Galway, Amnesty International Activists shoot over 300 Pedestrians in William Street Today !

galway | rights, freedoms and repression | news report

Saturday April 08, 2006 22:43

by Tommy Donnellan - Amnesty International Irish Section

"The obscenity that is the international arms trade.”

Today, in strength, Galway's Amnesty International activists took to William Street to protest over the obscenity that every year throughout the world, more than half a million people are killed
by armed violence – that’s one person every minute and to let the Irish government and UN know that there is a solution; a legally binding, rigorously enforced, international Arms Trade Treaty that will seriously kybosh the flow of arms to countries that use them to

The noted street busker Kieran Davies & acolytes in Williamsgate Street.

To facilitate this, the activists "shot" over 300 passing pedestrians to add their faces and outrage to the Million Faces project. The faces will part of a huge exhibition in Dublin in May and will also be part of the international exhibition to be held in New York in July to mark the UN Conference on small arms where governments will decide on the future of the Arms Trade Treaty.

Ireland's hand is filthy and complicit in this traffic as very year over €300 million of military goods and €4billion of what are referred to as dual use goods (including the trigger for the tomahawk missile and components for weapons systems). Jameen Kaur, Regional Co-ordinator of Amnesty International and head honcho of the AI shop in Middle Street, Galway is of the firm view that; “We must recognise that as an increasingly important exporter of military goods, we are part of the problem but we can chose to be part of the solution”

Labour Party President and Spokesperson on Foreign Affairs, Michael D Higgins TD, has said that "under Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats Ireland has become more heavily involved in the international arms trade, following revelations that military equipment sales from Ireland have topped €300 million since they came to power.Deputy Higgins commented, “The Government has repeatedly told the public in recent years that Ireland is not a producer of arms in the normal international sense. How can such a claim stack-up when Irish-based companies exported €30 (or is that €300????) million worth of military equipment in 2005?.“Previously, Ireland had a reputation of advocating international disarmament, but that status has been shattered by these figures. Furthermore, the European Union, without any objections from Ireland, has become one of the largest sources of armaments sales in the world.“The Government has consistently ignored the advice of independent consultants, Amnesty International, and a report by Forfas report two years ago commissioned by Tanaiste Mary Harney, that identified serious gaps in procedures for the monitoring and control of military exports from Ireland. Our control systems lag seriously behind those of major arms exporters such as the UK. The Government has consistently ignored warnings that this an incentive for British-based arms brokers to move to Ireland. Today’s figures demonstrate the consequences of choosing to disregard that advice.“There is a need for a new legislative framework for the monitoring and control of military and dual-use exports. There must be clear guidelines for identification of all material and components. Irish manufactured equipment must not end up in the hands of undemocratic or repressive regimes, where they will be used against their own people.“Ireland’s international reputation has already been damaged by the government’s support for the war on Iraq. Now, it seems, we are heavily involved in the obscenity that is the international arms trade.”

Sister Barbara Raftery, along with her students from the Portlaoise Presentation, Scoil Chriost Rí school, have also helped expose the lack of regulation in Ireland that allows arms dealers free rein.

According to Kate Butler's Sunday Times report headlined Undercover nun in arms deal sting; "Their foray into the murky world of secret dealing began in October, when Sister Barbara was approached by Action From Ireland (Afri), a human rights group with which she had worked previously. Afri asked if some of her students at Scoil Chriost Rí would be interested in taking part in a project for the Dispatches documentary series on Channel 4. The Leaving Cert schoolgirls — Alison Lewis, Maeve O’Sullivan, Clare Coleman, Laura Kearns and Mary Maloney, along with fifth-year student Margaret Hyland — set up a company called Seachtar, the Irish word for seven. They contacted an Israeli company that was advertising stone-throwing machines. The husband-and-wife-run company offered to send the equipment to Ireland under an “agriculture” classification — in contravention of Israeli law. They also volunteered to travel to Ireland to give a demonstration. A Dispatches team, led by the presenter Mark Thomas, then took over, setting up a company called Williams Defence Ireland. They paid the Israeli company $7,500 (€6,250) for the machine, which can fire up to 600 stones a minute. “They called it a manure- dispersal unit,” said Thomas. “They were breaking the law in Israel. They needed an arms licence to discuss the deal in the first place, and they needed a licence to export. They have admitted they had neither.” Although Israel classifies stone-throwing machines as arms, Ireland has no such classification, making it legal to import the equipment. The dealer and his wife gave a demonstration to Thomas in a field in Portlaoise. The schoolgirls were hiding nearby and listened on headphones. “When he offered to come over to demonstrate how it worked, I was nervous,” said Sister Barbara. “I didn’t want the students to be part of the confrontation, though I was happy to be part of it myself.” Once Thomas revealed that he was a reporter, the schoolgirls confronted the dealers, saying the machines were used against teenagers. The dealer argued that the machinery could also be used to fire Plasticine balls and sweets. “The two Israelis were actually lovely people and that’s what I found so awful about the whole thing,” said the nun. “He said the machine wasn’t used to kill anyone, that it was for crowd control. But when he demonstrated it, my heart jumped. It was frightening to see the stones coming out at such speed.” She defended her entrapment tactics as both moral and within the law. “People might criticise us for teaching the girls about this, but the purpose of it was to teach them about human rights and how to be active citizens,” Sister Barbara said. The Dispatches documentary, entitled After School Arms Club, argues that Ireland’s lack of regulation means it is legal to do such deals in Ireland, even if the weapons never come here but just move from one country to another. The schoolgirls brokered deals to transport a stun baton from Korea to California, and also imported leg irons to Ireland from South Africa. “It took a length of time to look into what was available,” said Sister Barbara. “The shocking thing was that these websites were selling normal things like kettles. Yet once you went deeper, it turned out that they were also selling arms. “We didn’t want to do anything illegal or immoral. Leg irons, which Amnesty call torture weapons, are not illegal in Ireland. Stun batons are illegal here, so we brokered them from Korea to California. A human rights activist received the stun baton and dismantled it.” Thomas described the school team as remarkable women. “When they brokered a deal to bring over leg irons from South Africa, they could have sent them to a human rights contact in Egypt, to show how easy it was to move them,” he said. “Instead the girls decided not to, because it could have caused problems for the human rights defenders in Egypt if they were caught with this kind of equipment. I thought that was a very mature decision. “What we’re concentrating on is changing the law at the European end. The European Commission’s position is that all members have to introduce laws on brokering, so Ireland is in breach of EU commitments.” (end of Kate Butler's report).

The global arms trade is dangerously unregulated, and allows weapons to reach repressive governments, human rights abusers and criminals. To address these concerns, three global organizations; International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA), Oxfam and Amnesty International, have joined together to launch an international campaign in over sixty countries, to reduce arms proliferation and misuse, and to introduce an international Arms Trade Treaty.The global arms trade is dangerously unregulated, and allows weapons to reach repressive governments, human rights abusers and criminals.

The Body Shop in Galway, let it be said, facilitated and actively promoted today's much supported action, more of the same is planned in Galway for this Monday and ad infinitum.

EVERYONE CAN CONTRIBUTE TO THIS CAMPAIGN : Just take a photo of yourself and upload it directly to the Million Faces website, see Related Link, or else draw your self portrait and post it to Amnesty @ 48 Fleet Street, Dublin 2.

ALREADY, AS OF TODAY, 901,576 HAVE SIGNED UP WITH THEIR PHOTOS.