The Pentagon recently announced plans to detonate 700 tons of Ammonium Nitrate in Nevada on Western Shoshone land. The detonation, called the Divine Strake, is planned for June 2. The testing of weapons on sovereign Native American land is a direct violation of the March 10 decision by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), which called for the United States to freeze destructive actions being taken against the Western Shoshone peoples.
According to Lee Dazey, Development Coordinator for the Western Shoshone Defense Project (WSDP), the U.S. government has been detonating explosives on the Western Shoshone’s land since the 1950s, with the last major detonation occurring in 1992. Although the Divine Strake was approved by the state of Nevada in January, the test detonation could still be cancelled.
The WSDP is organizing an International Day of Action on May 28, where demonstrators will gather at the test site to protest the detonation. In addition, a delegation of Western Shoshone recently returned from Geneva, Switzerland, where they looked to the U.N. for support in opposing the detonation.
http://wsdp.org
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