Testimony Fund

Janet Bloomfield and Kilali Alailima, Director of the American Friends Service Committee Pacific Programme,
worked together to bring Pacific Indigenous Peoples to the United Nations through the Testimony Fund.

Through her work as UK Director of the Atomic Mirror, Janet Bloomfield was committed to ensuring that the powerful stories of people directly affected by the toxic activities of the nuclear age were heard in the halls of power and by ordinary citizens. These stories have the power to transform the listeners and change the direction of public policy.

The Atomic Mirror maintains a special fund, called the Testimony Fund, that brings “Hibakusha” or atomic bomb survivors, atomic veterans, uranium miners, and people living “downwind” of nuclear test sites face-to-face with nuclear decision makers. A disproportionate number of people affected by the activities of the nuclear age live in indigenous communities, subject to manifold injustices.

Since 1995, the Atomic Mirror has raised over £10,000 British pounds and brought one such person each year to the capitols of nuclear weapons countries, United Nations meetings and other diplomatic arenas, and to citizen events at all levels.

Your donation will help to fulfill Janet’s dream that all the world, and especially young people, know these stories by heart. Please make your donation payable to ‘Saffron Walden Friends Meeting,’ c/o Friends Meeting House, High Street, Saffron Walden, Essex, CB10 1AA in the UK. In the US, or anywhere else, please make your donation payable to 'Atomic Mirror Testimony Fund,' and send to Atomic Mirror, P.O. Box 220, Port Hueneme, CA 93044, USA.

The Atomic Mirror sends its warm congratulations to our friend and advisor Motarilavoa Hilda Lini, of Vanuatu in the South Pacific on receiving the 2005
Nuclear Free Future Resistance award. This honour is richly deserved.
(24 September 2005)

Appeal to Bring Pacific Woman Leader to NPT in May 2006
Bring Motarilavoa Hilda Lini from Vanuatu to New York for the NPT Review Conference.
Help Bring a Pacific Woman who Made Nuclear History to the UN in May.

Thanks to all who generously responded to this appeal. Due to you we were able to bring Hilda Lini to New York to attend the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in May 2005. She was also able to attend the Fourth Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples at the United Nations in New York in May. She was unable to represent the government of Vanuatu due to a very recent change of government that did not allow time for the necessary diplomatic procedures to be gone through. However she was, as a well-known and highly respected activist and former government minister, able to engage in fruitful dialogue with delegations from the Pacific and other regions at the NPT. She also helped to initiate the establishment of a Disarmament Commission as part of the Permanent Forum.

She attended a number of meetings with fellow members of Abolition 2000 Global Council to plan strategies for coming year including the panel on Indigenous Perspectives on Nuclear Weapons Production and Testing, hosted by the Atomic Mirror.. She was the main speaker at the final Abolition 2000 Press Conference at the United Nations that was co-sponsored by the governments of Canada and New Zealand. The press conference is documented at: http://www.un.org/News/briefings/docs/2005/ngonptbrf050526.doc.htm and can be seen on video at: http://www.un.org/webcast/2005.html.