Yana Mintoff

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Yana Mintoff is a peace activist, the daughter of Baroness Moyra De Vere Bentinck and the former Prime Minister of Malta, Dom Mintoff.

In 1968, at the age of 17, Yana Mintoff, travelled to Czechoslovakia on her own, outraged by the Soviet occupation of that country and its harsh repression. She worked at Olomouc as a youth volunteer and opposed the Soviet military presence.

In 1973 to 1974, while working as a teacher in Greece, she was swept up in the student protests against the oppressive military Junta that had taken power in a CIA-backed coup. She was amongst the students who were attacked by the army outside the Polytechnic in Athens. Many students were killed and she was shot at three times before managing to escape.

In 1974 she contributed to the Granada television documentary series World in Action. The subject was a scandal involving British architect John Poulson and the building of a "white elephant" hospital on the Maltese Island of Gozo, opened by Queen Elizabeth II. Her research into the bribery and corruption of local officials led the trail to the British Home Secretary Reginald Maudling. He resigned after this documentary was broadcast.

As a teacher and an activist in Britain, she worked for workers' rights, women's rights, and the rights of the Irish and Palestinian people to self-determination and freedom from occupation.

On 6 July 1978 Yana Mintoff took part in a demonstration in the House of Commons in London^[1]. To protest against Britain's military presence in Northern Ireland^[2], three bags of horse manure were hurled from the public gallery during a debate on Scottish Home Rule. Yana Mintoff and a man were dragged off by police, arrested and later she was fined.

On her return to Malta, she helped establish the Association of Women of the Mediterranean Region, an organization to unite women in nineteen Mediterranean countries in the cause of Justice, Equality and Peace. Dr. Bland helped compile four books of collected works: Militarism in the Mediterranean Malta 1994; Health in the Mediterranean, including interviews with Tuareg Nuclear test Victims, Malta 1995; Nobody Can Imagine Our Longing: Refugees and Immigrants in the Mediterranean, Plain View Press, Austin TX 1996; In Search of Peace, Plain View Press, 1998. An economist by training, her publications include an article published in the International Journal of Health Services, Johns Hopkins University, MD, USA.

In Texas, Yana Bland worked with the Foundation for a Compassionate Society and was invited to speak at the UN Alternative Forum in Beijing China in 1995, on the subject of women and peace. She also worked on a study of the health effects of military pollution at Kelly Air Force Base, San Antonio Texas, where she won two Environmental Justice awards. In addition to being an activist in the cause of peace, Yana Bland has been a teacher, administrator and the founder of two schools during the past thirty years.

Dr. Yana Mintoff Bland is now the Superintendent of the Katherine Anne Porter School, a charter school, in Wimberley, Texas^[3].

Mintoff is married to David P. Bland. Her children are Cetta S. Mainwaring and Daniel X. Mainwaring.

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