| March
8, 2001 For Immediate Release |
|
|
Contacts: |
SATELLITE
FEED Liz Bernstein,
ICBL Coordinator |
|
Congressmen, International, and US Campaigns to Ban Landmines, the Faith Community, and Landmine Survivors Along with Her Majesty Queen Noor Urge Bush to Join Mine Ban Treaty WASHINGTON, DC–Today, in an unprecedented show of support for U.S. participation in the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, over 500 campaigners from the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), hailing from over 90 countries and nearly every U.S. state, converged on Capitol Hill. The ICBL, 1997 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, was joined by Her Majesty Queen Noor of Jordan; the faith community; American and international landmine survivors; ICBL Ambassador and co-laureate Jody Williams; students from around the country; and Congressmen Jack Quinn (R-NY) and James McGovern (D-MA) in their call to President George W. Bush to join the 139 nations that have signed and/or ratified the Mine Ban Treaty. Her Majesty Queen Noor also today delivered a major address on the landmine ban at the National Press Club. Her Majesty also spoke to the Congressional Human Rights Caucus yesterday on humanitarian assistance to landmine survivors. Jerry White, an American landmine survivor and Chair of the United States Campaign to Ban Landmines (USCBL), opened the press conference flanked by an imposing pyramid of some 2,500 pairs of shoes representing the lives and limbs stolen yearly by landmines laid in over 80 nations. He said, "Mr. President, in your Inaugural Address, you pledged our nation to a noble goal: 'when we see the wounded traveler on the road to Jericho, we will not pass to the other side.' Hundreds of thousands of people worldwide cannot walk roads without fear of a landmine explosion. How soon will your Call to Compassion lead the United States to the Landmine ban?" "Today, I join with my friends Rep. James McGovern and Rep. Lane Evans (D-IL) and others in once again introducing legislation toward our mutual goal of ending the use of landmines by the United States," said Rep. Jack Quinn (R-NY), the former chair of the Veterans Affairs Sub-Committee on Benefits, "I am hopeful that this time we will succeed." "I am anxious to roll up my sleeves and get back to work on this issue," said Quinn. "The first thing I intend to do is personally urge President Bush to take steps to join the Ottawa Treaty to ban landmines." "It is essential that the United States show meaningful leadership on the banning of antipersonnel landmines. This can only be done if the United States becomes a party to the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty. This is not a partisan issue--it is an issue of fundamental human rights," said Rep. James McGovern (D-MA). Rev. Dr. Bob Edgar, General Secretary of the National Council of Churches (NCC) and an Elder in the Methodist Church, announced a new plan for a faith-based initiative by the ecumenical NCC and other faith groups to push for U.S. participation in the Mine Ban Treaty. "The Mine Ban Treaty is a convention that not only prohibits the use of a cruel device that is unethical and immoral, but assists victims and reclaims the earth. This treaty has truly slowed the carnage, beginning the long process of healing lands broken by landmines," stated Rev. Dr. Edgar. "US denominations and faith groups support this treaty, and I hope that President Bush and the United States Congress can acknowledge the will of America’s churches, mosques, synagogues, and temples, and speedily push for its ratification." "When I was four, I lost my leg while playing near my house. I have traveled from Cambodia to tell this story to a nation that lives without the fear that haunts those living with landmines," stated Song Kosal, a seventeen year-old landmine survivor from Cambodia. Like Kosal, many landmine survivors are children who unknowingly stepped on a mine, picked up a mine, or mistook a weapon for a toy. The two-year old treaty is credited with cutting the number of mine-producing nations from 55 to 16, lowering rates of mine injury considerably, bringing more money to the cause of demining, completely halting almost all mine exports, and forcing the destruction of more than 20 million mines. Enforcement of the treaty is promoted by the ICBL's monitoring of the treaty-compliance of states party to the convention through the Landmine Monitor initiative. The ICBL and Landmine Monitor meetings are taking place in Washington this week (www.icbl.org). "The new administration has yet to make any public statement about its position on landmines. Hopefully, in the sweeping review of the military ordered by President Bush,landmines will fall by the wayside and the US will join the 139 nations of the world--, including all of our NATO allies except Turkey, the entire Western Hemisphere except Cuba and other key allies such as Japan and the Philippines--and ban the weapon," said Jody Williams, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Ambassador for the ICBL. "The United States gives more money than any nation in the world to humanitarian demining initiatives, and for that, we thank them. But the United States will always be part of the landmine problem for as long as we fail to embrace the Mine Ban Treaty." Retired Lieutenant Generals James Hollingsworth, a former I Corps commander of U.S. forces in South Korea, and Henry E. Emerson, the heavily decorated former commander of the XVIII Airborne Corps, recently decried U.S. reluctance to join the Mine Ban Treaty, claiming that the Mine Ban Treaty is "a militarily sound solution to a crippling humanitarian problem." In another show of wide-ranging support for the treaty, over 300 physicians from around the country sent a letter to the President on March 1, the anniversary of the treaty’s entry into force, urging him to quickly accede to the Mine Ban Treaty. The presence of the ICBL and USCBL in Washington for their general meeting from March 5-11 has prompted DC Mayor Anthony Williams to proclaim this week Ban Landmines Week. Tonight’s reception at the Organization of American States with Her Majesty Queen Noor of Jordan and Jody Williams is one of many in a series of awareness-raising events happening in the nation’s capitol. Educational advertisements on bus shelters, "landmine" coasters in bars, the first ever upright, amputee hockey tournament, a film screening and a mine-related play, and an international demining demonstration are a few of the many mine-related events culminating in a demonstration in Lafayette Park. American youth and the ICBL will present hundreds of thousands of petition signatures across the street from the White House (call 617 413-6407 about this event). The Lafayette Park demonstration will be followed by a prayer service at the Church of the Epiphany. One of the more than two hundred Americans who have come to Washington to support the new landmine ban legislation, Jeff Frederick, a landmine survivor from Florida and a former member of the elite 101st Airborne in Vietnam, expressed his outrage about the indiscriminate nature of the weapon, "I knew what to expect as a soldier--I played the game. It sickens me that innocent children are victims of these same landmines. A child would not have survived the injury that I suffered from a mine blast nor does a child deserve to lose their life from mines," he said. The USCBL sent its first official letter to President Bush last week, urging him to join the Mine Ban Treaty within his first year in office, and recommending other steps for immediate action. The International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), launched in 1992, brings together over 1,300 human rights, humanitarian, children's, peace, disability, veterans, medical, humanitarian mine action, development, arms control, religious, environmental, and women's groups in over 75 countries who work locally, nationally, regionally, and internationally to ban antipersonnel landmines. The US Campaign to Ban Landmines is affiliated with the ICBL and composed of a coalition of more than 500 US-based groups dedicated to a total ban on antipersonnel landmines.
|