|
Hildegard Breiner, 2004 Nuclear-Free Future Lifetime Achievement Award Recipient
Jutta Wiesenthal's Presentation Speech
Hildegard Breiner is the Grande Dame of the antinuclear and ecological movements in Austria. Her credentials go back to the milestone 1978 referendum, in which the Austrian people, by a narrow margin, opted against nuclear power.
When I met Hildegard a few days ago, my first impression of her was of a rather quiet, polite and friendly person, even a little bit shy. But when I began talking and listening to her I realized I was dealing with a strong and remarkable woman who is determined to act. No wonder that she and her late husband were so successful in spearheading the campaign against the Austria's first nuclear power plant at Zwentendorf. The plant never materialized, and to this day Austria has remained a nuclear-free country.
In the second half of the 1980s, Hildegard and her husband played a major role in another successful fight - against the nuclear reprocessing plant to be built in Wackersdorf in neighboring Germany. Drawing on the experience gained in the grassroots struggle against Zwentendorf, and increasingly sophisticated in getting media attention, the Breiners mobilized in Austria, and helped to organize massive protest rallies at the construction site in Germany.
While still an outspoken antinuclear activist, in recent years Hildegard has been focusing on alternative energy sources. In 1996, she started the Sunshine Campaign with the goal of sensitizing the people for photovoltaics. She persuaded the State government to support this drive by funding public relations campaigns and providing seed money for pilot projects.
Recently the Sunshine Campaign gave its first grant to two young men from Sierra Leone to come to Rajastan to be trained as solar engineers at the Barefoot College in Tilonia. Hildegard Breiner's determination links Austria with Africa and India.
Hildegard, your work not only connects half the world, it also is a marvelous source of inspiration. I especially want to say that you give me, us and many others strength and courage to continue in our struggle against the current renaissance of nuclear power in our world. Thank you.
We, the Nuclear Future Award Committee, are very proud to honor you and your late husband's work by awarding you the 2004 Lifetime Achievement Award in this beautiful modern amphitheatre of Jaipur, with the full moon just rising above us.
Namasté!
I'm so grateful and simply happy about this wonderful and honourful award!
But it is not only for me, my deceased husband also should have had it, because we all did together - and in the beginning he was the driving force. So in my heart he is here with me now. And I feel myself as a symbolic person also fo all the people who struggled with us against nuclear power plants. I am representatively here and they are also highly honored by this award.
So I'm sure that gives new input and encouragement to proceed in the struggle against the utilization of nuclear power. Now we have to change the mind and to work with the sun! And we have to write a new chapter, with peaceful energy for the future, with decentral units, so that our children and grandchildren no more have to die for oil ...
Civic resistance is so important - but also to force the renewable energies!
My third "thing at heart" is to conserve nature. I'm the president of the organisation "Conservation of Nature" in my state of Vorarlberg.
You see, there is much of working in all directions, because my motivation is JUST DO IT !
And always again you have to begin and to stand up again.
Both we Austrians and the old Chinese in the book of wisdom, the
I Ging, say: Perseverance furthers!
Hildegard Breiner
Jaipur, 28th November 2004
|
