them and the prevention and healing of armed conflicts."
Raul Montenegro, (Argentina), shows how much one committed scientist and
activist can do to raise ecological awareness and prevent environmental
degradation. The Jury honours Montenegro "for his outstanding and
wide-ranging work with local communities and indigenous peoples to protect
the environment and conserve natural resources in Latin America and elsewhere.
Further details about the work of the recipients are given on separate sheets.
Founded in 1980 the Right Livelihood awards are presented annually in the
Swedish Parliament and are often referred to as "Alternative Nobel Prizes".
They were introduced "to honour and support those offering practical and
exemplary answers to the most urgent challenges facing us today".
Jakob von Uexkull, a Swedish-German philatelic expert, sold his valuable
postage stamps to provide the original endowment. Alfred Nobel wanted to
honour those whose work "brought the greatest benefit to humanity". Von
Uexkull felt that the Nobel prizes today ignore much work and knowledge
vital for our world and future.
A press conference with the recipients will be held in Stockholm on
Wednesday, December 8th. The award presentation ceremony in the Swedish
Parliament will be held on December 9th.
For further information and photos of the 2004 Award recipients, including
contact addresses:
Kerstin Bennett, Administrative Director Right Livelihood Award, Stockholm
Mobile phone at the press conference: +919848387009
The press conference to announce the recipients will be held in
Jubilee Hall, Hyderabad, India at 10.00 a.m. on September 20th, 2004.
A Video clipping of the press conference can be viewed by accessing our website
For more information:
Tel: +46(0) 8-702 03 40
Fax: +46(0) 8-702 03 38
E-mail: info at rightlivelihood.se
Website: www.rightlivelihood.org
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The recipients:
ASGHAR ALI ENGINEER (India)
Asghar Ali Engineer was born in 1940, and took a BSc. in civil engineering
from Vikram University. From 1980 he edited the journal The Islamic
Perspective, and during the 1980s he published a string of books on Islam
and communal violence in India, the latter based on his field
investigations into the communal riots in post-independence India. By 1987
he was well enough known to receive the Distinguished Service Award from
the USA International Student Assembly and the USA Indian Student Assembly.
In 1990 he received the Dalmia Award for communal harmony and in 1993 was
awarded an honorary D.Litt. by the University of Calcutta.
1992 saw the destruction of the Babir Mosque and provided the impetus for
the foundation by Engineer in 1995 of the Centre for Study of Society and
Secularism (CSSS), of which Engineer is still the Chairman and which has
been the organisational focus of his work since then. The objectives of
CSSS are to spread the spirit of communal harmony, to study problems in the
area and organise inter-faith dialogues. To this end CSSS undertakes
research, organises seminars, conducts training and mass awareness
programmes, publishes books and pamphlets and networks with other
organisations. Through CSSD and otherwise Engineer has given many lectures
and been involved in many workshops (some abroad, mainly in India, some for
the Indian police) promoting communal understanding and harmony. He has
published 47 books, many papers and articles, including those for scholarly
journals. He edits a journal, Indian Journal of Secularism, and a monthly
paper, Islam and Modern Age. Through the 1990s, Engineer received a number
of awards, including the National Communal Harmony Award in 1997, and the
USA Award from the Association for Communal Harmony in Asia in 2003.
Engineer is a Bahra Muslim, and an important component of his work has been
both to promote a better external understanding of Islam and to critique
some of its manifestations from the inside (for example, Rethinking Issues
in Islam in 1998). His progressive interpretation of the scriptures has
often brought him into headlong conflict with the orthodox clergy at a
great personal risk. Post-2001 some of Engineer's work has addressed the
issues of globalisation, Islam and terrorism, but most of his work has
remained focused on the communal situation in India and, to a lesser
extent, its relations with Pakistan.
Asghar Ali
Engineer Mobile
number: 9819781006
Centre for Study of Society and Secularism Phone:
+91(0)226149668, 56987135
9B, Himalaya Apts.,1st Floor Fax:
+91(0)2256987134
6th Road, TPS III, Opp. Dena Bank E-mail:
csss at vsnl.com
Santacruz (E), Mumbai-400055 Website:
www.csss-isla.com
India
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SWAMI AGNIVESH (India)
Swami Agnivesh was born Vepa Shyam Rao on 21st September 1939, the grandson
of the Diwan (Chief Minister) of a princely state called Shakti, now in
Chhattisgarh. He gained law and business management degrees, became a
lecturer in Calcutta and for a while also practised law. He comes from an
orthodox Hindu family, but in 1968 he became a full-time worker of the Arya
Samaj, a Hindu reformist movement, and two years later became a sanyasi,
renouncing worldly possessions and becoming, in the process, Swami
Agnivesh. On the same date that he became a "renouncer".
Agnivesh co-founded a political party, the Arya Sabha, to work for
political order, founded on Arya Samaj principles. The principles were
spelt out in a book published in 1974, Vaidik Samajvad (Vedic Socialism).
This rejects the lopsided materialism of both capitalism and communism in
favour of what the Arya Sabha constitution calls 'social spirituality."
When Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency in 1975,
cracking down on opposition parties, Agnivesh and some colleagues were
arrested. He was in jail for 14 months. After the 1977 elections which
swept Indira Gandhi from office, Agnivesh was elected to the Haryana state
legislative assembly, becoming education minister. He rapidly became
disillusioned, resigned and decided to devote all his energy and time to
social justice movements.
During this period he began to denounce bonded labour, a cause for which he
became well known. He founded the Bandhua Mukti Morcha (BMM, the Bonded
Labour Liberation Front) in 1981, and is still its Chairperson. Swami
Agnivesh puts the number of child labourers in India (despite
constitutional provisions) at 65 million. Some are in debt bondage or have
been pledged by parents in return for financial advances; some are lured by
procurers who promise bright prospects after training. BMM has secured the
release of more than 172,000 Indian workers, and has helped create a number
of trade unions, including the All India Brick Kiln Workers, the Stone
Quarry Workers and the Construction Workers. Working also at the
international level, Agnivesh has also thrice been elected as Chairperson
of the UN Trust Fund on Contemporary Forms of Slavery.
Agnivesh has had a high profile with a number of social issues apart from
child and bonded labour:
· In 1987 he led a 18 day long 'padhyatra' (march on foot) from Delhi to
Deorala in Rajasthan to protest against sati (the immolation of widows on
their husband's funeral pyres) following a particularly notorious incident.
The march was stopped, and Agnivesh briefly gaoled, but both received
widespread, sympathetic coverage. The Indian Parliament later enacted the
Sati Prevention Act. Back in Delhi Agnivesh launched a campaign against
female infanticide, which also resulted in legislation.
· In 1988/89 he led a movement to secure the entry of 'untouchables' into
Hindu temples which were discriminating against them. Again he was arrested
but the action had a substantial impact on public opinion.
· In 1989 he led a multi-religious march from Delhi to Meerat to protest
against and defuse communal violence that had claimed the lives of 45
Muslim youths. Dr. Asghar Ali Engineer was also a prominent participant in
the march.
· From 1989-95, he participated in a number of people's movements
(including Narmada Bachao Andolan) in respect of land, water, forests and
fisheries issues, and campaigned with women's movements against alcohol in
both Andhra Pradesh and Haryana, winning total prohibition (for a short
period) in both states.
· In 1999, concerned about escalating religious fundamentalism and
obscurantism, he helped to launch a multi-religious forum called Religions
for Social Justice, which led a group of 55 religious leaders to the place
where an Australian Christian missionary and his two sons had been burned
to death while they slept, by Hindu religious fanatics. The leaders in The
Times of India on the theme of religious tolerance and reconciliation,
written by Agnivesh, attest to the impact of this initiative. For many
years he has also written articles in leading newspapers jointly with a
Christian priest, Rev. Valson Thampu.
· In other recent newspaper articles Agnivesh has deplored the consumerism
andmaterialism that he perceives to be undermining Indian culture. The Arya
Samaj movement, with which he is still involved, launched a people's
movement in 1997 against the 'western cultural invasion' and the
'neo-colonialism' of the WTO and World Bank.
In 2001, Agnivesh led a protest march from Mumbai to Gujarat against
economic globalisation.
Swami Agnivesh was deeply disturbed by the massacre in Gujarat in 2002. He
once again organized a group of 72 eminent religious - social leaders who
spent five days in the violence affected areas of Gujarat and denounced the
Hindu fundamentalist organizations and sectors responsible.
High point of Communal harmony has been the fact of Swami Agnivesh and a
Christian priest Rev. Valson Thampu working together for years as brother
and comrades in the same mission and writing articles in leading newspapers
under their joint names.
Swami
Agnivesh Tel: +91
11 2336 6765
Bonded Labor Liberation Front Fax: +91 112 336 8355
7 Jantar Mantar
Rd website:
www.swamiagnivesh.com
New Delhi 110 001
Bharat
India
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MEMORIAL (Russia)
Memorial is the short name of the International Volunteer Public
Organisation Memorial Historical Educational, Human Rights and Charitable
Society. It was founded at the end of the 1980s as a result of a major
movement in October 1988, which took the form of Initiative Groups
appearing in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other cities. The union of regional
Memorial societies was the first non-politicial NGO not organised by the
state in Russia's recent history. Its first leader was Andrei Sakharov.
Today Memorial unites 87 organisations: in many regions of Russia, in
Ukraine, in Poland, Latvia and Germany. Its 18-member Board of Directors is
elected every 4 years at a conference of all Memorial member organisations.
As embodied in its Charter, Memorial's "primary missions" are:
- To promote mature civil society and democracy based on the rule
of law and thus to prevent a return to totalitarianism;
- To assist formation of public consciousness based on the values
of democracy and law, to get rid of totalitarian patterns, and to establish
firmly human rights in practical politics and in public life;
- To promote the revelation of the truth about the historical
past and perpetuate the memory of the victims of political repression
exercised by totalitarian regimes.
Memorial work falls into three main areas:
1. Creating a historical memory about the crimes committed by the Soviet
regime through research and publications.
Memorial has built an enormous network of archives specialized in the field
of historical research into totalitarian repression that are open to the
public. This work is co-ordinated by the Moscow-based
'Scientific-Informational and Enlightenment Center, Memorial', which has
70,000 documents and 23,000 books, and paintings and graphic works by GULAG
prisoners. Many of the Memorial regional branches also have archives and
museums. Near the city of Perm in the North West Urals Memorial has built
the only existing museum of a Soviet concentration camp on the site of the
last camp for political prisoners. Memorial's archive includes 400,000
letters from 'Ostarbeiter' (people taken as slave labour to Germany during
the Second World War), and has published CDs with brief details of
political prisoners - the most recent, 2CDs entitled Victims of Political
Terror, was published in 2004 and also released at the 2004 Frankfurt Book
Fair. They contain records and short histories of about 1.3 million people
of 120 ethnic origins born in all areas of the USSR, who were killed by the
Soviet regime. Memorial estimates that this accounts for only about 10% of
the total number. In Russia Memorial organised an essay competition (this
is the fifth year) about "the life experience of man and family against the
background of 20th century history". 2,400 entries were received, about the
same as in previous years.
On the basis of its archives Memorial has also published the so-called
Stalin Lists, with the names of 35,000 people executed on the personal
order of Stalin. Memorial also campaigns for the victims of political
repression to receive compensation from the state.
2. Social work for the victims of the Soviet regime and their relatives.
Examples of Memorial's work in this area include the organisation of
meetings, care for the elderly, and medical help for victims; provision of
care for people who have been raised in KGB children's homes, because their
fathers had been shot as alleged traitors and their
mothers detained; and helping victims to enforce their rights under the act
on the rehabilitation of the politically prosecuted.
This act is presently under review, and the 'moral responsibility of the
Russian state' for the Soviet crimes, which Memorial had helped to include
in the law when it was enacted in 1993, will probably be deleted. They are
now trying to prevent this. There is also currently a proposal that the
special benefits granted to the politically prosecuted (like free use of
public transport etc.) should be replaced by direct payments. Memorial has
calculated that these would be worth less than the benefits and is
campaigning to maintain the benefits.
3. Human rights work in present-day Russia.
Memorial monitors the situation in so-called 'hot spots' of actual or
potential conflict and human rights abuse - Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia,
Tajikistan, Turkmenia, Moldavia, Crimea (Ukraine) and, in Russia, North
Ossetia, Krasnodar region, and Ingushetia. Since 1994 Memorial's main focus
for this work has been Chechnya. Memorial also generally monitors
'contemporary political repression' in the former territories of USSR,
analyses and seeks judicial assistance for displaced people in Russia and
works for equal rights for national minorities in several regions in
Russia. Specific examples of Memorial's work in this area include giving
legal assistance and lobbying support on behalf of refugees from Chechnya
and from 'older' conflict regions like Armenia and Azerbaijan or
Afghanistan (from the time after the Russian invasion); and publishing
reports of, and campaigning against human rights violations in Russia,
especially in Chechnya. They have five offices in and around Chechnya, with
four offices in Grosny, and publish a monthly web documentation about the
disappeared and about 'cleansings' that have taken place.
There are three different units of about the same size in Memorial for
these three different fields. Some staff members are very much specialised
in one field, e.g. historians working with the documentary work. However,
as much of the work is project based, there is some internal fluctuation of
staff, when a project in one field is running
out and another one starting in another field.
The rationale that links these three different work areas of Memorial is
that the documentation of past violations of human rights is connected with
the present human rights situation, because historical knowledge is needed
to sensitise people for present and future abuses, and to understand
present conflicts better. They have all along kept the three fields
together in one organization rather than separating them, because they view
the connection of the three aspects as their specific strength. In the
public perception, Memorial is mainly known for their present-day human
rights work.
Memorial's work can be dangerous. Its office in Petersburg was attacked in
2003. In 2004, the Memorial member and expert on minority rights Prof.
Girenko was shot dead in his flat in Petersburg, probably by a right wing
group. He had given testimony in cases against right wing extremists. There
have also been repeated anonymous threats on the life of Wladimir
Schnittke, head of Memorial Petersburg.
In April 2002, Memorial received the Lew-Kopelew-Award for peace and human
rights in Cologne, and in June 2003 Svetlana Gannushkina, who is head of
the legal network at Memorial and works with legal advice to refugees and
displaced persons, received a human rights prize from the German Amnesty
section. In 2004 Memorial's Human Rights Centre received the UNHCR's Nansen
Refugee Award for helping 'dozens of thousands of refugees and internally
displaced persons'. In June 2004 Memorial received the National Endowment
for Democracy Award in Washington DC.
Memorial
Human Rights and Humanitarian Society
Elena Zhemkova, Executive Director (speaks Russian)
Irina Sherbakova, Head of Educational Youth Programme (speaks Russian, German)
127051 Moscow
Maly Karetny per. 12
Russian Fed
Phone +7 095 209 7883
Fax +7 095 973 2094
Website: www.memo.ru
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BIANCA JAGGER (Nicaragua)
Bianca Jagger was born in 1950 in Nicaragua, where she experienced the
harsh US-backed military rule of the Somoza family, which ruled Nicaragua
for almost half a Century until 1979. At the age of 16 she won a
scholarship to study at the Paris Institute of Political Studies. She was
married to Mick Jagger from 1971-79.
During her childhood and adolescence she witnessed first hand the terror of
Somoza's National Guard, and when she returned to the capital Managua as a
young woman in 1972 to search for her parents after the disastrous
earthquake that left 10,000 dead - she witnessed the Somoza regime
profiting from the tragedy of the victims, ruthlessly pocketing millions of
dollars Nicaraguans were meant to receive from humanitarian aid. Ms
Jagger's early experiences had a profound effect on her life and inspired
her to campaign for human rights, social and economic justice throughout
the world. Over the years she has received international attention as both
a passionate and effective campaigner.
In 1981, she was part of a US congressional fact-finding mission visiting
a UN refugee camp in Honduras, when an armed death squad from El Salvador
crossed the border, entered the camp and abducted 40 refugees, and
proceeded to march them towards El Salvador. Bianca Jagger and fellow
members of the delegation gave chase along a dry river bank, armed only
with cameras. The abductors pointed their guns at them, but were told "You
would have to kill us all or we will denounce your crime to the
world." There was a long silence and without explanation, the death squads
released their captives and disappeared.
In the 1990s Ms Jagger evacuated 22 children from the worst war zones in
Bosnia.
Mohamed Ribic, a boy 8 years old, lived with her in New York for a year
after a successful heart operation, before returning to his parents. In
1993, Ms. Jagger went to the former Yugoslavia to document the mass rape of
Bosnian women by Serbian forces as part of a campaign of ethnic cleansing.
For many years she campaigned to stop the genocide in Bosnia and make the
perpetrators accountable before the International Criminal Tribunal for the
former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Her reports on the war crimes against ethnic
Albanians in Kosovo contributed to the international community
decision, to intervene and stop the genocide. She has been on many
fact-finding missions which have taken her to Nicaragua, Guatemala,
Honduras, El Salvador, to remote rainforests in Brazil and Ecuador, to
Bosnia, Kosovo, Zambia, Afghanistan, Iraq, India and Pakistan.
In the 1990s she also spoke out on behalf of indigenous Populations rights
in Latin America, and to save the tropical rainforests where they live,
campaigning on behalf of the Miskito Indians in Nicaragua against the
government's granting of a logging concession to a Taiwanese company which
would have endangered their habitat on the Atlantic Coast; helping
demarcate the ancestral lands of the Yanomami people in Brazil against an
invasion of gold miners; and working with other rainforest groups against
the threatened clearance of about 40 per cent of the Amazon rainforests for
soybean plantations for international export.
In 1996, she was given the Abolitionist of the Year Award by the National
Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty in the USA for her efforts on behalf
of Guinevere Garcia, a death row prisoner in Illinois, whose sentence was
commuted, after Jagger's campaign. In November of that same year, Ms Jagger
received a Champion of Justice Award as a "steadfast and eloquent advocate
for the elimination of the death penalty in America" . Her articles,
lectures and press conferences on the subject continue to challenge a penal
system that is unfair, arbitrary and capricious, and jurisprudence fraught
with racial discrimination and judicial bias. In 2004 she was appointed a
Goodwill Ambassador for the Fight Against the Death Penalty by the Council
of Europe. Jagger has also been a goodwill ambassador for the Albert
Schweizer Institute and has worked for Amnesty International on their,
"Stop Violence Against Women, "Torture"" and Death Penalty Campaigns". She
spoke at the anti war rallies in London in spring 2003.
In 2004 Jagger added her name to the international campaign seeking
compensation from ChevronTexaco for gross environmental damage in the
Ecuadorian Amazon. The US-based oil company is accused of creating a
'Rainforest Chernobyl', turning the Ecuadorian Amazon into an environmental
quagmire. During two decades of operations in Ecuador (1971-1992) Texaco
(now ChevronTexaco) dumped more than 50 per cent more oil into the
rainforest environment than that spilled during the Exxon Valdez disaster.
The waste has spread over many years to contaminate groundwater, rivers and
streams on which 30,000 people - including five indigenous groups depend
for water.
Jagger was part of a fact-finding mission to the area in October 2003 and
2004. She confronted ChevronTexaco's CEO at the company's annual
shareholders' meeting in April. "Instead of a single, dramatic spill that
captured headlines around the world, what happened in Ecuador was far
more... insidious," she said. "Over the course of 20 years, Texaco slowly
poisoned the residents of the Oriente Region by dumping toxic waste and
crude oil into the water systems. None of my past experiences as a human
rights' campaigner prepared me for the environmental devastation I
witnessed in the provinces of Orellana y Sucumbios. Nor was I prepared for
the sad stories of human suffering and the heightened incidents of cancer
and spontaneous abortions."
She argued that the oil company neglected to use the technology available
at the time to protect the environment. "The reason why they did not do it
is they believe life in the third world is worth nothing," she
said. "That's why this case is so important. We need to make them
accountable." In an earlier speech in Ecuador itself, she said: "These
visits lead me to conclude that until ChevronTexaco addresses the
environmental damage it has caused in Ecuador, it should be treated as an
outlaw company that does not deserve the right to do further business or
make further investments in any country anywhere in the world." Jagger also
played a prominent role with Greenpeace in the launch of their "Boycott
Esso campaign".
On June 9, 2004 Bianca Jagger received the World Achievement Award from
President Gorbachev for "Her Worldwide Commitment to Human Rights, Social
and Economic Justice and Environmental Causes".
In March 2004 Jagger made a keynote speech at the launch of Amnesty
International's Stop Violence Against Women campaign. She plans to make
campaigning against sexual exploitation of children a central plank of her
future work.
Bianca Jagger, is a member of the Executive Director's Leadership Council
for Amnesty International USA, member of the Advisory Committee of Human
Rights Watch -America. Ms. Jagger also serves on the Advisory Board of the
Coalition for International Justice. She is a member of the Twentieth
Century Task Force to Apprehend War Criminals; a Board member of People for
the American Way and the Creative Coalition
Ms Jagger has written articles for the op-ed page of the New York Times,
the Washington Post, The Miami Herald, the Observer (UK), The Independent
on Sunday (UK) The Mail on Sunday (UK), The Guardian (UK), The Sunday
Express (UK), The New Statesman (UK), Liberation (FR), Le Journal du
Dimanche (FR), Le Juriste International (FR), Panorama (IT) and the
European (UK), The Dallas Morning news, the Columbus Dispatcher, to name a
few.
Bianca Jagger
9E Warwick Square
London SW1 2AA
UK
Tel: +44 207 931 9331, +1 212 826 3175
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RAUL MONTENEGRO (Argentina)
Raul Montenegro was born in 1949. Since 1985 he has been Professor of
Evolutionary Biology at the National University of Cordoba. In 1982 he was
the principal founder of FUNAM (Environment Defense Foundation), and has
been its President since 1995.
Since 1980 Montenegro has been involved, normally in an initiating role, in
an astonishing range and number of environmental activities, which include:
· Anti-nuclear: this has been probably Montenegro's single largest field of
activities, which have included: a six-year successful campaign to close
Los Gigantes uranium mine; campaigns against plans for nuclear waste dumps,
nuclear waste shipments and nuclear releases; a successful campaign to stop
the construction of a reprocessing/MOX plant and a Cobalt 60 irradiation
plant; a successful campaign to stop nuclear prospecting in the
Traslasierra Valley; promotion, with substantial take-up, of the concept of
municipal nuclear-free zones; campaigns against the privatisation of
Argentina's two nuclear plants (third under construction), against the
construction of a fourth plant, and against the import of Canadian CANDU
reactors, into both Argentina and Guatemala. All these campaigns have been
successful so far. Montenegro was also chairman of the campaign against
Argentina's nuclear plan, with many demonstrations, meetings and articles,
and exposure of nuclear leaks and accidents and illegal nuclear testing.
· National parks: Montenegro has been instrumental in the establishment of
six national parks or nature reserves. He has prevented car rallies through
one, and received death threats for campaigning against the building of a
golf course in another.
· Disposal of toxic waste: Montenegro has fought many successful campaigns
against plans to build toxic waste incinerators, exposed, and forced the
clean-up of, a number of toxic waste dumps.
· Pollution by chemicals and high-voltage power lines: Montenegro has
exposed polluting releases by factories and successfully fought to have
high-voltage lines located away from population settlements.
· Forests, wildlife and biodiversity: he has stopped the deforestation of
at least 500,000 hectares, campaigned to prevent forest fires, run
campaigns to protect endangered ecosystems, and acted to tighten up the
protection, and national trade rules affecting the export, of several
endangered species.
· Water environment: he has run several campaigns against dams and for the
provision of clean water and for ecologically sensitive water management.
In June 2000, action by FUNAM led to cancellation of the Canal Federal
project to move water from two of the poorest provinces to another which
would benefit properties of the rich. FUNAM challenged the government on
legal and environmental grounds and eventually Montenegro was informed that
the project had been dropped.
· Environmental legislation: for 4 years Montenegro was Cordoba's
Under-Secretary of the Environment, 'an independent and non-political
member of the Cabinet, promulgating many environmental laws and
initiatives, including Argentina's first requirement for Environmental
Impact Assessment for both private and public projects. He formed an
Environment Council and launched the Environment Defence Brigade of
conservation volunteers. Out of office he contributed to the drafting of a
number of environmental laws and has launched more than 40 prosecutions for
environmental destruction in the courts.
· Environmental education: for five years Montenegro wrote a column on
ecology in one of the main weekend newspapers. He was Chairman of FUNAM's
Children's Campaign for Peace and Life, which worked with 350,000 children
in Argentina, and coordinated the Voice of the Children International
Campaign at the time of the Earth Summit, which involved more than 600,000
children in 42 countries. For 20 years he has been a familiar figure on
Argentine TV and radio. He was Project Director of FUNAM's 'Only One
Environment' project, which produced 36 videos on ecological subjects for
distribution throughout Argentina and neighboring countries.
· International representation: Montenegro has been a member of the
Executive Committee of the Environment Liaison Center International in
Nairobi (ELCI, 1988-91), a Vice-President of Greenpeace (1987-89). He is
now Director of the international Biomass Users Network and FUNAM's main
representative of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).
In addition to all this Montenegro has had a full academic life, publishing
in journals and keeping abreast of (and sometimes contributing to) advances
in ecological science, which he then tries to implement.
In 2003 Montenegro joined indigenous groups in their struggle against
logging and mining companies. In the case of the Mby'a Guarain, the threat
is that logging will reduce the land available to them from 4,000 ha to 300
ha. Living with the Mby'a Montenegro helped them map their land and
biodiversity needs. Having documented their customary use of the land, he
is now helping them to fight for their rights in the courts. His approach
is spreading to other tribes. With regard to mining, Montenegro is helping
to convene an historic and unprecedented meeting of 140 indigenous leaders
to fight for their land rights.
Other work in the last two years has been with a number of citizens' groups
to fight off environmental menaces. In one case Montenegro's scientific
analysis of the drinking water, which seemed inexplicably to be making
residents ill, revealed a toxic build up of arsenic and heavy metals in
domestic water tanks, many of which had not been replaced or cleaned for
10-30 years. This simple discovery, with a new government campaign to
ensure that all household water tanks are drained and cleaned, could save
thousands of people from debilitating illness and death. More recently he
contributed to stop the provision of polluted water in a 50,000 people
area, and presented a judicial claim against governmental responsible and
private companies. Two top governmental leaders resigned and 13
neighbourhoods are currently provided with clean water.
In all his activities Montenegro combines an expert use of science with
community-based campaigning, and an ability to generate enormous media
coverage.
Montenegro received University of Buenos Aires' Prize to Scientific
Research when he was a student (1971) and the national 'Argentina has
examples' prize in 1996. FUNAM received a Global 500 Award from the United
Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in 1987, and Montenegro received the
same Award personally in 1989. In 1998 Montenegro was in Salzburg as one of
four recipients to be accorded the Nuclear-Free Future Award.
Raul Montenegro, President
FUNAM (Fundacion para la defensa del ambiente)
Casilla de Correo 83, Correo Central
5000 Cordoba
Argentina
Tel +54 351 455 7710, +54 351 4690282 (FUNAM)
Fax +54351 452 02 60
Website: www.funam.org.ar
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M. Reichl, Begegnungszentrum fuer aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
Center for Encounter and active Non-Violence
Wolfgangerstr.26, A-4820 Bad Ischl, Austria, fon/fax: +43 6132 24590
http://www.begegnungszentrum.at
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