Letter from the Koodankulam Children to Pres. Obama’s Children
KUDANKULAM ANTI-NUCLEAR SATYAGRAHA, INDIA, 10 Sep 2012
People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy – TRANSCEND Media Service
From: “The Koodankulam Children”
C/O People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE)
Idinthakarai & P. O. 627 104
koodankulam@yahoo.com
To: Malia Obama and Sasha Obama
C/O President Barack Obama
The White House
Washington D.C.
USA
Through
The American Consulate General
Anna Salai
Chennai 600 006
India
September 6, 2012
Dear Malia and Sasha:
Greetings to you both! We are the children from Koodankulam, Idinthakarai and other neighboring villages near the southernmost tip of India. Our parents and we have been struggling intensely against the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Project (KKNPP) for more than a year now.
The Government of India has not shared any basic information with us about the project; and they have not heard our opinions or allayed our fears and concerns either. They have not given us any disaster training to confront any possible disasters at the largest and imported nuclear power plant at Koodankulam. Neither have they got any liability from the Russian government or companies for this project. Worst of all, our country does not even have an “empowered and independent” nuclear regulatory authority to monitor the commissions and omissions of the nuclear installations.
Your country, the United States, has also signed a nuclear agreement with our country, India, and a few American companies are planning to set up two huge nuclear parks at Kovvada in Andhra Pradesh and Mithi Virdi in Gujarat. Your Dad’s government has been supporting this agreement and the nuclear park projects in India.
As you both know, Malia and Sasha, the nuclear power projects are dangerous as we witnessed recently at Fukushima, Japan. The nuclear power plants are also directly linked to nuclear weapons program and that is why your country strongly objects to the nuclear power programs of Iran and North Korea etc.
Just because our parents’ generation can get electricity for 40 years and their business corporations, politicians and bureaucrats can make a lot of profit and commission, we, children of today, should not suffer tomorrow with deadly radioactive waste, radiation and all sorts of illnesses. We should not trust the misleading argument that nuclear power is the answer for climate change. We know, polluted air is certainly a big problem; but poisoned Earth cannot be the answer for that.
We hear that people of your country have just celebrated the American workers’ and their labor unions’ contributions to the American economy today, the Labor Day. We must value workers and their welfare all over the world and our parents are all workers and make an honest living out of the sea, land and small businesses etc.
We do not want the United States to set up nuclear power plants in India for the profit of big corporations at the cost of our well-being, security, health, disease-free life of our parents, and the protection of our Natural resources. We do not want the United States to kill small businesses in our country by thrusting big corporations such as Walmart down our throats.
Dear Malia and Sasha, let us all together, the children of the United States and India and other countries around the world, build a safe future for all of us without nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons. We would very much like to request you to talk to your Mom and Dad and friends and help us close down the Koodankulam nuclear power plant and not start any American plant in our country.
Looking forward to your kind support and sympathetic efforts, we send you both and your parents our love, regards and all peaceful wishes. We would also like to wish your parents all the best with the upcoming Presidential election.
Yours sincerely,
The Koodankulam Children
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 10 Sep 2012.
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3 Responses to “Letter from the Koodankulam Children to Pres. Obama’s Children”
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KUDANKULAM ANTI-NUCLEAR SATYAGRAHA, INDIA:
We have so many wars in the world – at the moment over 200 armed conflicts – because of these, to me absurd – campaigns against nuclear weapons. This has allowed scientists, over the last 6 decades, to develop the most lethal conventional weapons, imaginable and inimaginable.
Campaigns MUST BE against ALL weapons, nuclear or non-nuclear. Against a militarised world. Nuclearism – nuclear energy – has tremendous positive qualities and is here to stay.
The girls from India are, sadly, following the steps of their parents and grandparebts, 2 generations that missed the opportunity to transform our world.
You poor, poor children and people. We need to all help each other as all our governments are all for nuclear power stations. We are not!! The poor Japanese people have to live with theirs leaking..
I think the whole world need to unite and tell our governments ”NO” to nuclear power or fracking. They are both very dangerous..
All my love to India
We will rise up again !!
Hello Janice, It is not “OUR” Governments. Politicians don’t run the world. They only “pretend” they run it, but in reality they are puppets, manipulated by the Elite that runs the world. They don’t work for the electorate, they work for their paymasters, very rich men and women who own Banks, the Corporate Media, oil wells, gold mines, etc. And of course, industrialists dedicated to what I call the “Death Industry”, that is manufacturers of all kind of weapons and missiles, warships, air-fighters, Apache helicopters, etc.
If you follow politics, you will read all the time about “donations” to political parties, or fund-raising dinners for political parties. All these rich people I mentioned in the previous paragraph, attend these dinners or simply make donations of thousands.
Once a politician becomes, thanks to his party’s very well “financed”,”sponsored” campaign, the leader of a country, he has to pay back all the favours he received. How can you pay back the favour to a manufacturer of bombs? there is only one “option”: create a market for his bombs. How do you create the market? by organising wars.
I bet you a million dollars that “you”, with all your anti-nuclear and Peace loving feelings, if you were to become the President or Prime Minister of a strong country, would be doing exactly the same as all those politicians you now criticize, do.
Only the removal of weapons from the world will create the Paradise on Earth you dream about. What you propose “the whole world need to unite and tell our governments ”NO” to nuclear power” (or fracking) has been done for so many years but in the undemocratic world we live in, it has had little effect.
We must think of “other ways”‘