In the Belly of the Chemical Beast: Hawaiian Activists Confront Syngenta on Its Home Turf

[marmar]

In the Belly of the Chemical Beast: Hawaiian Activists Confront Syngenta on Its Home Turf

Wednesday, 13 May 2015 00:00
By Mike Ludwig, Truthout | Report


I first met Malia Chun in late 2013, in front of her home on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, where she pointed between the houses across the street to a nearby field where the agrichemical giant Syngenta tests and produces genetically engineered corn treated with a considerable amount of pesticide.

I met up with Chun again a year and a half later, this time in Syngenta's front yard in Basel, Switzerland. After a short ride through winding, medieval streets on the city's famously punctual public transit, we took pictures outside the tall office building that serves as Syngenta's global headquarters, where a security guard told us we had no chance of getting inside without an employee escort. Unimpressed, Chun asked two university students sitting nearby if they were familiar with Syngenta. The students said they knew that Syngenta sold pesticides, and that a few weeks ago, demonstrators had hung a sign from the building in protest of chemicals thought to harm bees.

"Are you from Greenpeace?" one of the students asked.

"No," Chun replied. "I am from Hawaii."

Traveling with a small delegation from her island, Chun came halfway around the world to confront Syngenta as both a mother and a practicing teacher of Native Hawaiian culture. Chun and others in her community suspect the pesticides may be responsible for an uptick in health problems such as asthma and birth defects, including several cases where babies were born with their intestines outside of their bodies. "As far as pesticide exposure goes, it's most harmful to children, both born and unborn," Chun said. "It's also a direct desecration of our culture." ......................(more)

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/30750-in-the-belly-of-the-chemical-beast-hawaiian-activists-confront-syngenta-on-its-home-turf

[marym625]

1. K&R!

This is beautiful. Go them!