From: | CPEO Moderator <cpeo@cpeo.org> |
Date: | Wed, 1 Mar 2000 14:04:00 -0800 (PST) |
Reply: | cpeo-military |
Subject: | [CPEO-MEF] Philippine Daily Inquirer Report on Greenpeace Action |
[This was posted to the list by Arc Ecology, arc@igc.org] Thank you CPEO for posting yesterday's notice, here is some additional information from Greenpeace and a news article on the action. Saul Bloom for the US Working Group for Philippine Bases Cleanup Dear All: You can now find a backgrounder, yesterdays release and photos on the Greenpeace Asia tour site. Backgrounder is here: http://www.greenpeace.org/~toxics/toxfreeasia/documents/clarksubic.html Update with pics, link etc is here: http://www.greenpeace.org/~toxics/toxfreeasia/updates/feb29.html Lisa Finaldi Greenpeace International Toxics Campaign 11 B Glenwood Avenue Raleigh, North Carolina, USA 27603 1 919 828 5202 phone 1 919 832 9100 fax email: lisa.finaldi@dialb.greenpeace.org ---------- >From the Philippine Daily Inquirer, March 1, 2000. HEADLINE ''Child toxic warrior'' buried; US solons coming By Tonette Orejas PDI Central Luzon Desk MABALACAT, Pampanga--US Senators Richard Lugar and Daniel Inouye will come to the Philippines to look into the toxic waste contamination in two former US-run military bases in Central Luzon. The visit of the American senators was confirmed by Sen. Sergio Osmeņa III shortly after he attended the wake of 6-year-old leukemia victim Crizel Jane Valencia at the Madapdap resettlement site here on Monday night. Crizel, the ''child toxic warrior'' who died on Friday, was buried yesterday in this town, said to be the 81st victim to have died from the toxic brew of chemicals that were found in their water supply. There should be no more Crizels, according to Osmeņa. ''I hope this will not happen anymore to anybody,'' he said. ''But there are more victims. I know it will inevitably happen again.'' Crizel was buried at the Stella Maris Memorial Park at the Madapdap resettlement site. Her parents Alex and Herundina, wailing in grief, were consoled by about 10 women whose children did not see the light of day because of spontaneous abortions or stillbirths. White and red balloons were attached to Crizel's hearse. Hundreds of children and adults at Madapdap resettlement site lined the streets as the funeral group passed by. On the day Crizel was buried, environmental activists removed from residential areas in Angeles City and in Mabalacat two 400-kilovolt transformers that contained ''extremely toxic industrial chemicals.'' The People's Task Force for Bases Cleanup and government doctors had traced Crizel's leukemia to the mercury and nitrate that seeped into the wells of the Clark Air Base Command (Cabcom) evacuation center, where residents got their drinking water. Crizel and her family lived in the 12-hectare evacuation center for five years, together with about 20,000 other families, after they were displaced by the lahar flows from Mt. Pinatubo's eruptions. Osmeņa said he has been lobbying with the US Senate for a cleanup of the former Clark Air Base in this province and the former Subic Naval Base in Zambales. Osmeņa is also one of the many Inquirer readers who helped pay for Crizel's hospitalization and medical treatment. Crizel's case was among those Osmeņa cited to Lugar and Inouye as evidence of the military toxic wastes and the need for a comprehensive cleanup of the former bases. Osmeņa said he began to lobby in October 1999 by making a side trip from an international toxic waste summit in Washington D.C. to apprise the two senators and several congressmen on the toxic waste problem. Steady refusal ''I told them their government has steadfastly refused to own up to any legal or moral responsibility for the toxic and hazardous wastes they have left behind,'' Osmeņa recalled telling the two senators. He said Lugar and Inouye would call him this week to inform him of the schedule of their visit. Lugar headed the US observers' team that came to Manila during the 1986 snap elections. He was the former chair of the US Senate committee on foreign relations. Inouye has a big Filipino-American constituency in Hawaii. He was Hawaii's first congressman and the first American of Japanese descent to serve in Congress. Inouye lost his right arm in Italy during World War II. Osmeņa said the US state and defense departments have consistently declared that the US government has no legal responsibility for the toxic waste problem. ''Our people are dying and the US government says it has no legal responsibility,'' Osmeņa said. ''But what about moral responsibility?'' More than 40 sites Clark was extensively used by the 13th US Air Force and Subic was used by the US Seventh Fleet for nearly a century until 1991 when the Philippine Senate rejected the extension of the bases treaty. The US General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of the US Congress, had confirmed ''serious contamination'' in the former bases right after the pullout of the Americans, according to documents obtained by the bases cleanup task force. Two foreign-funded studies completed in 1998 had found more than 40 sites in Clark and Subic to be in various states of contamination, said the task force. Osmeņa said President Estrada had assured him that he was ''sympathetic'' about the issue. The senator, however, assailed the Estrada administration for ''not doing anything'' on behalf of hundreds of residents who have turned ill or died because of the toxic substances. Dying artist Even when she was already very sick, Crizel had created cheerful crayon drawings, some of which were used in greeting cards that were then sold to raise funds for the medical treatment of victims of toxic waste, including herself. She fought leukemia for a year, undergoing chemotherapy and blood transfusions paid for by known and unknown benefactors, including Inquirer readers who bought her greeting cards or donated money. She died on Friday while touring, together with 50 other victims, the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior at Pier 15 in Manila. More people are stepping forward to claim that their ailments are the results of long years of exposure to toxic substances at Cabcom, said Myrla Baldonado of the task force. Deadly transformers Also yesterday, local and foreign environmental activists from Greenpeace removed the two 400-kilovolt transformers from residential areas in Angeles City and Mabalacat for safe disposal. The transformers, measuring two meters in height, had been stolen from the power plant of Clark. A Greenpeace statement said analysis of soil samples from the area in Angeles City, where one transformer was found, contained polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs ''up to 18 times higher than the level considered safe for residential areas, and up to three times the level considered hazardous waste.'' It said PCBs are industrial chemicals used mostly in electrical equipment. They are said to induce cancer and increase susceptibility to diseases. PCBs are harmful to the environment and classified by the UN Environment Program as a persistent global pollutant. The junkyard workers had removed the transformer's metal casing and put its oil into a plastic container that was left leaking in one corner of the junkyard. Von Hernandez, Greenpeace toxics campaigner in the Philippines, said more transformers could have been taken out of Clark. Many more leaking transformers have been seen abandoned in grassy lots in Mabalacat. --With a report from Jun Malig, PDI Central Luzon Desk You can find archived listserve messages on the CPEO website at http://www.cpeo.org/lists/index.html. If this email has been forwarded to you and you'd like to subscribe, please send a message to: cpeo-military-subscribe@igc.topica.com _____________________________________________________________ Want to find the best email lists? Check out the Topica 20! http://www.topica.com/topica20 | |
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