NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

It only takes a moment, please sign this petition in order to protect the natural beauty of Jeju Island, South Korea. http://www.avaaz.org/en/save_jeju_island/?copy   More information on Jeju and Gangjeong is pasted below. ********************** From: Robert Redford To: All of your people Subject: Tell Environmentalists & IUCN : No Base on Jeju Island Dear Friends of Jeju Island, From September 6-15, some 10,000 environmentalists will converge on Jeju Island to attend the World Conservation Congress (WCC) organized by the oldest environmental organization, the International Union of the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The IUCN’s slogan is that it promotes “a just world that values and conserves nature.” If recent actions are any indication, nothing could be further from the truth. The WCC will take place only a few minutes away from Gangjeong where the construction of a naval base is threatening one of the planet’s most spectacular soft

Solidarity message from Gangjeong to World friends!! http://youtu.be/KpSLk9OMrGQ CALL FOR GLOBAL PROTEST Jeju: pax et justitia Jeju: peace and justice Sunday 6th May 2012 from 3:00 to 6:00 PM at the Trocadero, PARIS Join us at the Trocadero in Paris, France to support peace and justice in the South Korean island of Jeju. This UNESCO World Heritage Site is the only one in the world crowned with all three UNESCO Natural Science Preserve categories: Biosphere (2002), Word Heritage (2007) and Geoparc (2010). http://english.jeju.go.kr/index.php/contents/AboutJeju/Beauty/PhotoGallery For the past 5 years, the 1,500 inhabitants of Jeju’s Ganjeong village have been leading a peaceful struggle against the construction of a vast naval base on one of Jeju’s most culturally significant sites. Against mounting local and international objections, the South Korean government recently forced through a bill authorizing the construction of this base, the largest of

Two urgent messages about the situation in Gangjeong, Jeju: ************************** From Save Jeju Dear friends, Starting today, Gangjeong is in an emergency situation. Nearly 700 police have arrived from the mainland in Gangjeong village to monitor the blasting of Gureombi, the volcanic rock coastline, and the dredging of the seafloor. Not only will the marine life, including endangered crabs and coral reefs, be swept away, the blast has already impacted the fresh water springs that the majority of the island is dependent upon. Though our numbers are small in the village, we will do our best to fight to stop the blast of Gureombi. It is still uncertain whether the Seogwipo Police will allow the Navy to blast Gureombi on Monday, when the Governor of Jeju Island is supposed to make his decision. Please send an email to the Governor NOW asking him to please stop the blast of Gureombi. Thank you for one minute of your time. We urgently need international solidarity NOW. In p

Another update from Brue Gagnon on the international peace conference that took place in Jeju, South Korea over the weekend. I've pasted it below: ************************* The Navy is expanding its effort to put razor wire all along the rocky coastline so the villagers cannot any longer stand on their sacred ground. But the people keep coming by swimming or on kayaks. They are determined. They continue to be arrested. As I write this a group will find their way there for the Sunday morning Catholic mass. Yesterday we had a joint meeting between the villagers and our international guests. Our folks shared stories about U.S. and NATO space technology expansion into Sweden and Norway, the effort by the U.S. to get India to create their own aggressive Space Command to help "contain" China, and the Vandenberg AFB in California space missile launching center. One elderly man from Gangjeong village told us he can't sleep at night, suffers from depression, and sees

An update on Day 1 of the Jeju International Peace Conference taking place this weekend in Jeju Island off the coast of South Korea. The update is written by Bruce Gagnon of The Global Network. You can find more updates throughout the week on his personal blog Organizing Notes :  ****************  There is so much to write about and so little time. Yesterday we began our time here on Jeju Island (South Korea) with a conference at the museum where the story of the April 3, 1948 massacre of tens of thousands of Jeju residents is told. Following the end of WW II the U.S. took control of Korea and put the former Koreans who collaborated with fascist Japan in charge of the country. The U.S. began the process of dividing Korea and the people of Jeju were accused of being communists because they were independent minded and did not want to follow the corrupt leaders appointed by the U.S. military. The people rebelled and the U.S. military directed the new Korean government to a

From Christine Ahn, Korea Policy Institute Dear friends, In three weeks, I will be going to Jeju Island in South Korea to bear witness to the extraordinary nonviolent resistance underway now to stop the construction of a naval base. Through incredible acts of courage, the villagers and activists from the peninsula have established a system where if construction trucks carrying cement approach the site, they blow a siren which then signals to the villagers that they must drop their farming and work to come and protect the coastline from being dredged and concrete poured over the coral reefs. We are slowly gathering a larger delegation, including potentially a Spanish filmmaker, a German faith worker, and a Japanese peace activist. So far three of us will be traveling from the United States. We hope to gather at least 100,000 signatures from around the world for this petition and hand deliver it to the South Korean President Lee Myung Bak at the Blue House. Will you please sign thi

From Ten Thousand Things : On May 23rd, Art teacher and peace blogger Sung-Hee Choi was arrested and detained with seven other people at Jeju Island for nonviolently protesting the South Korean government seizure of property belonging to 1,500 villagers in Gangjeong, Jeju Island, South Korea. The Lee administration wants to destroy this beautiful region of tangerine groves and greenhouses on the Gangjeong coast to make way for a navy base intended to house destroyers equipped with missile systems. At the time of her arrest, Sung-Hee Choi was holding a banner with the message printed on it: Do not touch even one stone, even one flower! She was arrested for simply holding the banner. She did not do anything to obstruct the South Korean government's destruction of the Gangjeong villagers' property. ************************ Below is a poem that was written by Sung Hee-Choi while she has been in prison. The revolution comes in time we do not know. It comes suddenly w

My column this week for the Marianas Variety will be on Gangjeong, South Korea and the resistance there to the construction of a joint-US-ROK-Naval Facility there. My column will focus on a speech I gave while I was there in June of last year, but things have changed much since then. When I visited the village in Southern Jeju the start of construction was several months away, and there was still hope that their protests and a lawsuit they had filed would stop it. Since the start of the new year, there were protests, crackdowns and construction has begun and so I am always on the lookout for any information that I can find about what is going on in Gangjeong. I came across this article below which is a great update about what is happening now from Bruce Gagnon's Organizing Notes blog. When I visited Gangjeong, I traveled as part of a delegation which included Bruce, who was representing the United States, Shinako, an activist from Okinawa, and Corazon Fabros from the Philippines

The Korean peninsula has been in the news on Guam for the past few weeks after a North Korean attack killed two South Korean Marines and two civilians on the island of Yeonpyeong which both nations claim to be on their side of the border. I have found the coverage of the issue to be frustratingly simple and incomplete, following the predictable narrative of blaming North Korea for naked aggression despite the fact that the South Korean Government has admitted firing first. They claim they were not directed at North Korea, but just part of a training exercise which was simulating a possible attack on North Korea and involved 70,000 troops near the North-South border. I traveled to South Korea earlier this year on a research trip in order to interview different communities affected by US bases there and also activists working towards the reunification of the Koreas. My entire trip was completely overshadowed by an earlier incident on the Korean peninsula, the sinking of the South Kor