Our Speakers
Rebecca Bear-Wingfield
is an Aboriginal activist and has been working for many years to improve the rights of indigenous peoples, migrants and for a nuclear free future. Bear-Wingfield worked as a nurse and took Aboriginal Studies and Educational Science at the South Australian College of Advanced Education. Her doctorate focussed on early childhood education and she worked as a private lecturer at the University of Adelaide and Flinders. Rebecca Bear-Wingfield holds, among other positions, the deputy chair of the Australian Nuclear Free Alliance (ANFA) and is a committee member of the Aboriginal Advancement League (SA). In 2009 she spoke as an expert to the UN Forum on Indigenous Affairs.
Michael Beleites
is one of the founders of the environmental movement in the former GDR. Beleites had already begun to work on environmental political issues during his training as a zoological preparateur at the Natural History Museum in Gera. He first received public attention in 1988 when he presented illegally collated research findings on uranium mining in Wismut to the 1st Ecumenical Assembly in Dresden. These are documented in the underground report „Pechblende – der Uranbergbau und die Folgen“ (Wittenberg 1988). After the Wall fell, Michael Beleites studied agricultural science at the Humboldt University in Berlin. He is the regional representative in Saxony for State Security documents of the former GDR. He has written several books, including „Altlast Wismut“.
>> Link: "Die Akte Wismut" as a pdf-File on nuclear-free.com
Oleg Bodrov
(b 1951 in Taschkent, Usbekistan) is Chair of the environmental organisation „Green World“ and an anti-nuclear activist in Russia. After completing his studies in engineering and physics, he worked as a researcher on submarine reactor science for several years. In 1979 a nuclear accident made him change his political opinion. He has worked for the restitution of the radioactively contaminated Baltic sea since 1980 and received the Aland Islands Baltic Fund International Award for this work in 2000. Since 2003 Oleg Bodrov has tirelessly worked as consultant, author, film producer and political activist for the shutting down of old nuclear power plants and their replacement with renewable energy.
Many Camara
is a sociology and anthropology Professor at the University of Bamako, the capital of Mali. He was born in Falea, a village made up of 21 hamlets on the border between Senegal and Guinea. There are plans to mine uranium reserves that have been found in the area surrounding Falea. During the planning phase for these mines, Many Camara will work to protect the people of Falea. A “Zero Study” is intended to show the exact level of exposition to radiation in the region before the mining begins, in order to measure precisely the effect of uranium mining later on. At the same time, Many Camara is setting up a local department of the University of Bamako in Falea in order to record changes to the living conditions of the indigenous people.
Dale Dewar
is a rural doctor from Wynyard, Sk . and international human rights activist.
She is the Executive Director of Physicians for Global Survival and chair of the International Committee of the Society of Rural Physicians of Canada. Dale has been involved in medical education in Iraq, Pakistan and the southern Philippines and has worked extensively with Aboriginal peoples in Canada. She is Past Chair of the Rural and regional Committee of the Saskatchewan Medical Association and presented a position paper to the Uranium Development Partnership on behalf of the Association. She is also a medical columnist on CBC radio and, along with her husband Bill Curry, is the recipient of the SCIC Global Citizen Award for 2008. Dale was privileged to serve as Clerk of Canadian Yearly Meeting (Quakers) 2007 – 2009 and continues as Mentoring Clerk.
Michael Dworkind
is a peace activist and the founding president of Professionel de la santé pour la survie mondiale, the Quebec chapter of Physician’s for Global Survival. He is currently board member of PGS and the International Delegate for International Physicians for Prevention of Nuclear War.
Dr. Dworkind is Associate Professor of Family Medicine at the McGill School of Medicine, a fellow of the College of Family Physicians of Canada. He is a consultant in pain and palliative care at the Jewish General Hospital.
Gordon Edwards
is President of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility.
For the last three decades he has been one of the leading activists in Canada’s anti-nuclear movement. His ability to impart knowledge in maths and physics enhance his role as an activist and make him able to take apart the myth of clean nuclear energy with humour, effortlessly and with an analytical precision as well as fascinating imagery. Gordon Edwards proved that the limits set by the Canadian government for radon gas were six times too high – a claim that was later confirmed by the ‘Medical Association in British Columbia’ as well as the ‘U.S. National Academy of Sciences’. The work he did on the CANDU reactor was similar. He also played a key role in the moratorium on new reactors in Quebec and in various moratoria on mining for uranium in Labrador, Nova Scotia and British Columbia. He brought the nuclear programme of the ‘Atomic Energy of Canada’ to a standstill and made a major contribution to preventing a final depository for radioactive waste on the border from Quebec to the USA.
Edwards has produced several exemplary informative publications together with Robert Del Tredici on uranium mining and maps of nuclear Canada.
>> Homepage of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility
Azara Jalawi
belongs to the ethnic group of the Tuareg. She comes from Arlit, in North Niger. The French company of Areva has mined uranium for more than 40 years in this part of the country. Ms Jalawi’s parents had to leave their tribe’s homeland because of the uranium mining and they settled in the city of Arlit. Ms Jalawi has been active in the Civil Society of Arlit for a long time. She is president of the Federation of Women’s Groups in the urban area of Arlit. This federation supports protest marches against Areva. Ms Jalawi is also a member of the organisation of „aghirin man“ that concerns itself with the effects of uranium mining in Niger.
As the Vice-President of the Civil Society of Arlit, Ms Jalawi belongs to the oversight board of a microfinancial institution that receives funding from Areva.
She was also a member of the Arlit city parliament from 2004 to 2010.
Ms Jalawi was born in 1974, is the mother of two children and is a widow.
Punit Raj Kishor Minz
belongs to the tribe Uraon and has worked since 2003 as an activist against uranium mining in the Indian Province of Jharkhand. As the Secretary-General of the Jharkhand Mines Area Coordination Committee (JMACC) and the Coordinator of the Bindrai Institute for Research Study & Action (BIRSA) he has dedicated his work to achieving better working conditions for workers in uranium mines in the region as well as generally for economic, social and cultural rights of the rural population. One of his declared goals is to maintain and strengthen the identity of the 32 various indigenous tribes, each with their own language, that live in Jharkhand. His actions cover information and demonstrations to blockading mining companies and members of government. For this reason the JMACC established the Jharkhand Organisation of Struggling Humans (JOSH).
Sebastian Pflugbeil
Dr. rer. nat, was a Minister in the interim government of the former GDR under Modrow (1990) and a member of the Berlin Parliament (1990-1995). He worked for a long time as a physicist on pure medical research. For the past 30 years, Sebastian Pflugbeil has been occupied with educating the public on the effects of nuclear weapons and the risks of nuclear energy. He was one of the founders of the “Neues Forum” (the group that campaigned for more freedom in the GDR) and was particularly active in working for the closure of East German nuclear power plants and for an end to uranium mining in Wismut.
Sebastian Pflugbeil is one of the co-founders of Tschernobylhilfe (Aid for Chernobyl). He has accumulated a great deal of experience over the years in humanitarian and medical aid through his work in the region around Chernobyl. Today he is the President of the Society for Radiological Protection in Germany. He is also co-editor of the magazine STRAHLENTELEX. His main topics of work include: criticism of the German Radiation Protection Ordinance, the risks of low-level radiation, radioactivity and secret service, the effects of nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons policies in former West Germany, the effects of Chernobyl, nuclear victims and education on the background to the leukemia clusters in the area of the Elbmarsch.
>> Homepage of the Society for Radiological Protection
Manuel Pino
Manuel Pino comes from Acoma Pueblo, an Keresan adobe village west of Albuquerque in the US state of New Mexico. At the beginning of the 1950s the earth in the region was torn apart by the Jackpile-Paguate Mine, America’s biggest open-pit mine for uranium extraction, and a mill for producing yellow cake (commercial uranium) was established. Resistance to the mine and its operator – the Kerr-McGee company – took over Pino’s life from this moment on. He chose the destructive effects of uranium extraction on Indian culture as the subject of his dissertation on sociology. At the World Uranium Hearing in 1992 in Salzburg, he provided a strong voice for the victims of the uranium boom.
Today he is Professor of Sociology at the Scottsdale Community College in Arizona and dedicates himself to ensuring that the next generation take up resistance to nuclear energy and nuclear weapons.
Hilma Shindondola-Mote
is the Director of the Labour Resource and Research Institute (LaRRi) in Windhoek, Namibia. The publication of her report „The Mystery behind Low-Level-Radiation“ (2008) on uranium mining in Namibia, a conference and a speaking tour, organised by Earthlife Namibia and WISE, with the title „Uranium – Blessing or Curse?“ allowed the issue to become known to the public. Ms Mote has often taken part in international events, including a tour of Germany of people affected by uranium mining.
Her research is not limited only to the health effects on the miners but also covers the causes and effects on the whole of society of mining.
>> Homepage of the Labour Ressource and Research Institute
>> the study „The Mystery behind Low-Level-Radiation“ on uranium-network.org
Charmaine White Face
is from the Black Hills (He Sapa), a range of mountains in the border country between the US states of South Dakota, Montana und Wyoming – called in her tribal language Lakota, Dakota und Nakota, the heart of everything that is (Wamakas og'naka i'cante), the birth place of her people. The US government legally recognised the tribes of the Black Hills in a treaty until gold and later uranium were discovered there.
Uranium mining in the South and West of the mountains led to a severe radioactive contamination in the eighties. Even today, the boreholes, slagheaps and tailing ponds remain unnaturalised and contaminate the environment with radium 226, arsenic and lead. This is what led Charmaine White Face and others to form the organisation »Defenders of the Black Hills«.
Whether attending scientific symposia, in front of a court of justice, on a panel with representative of the uranium industry or at the mike of the Lakota KILI Radio, it is important to the biologist and author Charmaine White Face that alongside the scientific reasoning of her arguments, the philosophy of her people is heard.
Charmaine White Face received the Nuclear Free Future Award in 2007.
Robert del Tredici
is a photographer and the co-founder of the Atomic Photographers Guild. He was born in 1938 in Cloverdale, California, and lives today in Montreal, Canada. Since the accident in 1979 at Three Mile Island Del Tredici has documented the nuclear industry. In his book, „At Work in the Fields of the Bomb“, he published many of his pictures and received the Olive Branch Award in 1987 for his contribution to world peace. He began to tour the US, Canada, Japan and Europe and to take pictures of places and people that had something to do with the nuclear issue. In this way he gave nuclear technology that has changed our environment a face.
As well as „At Work in the Fields of the Bomb“ Del Tredici published „The People of Three Mile Island” in 1980 in San Francisco.