Christian Peacemaker Teams Press Release

The following press release was sent to me today by the Tulsa Interfaith Alliance:

Stop Depleted Uranium Weapons

For Immediate Release: Thursday, November 30, 2006

Media Contact: Craig Etchison
phones: 304-298-4704 or 800-896-1425 or 913-397-9660
email: cetchison@allegany.edu or RhoadsPrtg@aol.com

Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) and our partners around the world call for an end to the manufacture of depleted uranium (DU) weapons and the deployment and use of DU in theaters of war and practice ranges.

The United States and others have used DU munitions in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and currently in Iraq. This has left behind a documented legacy in the civilian populations, of cancers and birth defects due likely to both DU's toxicity as a heavy metal and the radioactivity of tiny DU particles that are inhaled or left in the soil to become part of the food chain. The biological half life (decay rate) of DU is 4.5 billion years.

The high number of returning veterans who are sick and the deaths of nearly one in six of all US military personnel deployed to the Gulf in the last sixteen years also strongly point to the need to end the use of DU for the sake of our own troops. Congressional legislation mandating a comprehensive study of DU and its effects on US military and their offspring is most appropriate.

Because of its ongoing and indiscriminate harm to civilians long after a war has ended, the United Nations and the Geneva Conventions declare DU to be an illegal weapon of mass destruction. The European Union and other human rights groups have called for a ban on any further use of DU weapons.

Therefore, Christian Peacemaker Teams call on:

1. Alliant Tech/ABL, Rocket Center, WV, to stop all DU manufacture as well as the shipping of all DU products;
2. all world militaries to stop using DU weapons;
3. all military personnel to refuse to load DU ammunition or use it in any of its forms;
4. the US. Defense Department and all manufacturers of DU products, to join with BAE Systems of Great Britain and the British Defense Ministry as they have stopped DU weapons production and stopped its use in war theaters and practice ranges;
5. the U.S. Army and Air Force to follow the lead of the U.S. Navy as it has stopped its use of DU weapons. If the Navy has recognized the dangers of DU's use, it follows that the other military services should also end their use of DU weapons.

I wonder if the organizations called upon will listen to CPT. We are poisoning our own military - not to mention innocent civilians and the earth itself. There need to be more such protests.