Source: www.nuclear-free.com/english/frames7.htm
Announcing the 2007 Nuclear-Free Future Award recipients
The Awards ceremony will take place in the Salzburg Archbishop's Residence on 18 October 2007. Friday, Oct. 19, will be devoted to networking between past and present Award recipients and anti-nuclear NGOs, and on Saturday we will host – in cooperation with IPPNW-Germany (International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War) – a public symposium entitled: "Klimawandel – nein danke, Atomkraft – ja bitte?" (Global warming – No thank you. Nuclear power – Yes please?). We hope to see you there!
Since 1998 the Nuclear-Free Future Award (NFFA), the "world's most prestigious anti-nuclear prize" (tageszeitung, Berlin), has annually honoured the visionaries and architects of a nuclear-free planet. The Award is a project of the Franz Moll Foundation for the Coming Generations and this year will give out awards in four categories: Resistance ($10,000 money prize), Education ($10,000 money prize), Solutions ($10,000 money prize), and Lifetime Achievement (contemporary work of art). The 2007 Awards ceremony, hosted by the state government of Salzburg, Austria, will take place at the the Archbishop's Palace on 18 October (read more at right). Our international jury selected as this year's recipients:
Solutions: Charmaine White Face and the Defenders of the Black Hills, USA
Charmaine White Face is the founder and coordinator of Defenders of the Black Hills, a group of volunteers without racial or tribal boundaries whose mission is to preserve, protect, restore and respect the area of the 1851 and 1868 Fort Laramie Treaties that were made between the United States and the Great Sioux Nation. The group monitors abandoned uranium mines on sacred Lakota Lands and seeks the remediation of hazardous waste ponds that contaminate the region with high levels of radium 226, arsenic, lead and iron. www.defendblackhills.org
Education: Prof. Dr. Siegwart Horst Günther, Germany
Prof. Dr. Günther, who once worked with Albert Schweitzer in Africa, was the first to demonstrate the medical connection between the 'Gulf War Syndrome' and the US military's widespread use of shells hardened by depleted uranium (DU). Today Iraq is a nuclear waste dump, with horrific consequences for the health and gene pools of its population, as well as the soldiers stationed there – a ghoulish fact largely overlooked by the mainstream press. This year the Nuclear-Free Future Award honors for the third time a scientist who, refusing to back down to threats, has visited the site of the crime to study the real-life consequences of DU-use.
Solutions: Tadatoshi Akiba and Mayors for Peace, Japan
In 1982 Takeshi Araki, then mayor of Hiroshima, came up with a simple idea possessing consequences for the entire globe: what would happen if all the mayors of the world declared their cities nuclear-free zones? So began the movement that became known as, 'Mayors for Peace,' and to this day (August, 2007) has grown to include some 1698 cities in 122 countries. Since 1998, Hiroshima mayor Tadatoshi Akiba has headed this organization that transcends national borders and allows citizens from around the globe to work together to press for the abolition of nuclear weapons.
Lifetime Achievement Award: Freda Meissner-Blau,. Austria, and Prof. Armin Weiss, Germany
Two veteran mentors of the Middle European anti-nuclear movement – she in Austria fighting against Zwentendorf, he in Germany pushing to terminate the construction of Wackersdorf. Our two Lifetime Achievement Award recipients – today, both over 80 years of age – remind us of our duty to wage peace for a nuclear-free future in the name of the coming generations