The new environmental movement in Russia Bellona Foundation, Frederic Hauge
"You could earn more money on the street selling vodka than safeguarding the nuclear installations." -- Frederic Hauge
Better known in Europe than in North America, the Bellona group was founded in Oslo in 1986 and quickly gained a reputation as an energetic and activist group, dressed in red jumpsuits, equipped with video cameras and zodiac speed boats, who blew the whistle on environmental polluters. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union they moved across the border into Russia to protest nuclear testing in the Arctic at the Novaya Zemlya test site and to explore the environmental damage inflicted by the smelters at Nikel, Monchegorsk and other sites, whose smokestacks are visible from Norway and Finland. Alarmed by stories of nuclear waste dumps in the ocean, and the evidence of massive accumulations of nuclear waste from the Soviet nuclear fleet, Bellona-with the help of a handful of young environmental activists in Murmansk-set out to document and draw the world's attention to the nuclear waste in the Arctic. After they were joined by experienced professional nuclear safety personnel including Andrei Zolotkov, Sergey Zhavoronkin and Alexandr Nikitin, Bellona became a leading authority on the problems of nuclear waste in the Russian north. Their multilingual website is book marked by many journalists and activists worldwide. Frederic Hauge, one of the original founders and Bellona's current director, is interviewed in the documentary.
Web links: www.bellona.no
Alexandr Nikitin, Captain in the Soviet Navy, environmental critic
"If we needed to dump the damaged section of a submarine nuclear reactor into the Kara sea, we would do so. If we needed to dispose somehow of solid radioactive waste because we had no storage for it, we would just dump it into the sea." - Alexandr Nikitin
Trained at the Soviet Naval College in Sevastopol, Nikitin served with the Soviet Northern Fleet until 1985, retiring with the rank of Captain. From 1985 to 1992 he worked with the Department of Nuclear Safety in the Ministry of Defence. He began working with Bellona in 1994 on a review of nuclear hazards in the Arctic co-authoring a number of reports including The Russian Northern Fleet, Sources of Radioactive Contamination published in Russian and English in 1996. The report was (and remains) banned in Russia. In 1995 Nikitin was arrested and charged with treason. He was held for two months without access to legal council and another eight months before being released. Over the next five years and a series of trials Nikitin's defence was supported by Bellona activists who assembled a team of lawyers and translated 20,000 pages of open source documents to support Nikitin's defence that he had not revealed secret information. Finally acquitted in 2000, -- in the final instance the charges were thrown out because the law invoked was passed after Nikitin was arrested -- Nikitin's case drew international attention, solidified Bellona's reputation in Russia, and helped to lay the foundations for the environmental movement in Russia. Nikitin currently heads the St. Petersburg office of Bellona and leads a team of young activists who publish a journal titled Environment and Rights, linking the young environmental movement with the older human rights movement in Russia.
Web links: www.bellona.no
Norway, Canada and Russia's nuclear waste
"Aging nuclear submarines in Russia's far north pose a serious risk to the Canadian arctic and require an urgent infusion of aid money. 'I consider that a clear and present danger to Canada itself in its present state,' Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham said yesterday. On Monday, the Russian news agency Interfax reported that Canadian officials discussed releasing 100 million in aid to help dismantle the subs… " Globe and Mail 27 Nov 2003
While the Canadian film crew was working in the Kola Peninsula near Murmansk, we were invited to visit the Nerpa submarine base on the edge of the Barents Sea. In spite of objections by the federal security service (FSB) the director of the shipyard invited the first non-Russian film crew ever allowed onto the base to witness the destruction of an aging Soviet nuclear submarines. The collapse of the Soviet Union left more than 100 nuclear submarines rusting in the harbours near Norway, many with reactors still fueled. It costs about 20 million dollars and takes eight months to reduce each sub to scrap. The nuclear reactors, cut out from the centre of the subs, are refloated in the harbour. This radioactive scrap, like the tens of thousands of fuel assemblies stored on land, are waiting for a more permanent solution. In the meantime Canada, along with European countries, have promised to support the clean up. The Nerpa shipyard was hoping that Canadian officials would visit, and that our film crew would send copies of the shipyard tour and a plea for support by the director to the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, which we did.
Aboriginal activists and indigenous rights
Aleftina Sergina, Andrei Gavrilov, Nadya Zolotuhina
"When the settlers came up they declared that the land belonged to everybody - which really means nobody" - Nadya Zolotuhina, Saami teacher
"The first thing they did was to start to collectivize everything: the reindeer herds, the boats, the fish nets. Everything. " - Aleftina Sergina, Saami community activist
"The government should admit that the Saami people exist. Let me fish, let me hunt, let us herd the reindeer" Andrei Gavrilov, former reindeer herder
The Saami people have lived in the Kola peninsula and the Nordic countries for millennia, but their lives of the Russian Saami took a radically different path following the Russian revolution in 1917. Formerly reindeer herders, hunters and fishers, the Saami of Russia were removed from the land and resettled in villages by Soviet authorities who shared the Canadian government's zeal for re-educating and modernizing indigenous cultures which they viewed as primitive and outdated. As described by Saami and Chukchi activists, the consequences of the combined attack on the culture, resources, education, and status of the hunting peoples of the Russian Arctic have been extreme.
In practice Russia, unlike the Nordic countries and Canada, does not recognize the indigenous rights of Arctic peoples. While Section 69 the Russian federal constitution of 1993 "guarantees the rights of indigenous small peoples according to the universally recognized principles and norms of international law and international treaties of the Russian Federation" the provision has no force and regional governments have been free to ignore it. The Saami Council concluded that "the Saami people in Russia today de facto do not hold title to their traditional land and water, and their right to use the land and its resources is also denied. Even basic subsistence use has now been curtailed dramatically."
Among the approximately 2000 surviving Saami who live in the villages of Lovozero and Jona, a new leadership is emerging with plans for a cultural revival, and the hope that they will be able to rent back their land and restore family based reindeer herding in their district.
The expression that Nadya Zolotuhina writes on the blackboard 'What is good for reindeer is good for people' comes from the an ancient Saami story known as the Meandash, about a reindeer, a raven and a seal who marry three sisters in ancient times.
Web links: Saami Council report on indigenous rights www.suri.ee/doc/saamide.html
More on the Meandash and the central position of reindeer in the lives of the Saami can be found at www.haldjas.folklore.ee/folklore/vol11/meandash.htm
Oleg Egorov, Born in Chukotka, founder of L'auravetl'an, aboriginal rights activist
"The Elders said to me 'See what has happened to us. We want you to help.' And I said 'How?' " Oleg Egorov
Oleg Egorov was born in the small sea hunting and reindeer herding community of Lorino in 1950, on the edge of the Bering Strait, opposite Alaska. His father was Russian and his mother was half-native member of the Chukchi nation. Growing up in the village, speaking Chukchi, Egorov was caught up in the Soviet campaign to educate native children in Russian language residential schools. Beginning at the age of six, he spent ten years in state run residential schools. After serving in the Soviet military he was able to leave the Soviet Union and settle in the USA.
Return visits to Lorino were only possible after the Soviet collapse. The conditions he found on his return, described in the documentary (52 min version) were appalling. Stirred into activism at the request of the Lorino's Council of Elders in 1991 Egorov founded L'auravetl'an, an information and training centre in Moscow where indigenous grassroots activists from across Russia could hone their political, communication and media skills. He also represented his community at many UN and international conferences on indigenous rights.
Following his criticism of the Russian media for their lack of interest in indigenous rights, his demands that native groups receive a share of the wealth from resource development, and his outspoken comments about "the self-serving stance taken by some official native NGOs in Russia which ignores the needs of the grass roots communities " Egorov was abruptly deported from Russia. Currently in exile in Europe with his wife and child, he continues his work from abroad .
Web links: L'auravetl'an website at www.indigenous.ru
See also Russian Association of Peoples of the North www.raipon.org
Hugh Brody, Anthropologist
Wherever you look during that period… there was a huge and often devastating attack on hunter gatherers and other indigenous peoples, on their sense of self, their heritage, their rights. It was happening in Russia, Australia, Canada… -- Hugh Brody
Anthropologist Hugh Brody, who did much of his early field work with the Inuit in the Canadian Arctic, is an internationally recognized writer and filmmaker. He is the author Maps and Dreams, The People's Land, Living Arctic, and The Other Side of Eden, a study of the clash of cultures between agriculturalists and hunter gatherers. Throughout the film he comments on the parallel difficulties faced by aboriginal peoples in both communist and capitalist countries. The common denominator, for indigenous peoples, is that the settlers are agriculturalists. In Russia, as in Canada in the mid 20th century the authorities who controlled the lives of the native peoples did not respect or understand the sophistication of hunter-gatherers and failed to comprehend a way of life that was not based on the familiar world and social organization of agriculturists.
Web links: Search Hugh Brody at www.opendemocracy.net
Liuba Nikiforova, Russian Translator
Ms. Nikiforova is a young environmental activist, raised in Siberia and St. Petersburg, now living in Murmansk. Until she worked on this film she had never met a native Russian. Before spending time with the Saami her opinion was that aboriginal peoples were no different than any other Russians who suffered during the Soviet era, and they should not be granted additional rights. Following her contact with the Saami community in Lovozero, her ideas about indigenous rights changed. It was Liuba who told us that the expression 'We must not wait for nature to grant us her favors, our task it to take them from her' was a slogan written above the blackboard in her elementary school.
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