Statement in Support of Nollaig na mBan Women's Anti-War Vigil at Shannon

Women North and South Together Say No Bush Visit, No Weapons of Mass Destruction in Ireland

*US military Out of Shannon and Raytheon Out of Derry*

The Global Women’s Strike calls on all women to join the women’s anti-war vigil at Shannon, from midnight tonight to noon on Tuesday 6th January – Women’s Christmas in Ireland.

In this autonomous women’s action, we join women from Shannon, veterans of Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp and of the 2003 Shannon peace camp, students, housewives, teachers, office workers . . . We join with women and men in Derry who on Wednesday will vigil all day to demand that Raytheon, giant US arms manufacturer, get out of the city. Now governments and political parties talk about peace and jobs in the North and the South, and the necessity of keeping the US 'friendship' to enable them to import the arms trade to Derry and the US military to Shannon...

The Global Women’s Strike calls on all women to join the women’s anti-war vigil at Shannon, from midnight tonight to noon on Tuesday 6th January – Women’s Christmas in Ireland.

In this autonomous women’s action, we join women from Shannon, veterans of Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp and of the 2003 Shannon peace camp, students, housewives, teachers, office workers . . . We join with women and men in Derry who on Wednesday will vigil all day to demand that Raytheon, giant US arms manufacturer, get out of the city. Now governments and political parties talk about peace and jobs in the North and the South, and the necessity of keeping the US 'friendship' to enable them to import the arms trade to Derry and the US military to Shannon.

Such is the strength of opposition to war, occupation and to our government being bought off by the US, that women are taking time off from waged and unwaged work to protest. Even women who have been seriously ill are determined to join the vigil. Playwright and author Margaretta D’Arcy (a Strike organiser), film-maker Lelia Doolan and writer Jennifer Johnston are supporting the event. Messages of encouragement have come from many others who cannot make it on the night and a vigil in support of women at Shannon and events in Derry will be held outside Dail Eireann [Irish parliament] in Dublin on Tuesday. Women ask no permission to be braving freezing temperatures and rain to fight for our lives; we ask no permission to live or die.

We in Ireland know about what happens in prolonged war, about the terrible divisions that are stoked by occupiers, and which remain centuries later. We demand an end to the continuing illegal war and occupation of Iraq, and to all wars, and the end of the use of Shannon airport, illegal under the Irish constitution, for the refuelling of planes carrying US troops and
weapons.

As mothers and other carers, we are one with our sisters in war zones, under occupation, curfew and threat of US-backed coups. We women and our children are the majority of those killed in armed conflicts and the majority of refugees worldwide. Never the passive victims we are made out to be, it is women who pick up the pieces, burying the dead, searching for missing loved ones, nursing the wounded and trying to make life bearable in massive refugee camps around the world. Our struggle to end war and against occupation is the daily struggle to get enough food and clean water for our families, medical treatment, education, preservation of communities not only to preserve life but to enrich it. All the while women are under threat of rape and other sexual violence used as weapons of war against us.

Strip searches and sexual assaults on women of Iraq by the occupiers at military checkpoints go largely unreported. We join with our Iraqi sisters in their demands for justice and an end to the occupation and war and with women in the enormous anti-war movement in the US, where in the wealthiest country in the world millions eat in soup kitchens, are homeless or do slave
labour in prisons, to pay for that government's massive spending on war. The other price is paid by military families who demand that their loved ones, 115,000 of whom came through Shannon in 2003, come home at once before they are killed or maimed for the profit of Halliburton and Bechtel.

The Global Women's Strike international co-ordination in London have written to say: 'We send our love and support to the women opposing war and occupation at Shannon airport and to the women and men of Derry who want the mass murderers Raytheon out. As grassroots Londoners, many of us are from other countries as well as England, including Argentina, Austria, Eritrea,Ghana, Ireland, Italy, Native America, Uganda and the US. We are many races, women with disabilities, lesbian and bisexual women, younger and older women. Some of us are asylum seekers, driven from home by the West’s brutality and theft in the Third World.

‘Women have always been at the heart of the anti-war movement. Our work has been as society’s carers, and to protect those we care for we are the first to demand justice for all and an end to war. Military budgets must support our caring, not the killing of our children and making them into killers of other mothers’ children. Our anti-war picket in Parliament Square regularly
reports news of your anti-war organising. We are inspired and encouraged by your determination to take on the warmongers in Ireland, North and South together.

‘Power to the sisters and therefore to the movement against war!'

We laughed when the Irish government said it was on the side of the majority who opposed war all along. We are angry that they lay claim to Ireland's historical ties with the US to patch things up between the EU and Bush over the war. Will the money for a Bush visit to Ireland be stolen from us in more savage social welfare cuts? Women in Ireland do not want Bush to come
to this country and the US people don't want him in the US either!

Shannon airport is at the heart of the corruption, bribe-taking, deal-making and warmongering that passes for political representation in Ireland; we will continue to make Shannon the focus of our opposition for as long as it takes to end this sell-out. Let Bertie Ahern come to the women's midnight court at our vigil. Let him try and tell us that he is anti-war and cares about any of our lives as the warplanes and troops pass through only yards away.

Invest in Caring Not Killing!

Issued by the Global Women’s Strike, Ireland