Tanzania: Alert to End Uranium Mining, Nuclear Weapons – by Deus Ngowi (All Africa.com – July 2, 2015)

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Moshi — PEACE and environmental activists from around the world are gathering here in a quest to persuade African governments to slap a ban on uranium mining and nuclear weapons as they are twin threats.

Under the K-Project for Peace, the activists, having gone through scientific studies, have formed an opinion that it is in everybody’s best interest that uranium should remain in the ground, as its extraction is in every way hazardous.

K-Project for Peace started as an appeal by Ms Racheal Chagonja, an environmental and peace activist from Tanzania, when she saw the devastating effects of uranium mining (U-Mining) to the environment, health, and rights of indigenous people in Niger and Mali.

She did not want to see this happen to her country Tanzania, a potential future U-Mining country, and sensed the urgency to halt U-Mining in active sites and stop potential future UMining sites in other African countries Ms Chagonja reached out to like-minded civil society organisations in Africa to join her and the project has since grown from an appeal to an international campaign led by young African activists.

Further to that, it is bringing onboard other young activists from all over the world with a vision to see ‘Africa Free of Uranium Mining, and the World Free of Nuclear Weapons’.

Dr Mathabo Hlahane is IOC Chair K-Project for Peace who says people stand at a historic time when the twin threats of nuclear weapons and uranium mining looms large, and that it is a matter of urgency for so all activists and other organisations in the world to join hands for the great cause.

“As you know, nuclear weapons stand as the gravest threat to our global survival and peace on this planet… a limited, regional nuclear war far removed from any African state would result in severe and longlasting disruption to the global climate and to agriculture that would threaten hundreds of millions of Africans with starvation.

“We would like to call on the governments in Tanzania and Africa at large to hear the calls of professionals around the world calling for a ban on uranium mining and a ban on nuclear weapons,” says Dr Hlahane.

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