Peace witnesses imprisoned Ploughshares act against depleted uranium

Four of America’s leading Catholic peace witnesses have been imprisoned for lengthy terms in Baltimore, USA for an action they took to highlight the use by NATO and the US military of depleted uranium-capped weapons in wars in Iraq, Yugoslavia and Kosovo. Because of the use of these weapons, these were in fact all nuclear wars. The legacy left is an agonising, drawn-out, cancer-filled future for generations to come.

The four, Jesuit priest Steve Kelly S.J. from New York, mother of two Susan Crane, 56, and veteran prophet Phillip Berrigan, 76, both of the Jonah House community in Baltimore and Liz Walz, 33, founder of a Catholic Worker community in Philadelphia had all entered the Maryland Warfield Air National Guard Base in order to convert two A-10 Thunderbolt bombers, known as Warthogs, which carried the depleted uranium weapons.

Calling themselves Ploughshares vs Depleted Uranium, they entered the airbase in the early hours of 19 December 1999, the fourth Sunday of Advent. There they sought to disarm the weapons in obedience to God’s prohibition against killing and to embody Isaiah’s vision of a disarmed world where hearts are converted to compassion and justice and the weapons are converted to the tools of peace. They sought to atone for the use of these nuclear weapons in Kosovo, in Yugoslavia and against the people of Iraq in the Gulf War. In addition, they sought to highlight the grave damage done by DU weapons to the land and people of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Bosnia, and to those who live adjacent to US bases in Vieques, Pueto Rico and Okinawa, Japan. As Phil Berrigan said in response to a question about his motivation, ‘I cannot forget the dying children of Iraq and the two million Iraqis dead from our war, sanctions and depleted uranium. I cannot forget what 78 days of NATO bombing did to Kosovo and Serbia. I cannot forget my shame and sorrow over the second American nuclear war in Iraq and the third in Yugoslavia. Despite what the spin doctors say, depleted uranium shells and bombs are nuclear weapons. I cannot forget my country’s war psychosis, its obsession with better tools for killing, its mammoth war chest, its think tanks and war laboratories.’

After entering the airbase and upon reaching the stationary aircraft, they hammered on the Gatling gun in the nose of the planes and on the pylons under the wings, and poured their blood into the engines of the plane. They hung their banner PLOUGHSHARES VS DEPLETED URANIUM on the site. Military police then arrested them and charged them with a variety of offences.

The A-10 is an aircraft built around a gun - a 30mm 7 barrel Gatling that can spew 3900 rounds per minute. This plane fired 95 percent of the depleted uranium deployed by the US during the Gulf War, leaving behind 300-800 tons (Dutch Laka Foundation), poisoning humans and the natural elements in Kuwait and Iraq. Sanctions and depleted uranium have killed more than two million people in Iraq since the war there ended. As the Ploughshares statement says, ‘Depleted uranium is a delayed response weapon which burns its way through tank armour and oxidizes, throwing radioactive particles as far away as 25 miles. When ingested, these particles cause chemical and radioactive damage to the bronchial tree, to kidneys, to liver and bones, causing somatic and genetic trauma. Cancer often results.’

It goes on to point out that Iraq and Yugoslavia are template wars, blueprints for future imperial wars by targeting the whole of a society – military, civilians, the unborn, the infrastructure, the ecology, the health and spirit of a people. These wars even overflow against the troops that fight them. More than 90,000 American Gulf War veterans are now chronically ill. A US Department of Veteran Affairs study of 251 veteran’s families shows that 67 percent had children with severe illnesses or birth defects.

After three months in custody awaiting trial, the case against the four was finally heard before a jury late in March 2000. At the trial, they sought to show that the US Government was guilty of crimes against humanity through waging war with weapons banned by international conventions which prohibit the use of nuclear weapons and depleted uranium. Unlike some British courts, no American court has allowed a defence using international law and moral argument to proceed. The only questions allowed by Americans judges in the more than 60 similar cases in recent years, have been questions about the alleged incident. No one is allowed to talk of morality, deaths of children or civilian populations from radioactivity, or the destruction of land and crops from the illegal and immoral use of weapons of modern warfare. In other words, the whole truth has no chance of emerging.

And so it was on this occasion. Because of the refusal of Judge James T. Smith, a Catholic, to allow any moral argument, the four defendants withdrew from participation in the trial and remained in their cells praying. Before they withdrew, Susan Crane told the judge and jury, ‘We cannot put on a defence about the dangers of depleted uranium and our rights and duties under international law. We have been denied our right to testify about these topics. We have been denied our expert witnesses. Therefore we cannot go forward. We will not participate with what amounts to a legal gag.’ Supporters burst into hymn singing and were cleared from the court. Phillip Berrigan returned from the cells to tell the judge, ‘The courts are identified with the Pentagon and the government. There is no way non-violent defendants can get a serious hearing in this or any other courtroom. That is my experience over several years in several dozen courts’.

The jury were given specific directions from the judge as to what they were to discuss and what they were to regard as irrelevant. After four hours, the four were found guilty of malicious destruction of property. All were given prison sentences. Liz Walz was given 18 months, Susan Crane and Steve Kelly 27 months and Phillip Berrigan 30 months. In addition, the four were expected to pay restitution of $US88,622. Should they wish to post bail awaiting appeal, bail was set at $US90,000 each. For the four, all of whom live a lifestyle of voluntary poverty among the poor and earn less than $20 per week, these figures are ridiculous.

Subsequent to the arrests (and ironically released while the trial was in progress), a recent letter from the NATO Secretary-General George Robertson to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan confirms that the DU weapons were indeed used by the US in Kosovo. There 31 000 rounds of depleted uranium ammunition were used during some 100 missions by the Warthog aircraft. The shells are tipped with high density depleted uranium to help them penetrate the thick armour of military vehicles or underground bunkers.

Pekka Haavisto, head of the UN Balkan environment task force investigating the use of munitions used in the NATO led war, said the use of depleted uranium in Kosovo was only one-tenth of that used in the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq, after which there was a cancer epidemic among Iraqis living near battlefields. US and British veterans of the Gulf War have also blamed serious health problems among them on the use of such weapons.

Peter Wills, Associate Professor of Physics, University of Auckland, said that depleted uranium caused heavy metal poisoning and could be attributed to general malaise such as the various side effects termed ‘Gulf War Syndrome’. He said the effects were widely dispersed because depleted uranium virtually vaporised but persisted for many generations, with leftover radioactivity causing cancer. (NZ Herald, 23 March 2000)

(Jim Consedine collated this report from various sources including Elizabeth’s frequent letters.)

One can only stand back in admiration and admire the non-violent commitment of the four Catholics jailed recently in Baltimore, MD for their witness against the use of depleted uranium capped weapons in major European wars in the past decade. Phillip Berrigan is an icon of American Christian resistance to the sinfulness and evil of the power of the Pentagon killing machine that protects American interests worldwide. For 35 years he’s resisted ‘the military empire’ and its wars. He’s served nine years in prison, been arrested countless times, and lived his life committed to the Gospel.

Now 76, he has been sentenced to yet another jail term of 30 months by yet another Catholic judge unable to distinguish between justice and the law. Phil Berrigan is a remarkable saint of our time. He sits beside his brother Dan, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day and Cesar Chavez as modern heroes of non-violence and gospel commitment.

Mother of two Susan Crane, Steve Kelly SJ and Catholic Worker Elizabeth Walz are less known but equally as committed to Gospel non-violence and the confronting of the powers of this world that lead to death and destruction. All live personal lifestyles of commitment to the poor. Each recognises that tax money used in the production of such armaments is taken directly from the poor by reducing the availability of facilities for education, welfare, healthcare and housing. At the same time, huge government subsidies are gifted to armament manufacturers. It is well recognised that the US economy is built around its military needs.

Because the judge refused to allow any discussion on international law or gospel morality in their defence, the four refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of his court. Subsequently, he sentenced them to terms beyond the norm they might have expected. Heroic witnesses indeed.

Depleted Uranium (DU) is a dense radioactive waste used in munitions because it can pierce four inches (10 cm) of armour. It is radioactive; it is a heavy metal; it poisons environment and people. It has a half-life of 4.5 billion years.

Uranium-238 is mined and U-235 and U-234 removed in an enrichment process for nuclear weapons and power plants. What remains, depleted of the enriched isotopes, is a radioactive waste. Stockpiles of depleted uranium have accumulated since the 1940s (about 500,000 tons). The US government has been looking for a use for this radioactive waste to reduce storage difficulties and costs.

DU has physical properties that are useful in the military. It is almost twice as dense as lead. On impact, it ignites and aerosolizes, spreading fine dust particles of DU that can travel as far as 26 miles.

The US began producing DU ammunition in 1978; the munitions were first used during the Gulf War. 940,000 DU shells were fired from US planes and 14,000 DU shells were fired from tanks. 300-800 tons of DU particles and dust were scattered over ground and water in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. The majority of DU rounds fired in the Gulf were from the Fairchild A-10 ‘tank killer’ aircraft. About 564,000 pounds of DU were fired from A-10 planes during the Gulf War.

DU weapons are toxic, radioactive weapons which cannot be contained in time or space and are indiscriminate weapons which violate international law.

In the US Army base in Doha, Kuwait, an ammunition vehicle caught fire on 11 July, 1991. An estimated 9,000 pounds of DU were burned. During the Gulf War, 29 US vehicles were contaminated with DU through friendly fire incidents. Soldiers inside the vehicles were wounded; soldiers assigned to recover the vehicles were contaminated. Thousands of Iraqi vehicles were contaminated by DU. American soldieres entered these vehicles to salvage equipment, look for souvenirs or pose for photos. They were not warned that there was DU dust on the equipment and in the air.

Of the 697,000 US troops in the Gulf, over 90,000 reported medical problems. DU could be responsible for respiratory, liver and kidney dysfunction, memory loss, headaches, fever, low blood pressure and birth defects.

The people of Iraq – particularly in the south – have been contaminated through the air, water, soil and crops. Doctors in Iraq have documented an increase in leukaemia and other cancers.

DU threatens unborn generations. Children are the most affected because DU accumulates in their bones, replacing calcium. High rates of leukaemia, lymphoma and bone cancer have been recorded in Iraq. DU causes birth deformities: children are born with shortened or webbed arms and legs, lacking eyes, mouth, brain, and experiencing abnormalities in the number and shape of organs.

The military use of DU has contaminated areas of Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Bosnia, US military bases in Vieques, Puerto Rico and Okinawa, Japan, as well as neighbours of weapons manufacturers, such as in Colonie, NY where the National Lead Plant was manufacturing DU penetrators. Research and development of DU penetrators and armour has been done at the nearby Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland.