Nuclear-Free Future Awards
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION, 7 Sep 2015
The NFFA recipients of 2015 come from Canada, Austria, Switzerland, the Marshal Islands and the United States.
- The NFF Awards will be presented on October 28, 2015 in Washington, DC.
- Patronage: Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts.
- Local partners: Beyond Nuclear and Green Cross International (founded by Mikhail Gorbachew).
Category RESISTANCE:
Megan Rice, Michael Walli and Gregory Boertje-Obed, USA
On July 2012, Sister Megan, 82, together with Michael R. Walli, 63, und Gregory I. Boertje-Obed, 57, entered the “Y-12 National Security Complex” in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, one of the most closely guarded places where the US stores the highly enriched uranium needed for nuclear bombs. The three of them – all members of the ”Transform Now Plowshares” – were sentenced on February 18, 2014: 35 months in jail for Rice, 62 each for Walli and Boerje-Obed.
Category EDUCATION:
Cornelia Hesse-Honegger, Switzerland
You can find the insect drawings of the Swiss artist and scientific illustrator Cornelia Hesse-Honegger in museums and galleries all over the world. She did field studies near the German nuclear power plants Krümmel and the French reprocessing facility in La Hague, and she made drawings near Three Miles Island and the nuclear testing sites in Nevada. Everywhere she encountered heteroptera bugs and drosophila flies with distinct mutations.
Category SOLUTIONS:
Senator De Brum, today Foreign Secretary of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, spent the better part of his professional life fighting for clean-up and damages for radiation victims in the Marshall Islands, focusing on the cause as much as on the effects. For many years, banning all nuclear weapons and fighting global warming have been the focus of de Brum’s activity. He likes to use local earth and water colors when illustrating the effects of global warming on vast coastal an island regions. The islanders, who in the past had to abandon irradiated parts of their homelands, will soon have to leave low-lying parts threatened by the rising sea-level. The Marshall Islands are facing extinction. The population is expelled in two stages: first, they had to escape death by radiation, now they’ll have to escape death by drowning.
Category SPECIAL RECOGNITION:
Cree Youth of Mistissini, Canada (Quebec)
Shawn Iserhoff, Justice Debassige, Desmond Michel, Kayleigh Spencer have the blood knowledge of Cree hunters. They come from the First Nation community of Mistissini in Northern Quebec. In 2012 they recognized the encroaching danger when Strateco Resources Inc. of Canada began test-drilling the bush between Chibougamou and Mistissini for uranium. Strateco seemed especially interested in conducting probes in the Otish Mountains – land sacred to the Cree. Shawn, Justice, Desmond, and Kayleigh soon became a group of hunters, driven by the task of defending Eeyou Istchee. When the Quebec government did not pay any attention to them nor did the uranium company, they took fate into their own hands. Their protests gained support throughout the community and the Cree Nation, and at the Grand Council of the Crees’ General Assembly in 2012, the delegates unanimously supported the opposition and adopted a resolution banning uranium exploration, mining and waste emplacement in Eeyou Istchee. Strateco ended its explorations, left Cree lands, and sued the provincial government for damages.
Category SPECIAL RECOGNITION:
Ambassador Kmentt was born in Austria in 1965 and joined the Austrian Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs in 1994. He has also served as Austria’s Deputy Representative to the Conference on Disarmament (CD) in Geneva, Switzerland. As a leading advocate for disarmament for many years, he was recognized earlier this year as “Arms Control Person of the Year” by the members of the US-based Arms Control Association. Ambassador Kmentt and the Austrian delegation also spoke forcefully on the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons at the 2015 Five-Year Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in New York City.
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