Bruce Gagnon / GNAWNPS & Roots Action – 2012-08-23 13:44:30
http://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=6384
Save Jeju Island
Bruce K. Gagnon / Roots Action and Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space
Demand that Samsung halt construction and the WCC oppose the base.
(AUGUST 21, 2012) — National and international support for Jeju Island is growing dramatically. Today, thanks to David Swanson, a team of groups is putting out an email appeal that will reach tens of thousands of people around the world. We are asking folks to click here and send a message to Samsung Corporation (the lead contractor building the Navy base in Gangjeong village) and the World Conservation Congress (WCC).
The WCC will be held next week on Jeju Island and will bring 7,000 environmental activists to that event. Korean environmental and peace groups have implored the WCC to take a strong stand against the destruction to nature that the Navy base will bring. The WCC, in part funded by Samsung and other corporate giants, officially has taken a dive on the issue.
The groups sponsoring this email event today are: Save Jeju Island; Gangjeong village, Jeju Island, South Korea; Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space; Veterans For Peace; Voices for Creative Nonviolence; Fellowship of Reconciliation; and Environmentalists Against War.
In recent months an international team of organizers have been working hard to secure the ability to reach as many of those 7,000 WCC delegates as possible. The process has been bearing fruit. One group of bio-ethicists has volunteered to draft a powerful resolution and to bring it to the entire WCC body calling for an end to the Navy base.
It will be fascinating to see how Samsung and the South Korean right-wing government try to kill this expression of international will.
The villagers will be working hard during the WCC (Sept 6-15) to pass literature to the environmental delegates and to hire buses to take many of those delegates to see the desecration of the village and nature for themselves.
The peace community globally is increasingly on the ball when it comes to the Jeju issue. But the environmental community has been slow to engage. This current international effort to bring the Jeju issue to WCC activists could bear positive results. Please click here to help save Jeju Island.
Let’s Save Jeju Island
Roots Action.org
A coordinated international campaign is trying to save South Korea’s beautiful Jeju Island from destruction. The World Conservation Congress 2012 is being held on Jeju Island — while just four miles away, in the island’s Gangjeong Village, construction is beginning on a massive new naval base to be used by the US.
The extraordinary biological diversity, unique volcanic topography, and the culture of Jeju Island attract many tourists. The Sea of Gangjeong is a national cultural treasure adjacent to a UNESCO biosphere reserve. Only 114 Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins remain in Korea, and they live here — one of many species threatened by base construction. The damage will be devastating.
But Samsung, the primary contractor for base construction, is sponsoring the World Conservation Congress (WCC), which is pretending all is well.
94% of the residents of Jeju Island have voted against construction of the base.
If the base is constructed, it will host nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers, as well as Aegis missile-carrying warships. U.S. taxpayers will pay the cost of the Obama administration “pivot” into the Asia-Pacific, while Jeju Islanders pay with a damaged home. Ultimately, the cost to the earth and the risk of war will belong to all of us.
Demand that Samsung halt construction and the WCC oppose the base.
THE LETTER
To: Congress Secretariat IUCN
World Conservation Congress
Rue Mauverney 28, 1196 Gland, ot, CH
Halt Construction of Jeju Naval Base
Construction of the naval base on Jeju Island will be environmentally devastating. Please do the right thing, oppose the base, and immediately cease all construction activity.
