Tell the Bahraini King he is not welcome here, May 11th
The Bahraini King is once again attending the Royal Windsor Horse Show and once again the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD) will be protesting against his presence. The King and the Bahraini regime have a horrific human rights record and the UK is complicit in this through it’s arms sales to the regime. Since the Arab Spring uprising in 2011, the UK has sold £103m of arms to the Bahraini military. Family members of the Director of BIRD have been have been targeted because of protests against the King’s visits.
Please join BIRD this Saturday to protest against the Show’s sponsorship by Bahrain’s dictatorship. They will be departing for the show at 10am from Paddington Station. If you are able to attend, please send an email to [email protected]. If you are making your own way there, the Royal Windsor Horse Show is taking place in the grounds of Windsor Castle. Information on how to reach the event can be found here.
CAMPAIGN WIN!! – BAE Systems dropped as sponsor of the Festival of Making
In a wonderfully fast victory for our movement, it took two days for the Festival of Making to drop BAE as their sponsor. Art Not Arms again the led the way, targeting the festival on Twitter to point out the massive harm BAE’s business causes globally and launching a petition. The festival capitulated quickly and announced that the Festival was no longer receiving support from BAE. After getting BAE dropped as the sponsor of the Great Exhibition of the North, we are closing down the number of spaces where BAE can whitewash the true nature of their business. Unfortunately, they are still sponsors of Pride in Surrey and Pride Blackpool – you can sign the petitions about those sponsorship deals here and here.
Our walking tour of arms companies
We are still finalizing our plans for our walking tour around some of the arms companies that will be exhibiting at the DSEI arms fair but we have now chosen July 6th as the date for it. It will be an interesting and informative walk around some of the more heinous companies we have in our midst and will hopefully fire you up to take action at DSEI. We will send final details in next month’s bulletin.