Author: Ian Pocock

Say no to the Malvern arms fair

Another arms fair but another chance for resistance. Join Three Counties CAAT and others to take action against the Malvern arms fair (otherwise known as the 3CDSE Defence and Security Expo) on November 4th. With delightful companies such as BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin and Thales attending, they are but three reasons to join the actions against the fair. Full details here. You can also sign the petition against it here.

Some inspiring ways the arms trade has been resisted recently

The last month has seen some excellent work to take on various aspects of the arms trade and related issues of oppression. Firstly, a group of lawyers have filed a dossier on war crimes in Yemen to British police and prosecutors, calling for the arrest of 20 people from two Gulf countries if they step foot in the UK. Read more about that here.

The wonderful media organisation Declassified UK released an excellent short film about Britain’s relationship with Saudi Arabia, primarily focusing on an arms factory in Lancashire that sends a supply flight to Saudi Arabia every week. In another example of the UK supplying weapons to countries with dubious human rights records, Byline Times exposed that the UK government has approved sniper licences to three countries on its own list of countries of concern. Read more about that here. In Bahrain, the jailed academic Dr Abduljalil AlSingace has embarked on a hunger strike to protest against his poor treatment in jail where he is a serving a life sentence due to his role in the pro-democracy uprising in 2011. You can read more about his case here and sign a petition calling for his release here.

No to Saudi Arabian sports-washing!

Saudi Arabia is hosting a Formula 1 grand prix for the first time later this year. Join us on October 16^th at 2pm to call out this blatant example of sports-washing. The Saudi Arabian regime has carried out a brutal war on Yemen, causing the world’s worst humanitarian crisis and killing thousands of civilians. They have bombed schools, funerals and hospitals as well as being involved in other atrocities such as the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. The World Food Programme has recently said that 5 million people in Yemen are facing famine and another 16 million are close to starvation.

The UK is complicit in this crisis due to its continued supply of weapons to the Saudi Arabian regime and the support it provides to the regime’s bombing campaign. Since the war began in 2015 the UK has licensed £5.3bn worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia. Join us to protest against Formula 1 allowing Saudi Arabia to whitewash its crimes – see here for more details. You can also share the Facebook event.

The DSEI arms fair was resisted!

As the DSEI arms fair rolled into town again, it was met with two weeks of fierce and inventive resistance. From people getting on top of military helicopters to military vehicles being prevented from entering the fair to lock ons, people showed their strong opposition to its presence. As in previous years, there were themed days of action covering vital issues such as Stop Arming Israel, borders and migration, climate justice and, particularly pertinently, solidarity with Afghanistan. It was great to see so many varied groups involved in taking action, including Friends of Al Aqsa, Kurdistan Solidarity Network, Palestine Action and many others. The police’s handling of the protests has rightly been condemned and you can read more about that here. Phoenix Coop did great summaries of each day of action and you can find them all here.

London CAAT meetings

Our meetings are on the third Tuesday of every month at 6.30pm and are still taking place online. If you want to attend a meeting, please reply to this email and we will send you details.

The DSEI arms fair arrives in London again and we must oppose it

The DSEI arms fair, which is euphemistically called the Defence and Security Equipment International, is one of the world’s largest arms fairs. In 2019 it brought together over 36,000 arms buyers and dealers from 114 countries to network and make deals. This year military delegations from oppressive regimes will be browsing the wares of 1,600+ arms companies selling everything from guns and bombs to fighter jets and warships. At the last DSEI, the UK invited delegations to DSEI from 67 countries, including countries involved in military conflicts and at war, and on its own list of human rights abusers. This fair is where war and conflict starts and it must be strongly opposed.

Between September 6^th and 16^th there is a whole range of actions taking place to oppose and disrupt the fair, starting with Disarm DSEI’s Critical Mass cycle ride and ending with a Palestinian-led rally. In-between you can join various themed days of action, check out the return of the awesome Art the Arms Fair and take part in the Tank the Arms Fair day of action on the opening day of the fair. Information about all these and more can be found on the Stop the Arms Fair website.

Say no to the Liverpool arms fair

London is not the only venue for an arms fair this month. The AOC Europe 2021 arms fair is scheduled to take place at the council-owned ACC Exhibition Centre and Liverpool Against the Arms Fair have called a demonstration against it on September 11^th. Join them to oppose another arms fair where lethal weapons and military technology will be marketed and sold. Full details here. You can also email the directors of the ACC asking them to revoke permission for the event here.

Come along to our walking tour of arms companies that will be at the DSEI arms fair

The DSEI arms fair is unfortunately returning to London in September. With that in mind, we thought it would be a good idea to put on a walking tour to introduce people to some of the arms companies in our midst, companies which will display their destructive wares at the fair.

DSEI is where military delegations from repressive regimes will browse the latest weapons and make deals to buy even more lethal equipment. This is where war and conflict starts and it must be stopped. Check out the Stop the Arms Fair website for more details about the protests that will greet the fair.

We will visit these companies’ offices, hear about their disgraceful work, and get inspired to take against the heinous monstrosity that is DSEI. Join us on August 7^th at 2pm – more details and how to sign up here. We are nearly at capacity for the tour so be quick!

Arab Spring film launched with a fascinating panel discussion

Last week we held a successful launch event for our new film on the Arab Spring uprisings. We had illuminating contributions from Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei and Dr David Wearing. They talked about the torture of political prisoners in Bahrain (including Dr. Abduljalil Al-Singace, who is on hunger strike to protest his degrading treatment – you can take action regarding that here), how the Saudis wouldn’t be able to replace the weapons the UK and others sell to them easily and therefore their bombardment of Yemen would end and how individual actions can make a difference in putting pressure on governments to stop fuelling violence and oppression. The film itself covered the uprisings in Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Syria and Libya, outlined how they were brutally suppressed and showed how UK arms sales and other support helped these countries do so. You can watch the film here and a recording of the talks and discussion will be available soon. Thank you to Rainbow Collective for their fantastic work on the video and to our member Nicholas Davis for his amazing work writing and narrating the film.

Launch event for our film that highlights UK complicity in the suppression of the Arab Spring uprisings

Join us on July 26^th at 6.30pm as we launch our brand new film ‘10 Years of winter since the Arab Spring – the uprisings, the aftermaths and what we had to do with it all’. The film highlights the ten year anniversary of the Arab Spring uprisings, the decline in democracy and freedom since then and the role UK weapons and support played in suppressing the protests. It is a fascinating and disturbing insight into the uprisings and their brutal suppression. We made this film in collaboration with the wonderful Rainbow Collective.

We will hear from David Wearing, author of the book “AngloArabia: Why Gulf Wealth Matters To Britain.”, which exposes the UK’s close relations with Gulf Arab monarchies. More speakers are to be announced. You can sign up to the launch event here and there is also a Facebook event you can share.

An important victory for the right to protest

Protesters who blockaded the DSEI arms fair in 2017 won an amazing and important victory last month centring on the right to protest. The supreme court quashed their convictions for highway obstruction after they locked on outside the fair. The judge said “There should be a certain degree of tolerance to disruption to ordinary life, including disruption of traffic, caused by the exercise of the right to freedom of expression or freedom of peaceful assembly”. As one of the protesters Henrietta Cullinan said “That our simple protest, which lasted only a few minutes [it took police 90 minutes to remove them], though possibly disruptive, led to four years of legal toing and froing, illustrates very well the power of non-violence. Our government, like many governments, sees any protest as a threat to its authority, as well it might. Selling arms is a rotten, dangerous business.” You can read more about the ruling here.

This is a very welcome ruling in the run up to the next DSEI arms fair in September this year. There will be a day of action on the opening day of the fair on September 14^th so keep an eye out for more details about that. On August 7^th, London CAAT will be doing a walking tour of some of the arms companies that will be exhibiting at DSEI so please save the date.

Find out how UK companies contributed to violence against Black Lives Matters protesters

London CAAT wanted to show solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. With that in mind, we worked with Rainbow Collective to produce a video that highlighted the companies that have likely supplied weapons used on Black Lives Matter protesters as they took to the streets after the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. The companies in this video are complicit in the violent reaction to the protests and help maintain the structural racism and violent nature of the police. We posted the video on the anniversary of the death of George Floyd to highlight that not enough has changed in that time. You can take action here to call on the UK government to stop sales of anti-protest weapons to the US as well as signing this petition.

CAAT also wrote a blog post on how the UK fuels the militarisation of police globally and helps countries repress their populations. This article how the UK continued to export riot gear to the US after the protests.

There still needs to be further change, both in the US and here, to ensure that black lives truly matter – check out organisations such as Black Lives Matter UK and the United Families and Friends Campaign for ways you can get involved in the struggle for racial equality.

Join the campaign to stop and disrupt the DSEI arms fair

The Stop the Arms Fair Network is gearing up to take action against the DSEI arms fair, due to take place in September. This fair will bring military delegations from some of the world’s most repressive regimes to London to browse the latest military technology and do deals. These deals will lead to more death and destruction globally. This is where war and conflict starts and DSEI must be stopped. The network are meeting monthly online to plan how we oppose this hideous event. If you want to get involved with the network, you can email resistDSEI at protonmail.com to get on their mailing list and find out about these meetings. London CAAT are also thinking about how we can take action against the fair – come along to one of our meetings if you want to get involved – email us at londoncaat at riseup.net for details.

There is still a chance DSEI might move online this year, as have other arms fairs recently. Therefore CAAT are running a session on disrupting online arms fairs. Join the awesome Kirsten Bayes on June 17^th to how we can adapt our tactics to the online space and take action against these heinous events wherever they are. More details and how to sign up here.

Arms sales on trial again

April 22^rd saw fantastic news as CAAT was granted permission to bring their legal challenge over arms sales supplied for use in the war on Yemen to the High Court. This is another chance to hold the government to account on these heinous sales and put a stop to them.

Six years of war fought with UK weapons has caused massive devastation to the country and killed at least 8,759 civilians. The government has ignored allegations of breaches of international humanitarian law and numerous attacks on schools, hospitals and funerals; claiming they are ‘isolated incidents’.

In 2019 legal action by CAAT forced the government to stop issuing export licences for weapons that could be used in the war in Yemen. The government was ordered to retake all its previous decisions in a lawful manner.

But in July 2020 the government resumed arms sales, and since then it has licensed more than £1.6 billion additional weapons sales in support of the war. Declassified also revealed recently that BAE Systems have sold £17.6bn of weaponry to Saudi Arabia during the war.

This permission to proceed puts more pressure on the UK government to end these sales once and for all. The Yemeni people cannot wait any longer. You can read more about the legal challenge here and you can still sign the open letter demanding that Boris Johnson stops the arms sales now.

Call on the London Mayoral candidates to Stop DSEI

September 2021 will see the Defence and Security Equipment International, the world’s largest arms fair, return to London. This fair hosts military and security delegations from some of the world’s most repressive regimes and will enable weapons to be marketed to these regimes, fuelling more death and misery globally. DSEI 2019 featured over 1,700 exhibitors, including all of the biggest arms companies, marketing their wares to more than 36,000 attendees. But we can put pressure on the mayoral candidates to oppose this fair. In conjunction with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, we are calling on the candidates to publicly say they oppose DSEI, recover the costs of policing the event from DSEI’s organisers and commit to doing everything they can to stop DSEI from returning to London.

If you are in London, please email the candidates here. If you are out of London, you can write to the Secretary of State for International Trade here. DSEI has darkened London’s boundaries for far too long and it must be banned from taking place ever again.

Holding the people of Yemen in the light

On the sixth anniversary of the start of the war on Yemen, we held a vigil for the people of Yemen, who have experienced so much suffering due to the Saudi-led coalition’s bombardment of their country. We played a video from the Yemeni journalist Ahmad Algohbary and read out a poem by the Yemeni–Scouse poet and activist Amina Atiq, which you can read on the last page of this fantastic CAAT zine. We then lit candles and stayed in silence as we held the people of Yemen in our thoughts. Our vigil was preceded by Stop the War Coalition’s rally, which you can watch here.

On a related note, CAAT have produced a new open letter to Boris Johnson calling on him to end UK arms sales for use in the war on Yemen. As the United States has frozen arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, this is a great opportunity to put pressure on the UK to do the same. You can sign the open letter here.

Support Bahrainis campaign for an inquiry into the Bahrain Grand Prix

24 human rights organisations, including our friends the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD), and 61 MPs have called for an independent inquiry into the Bahrain Grand Prix over human rights concerns in the country. The Bahraini regime brutally crushed the pro-democracy uprising during the Arab Spring of 2011 and the human rights situation has grown worse over the last decade. Democracy activists have been tortured and jailed and even children have been tortured and convicted. 51 individuals have been sentenced to death and over 900 people have had their citizenship revoked. This is a form of sportswashing and Formula 1 should abide by its own human rights policy.

Lewis Hamilton has responded for calls to take a stance, including from an 11 year old boy who’s father is on death row, and said Formula 1 cannot ignore concerns surrounding human rights in the countries it visits. He said “There are issues all around the world but I do not think we should be going to these countries and just ignoring what is happening in those places, arriving, having a great time and then leaving”. You can read more about his stance here. Check out BIRD’s website for more information on how to support their #Race4Rights campaign.

As the war on Yemen enters its sixth year, join the rally calling for its immediate end

Six years ago, the Saudi-led coalition began a brutal and devastating bombardment of Yemen. This war has claimed 233,000 lives and it is estimated that 24 million Yemenis need humanitarian assistance. This was has been supported all of the way with UK-built aircraft firing UK-made missiles. The UK is fully complicit in this war and bears a great responsibility for the carnage in Yemen.

Join Stop the War coalition on March 26^th, the anniversary of the war’s start, to call for an immediate end to British support for the war, an end to the arms sales to the coalition and an end to all military support. Speakers at the rally include Ahmed Al-Babati, Jeremy Corbyn and Andrew Feinstein. You can find more details and sign up here.

We will also be holding a vigil to stand in solidarity with the people of Yemen and commemorate the lives that have been lost there since the war began. This will be immediately after the rally at 7pm. We will hear from the Yemeni journalist Ahmad Algohbary before reading names of some of the innocent civilians killed in Yemen and then light some candles in memory of them. You can find more details here.

Sign up for CAAT’s Digital conference!

CAAT will be hosting their annual conference online this year on March 19th-21st and they have put together an amazing programme that will be educational, interactive and inspiring. There will be panels marking 10 years of the Arab uprisings of 2011, rethinking security and on the role of art and creativity in our resistance. It’s bound to be stimulating weekend so please go here for more info and to sign up.

CAAT nominated for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize!

We are very excited to announce that CAAT have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize alongside their partner organisation Mwatana for Human Rights, a grassroots organisation working in Yemen. This is fantastic news and testament to both organisation’s sterling work raising awareness about the devastating humanitarian crisis in Yemen and the UK government’s complicity in it through the arms sales and support it provides to the Saudi-led coalition.

Mwatana have done amazing work documenting human rights violations by all parties in the war and raising the voices of victims. You can check our their website here and read more about the important work they do.

CAAT have written a blog on what the nomination means for their campaigning and you can read that here. One of the main benefits is that it is an opportunity to bring to the world’s attention the suffering Yemeni people have endured since the war started. This is a war that is fuelled by western weapons, including £6.8 billion worth of arms by the UK alone.

We are grateful to The American Friends Service Committee and Quaker Peace & Social Witness for nominating CAAT and Mwatana.

‘The war must end’ – thousands globally call for an end to the war on Yemen

385 organizations from 25 countries signed a call to action against the war on Yemen, an end to the arms sales to the Saudi-led coalition and more humanitarian aid to the people of Yemen as well as organising various actions opposing the war. Yemenis themselves took to the streets in their thousands to protest against the ongoing Saudi-led assault on their country. There were also solidarity demos in Bahrain, car cavalcades in San Francisco and a students rally. The day ended with a massively oversubscribed global online rally where attendees heard from speakers such as Ahmed Al-Babati (the British-Yemeni Soldier who was arrested for protesting against the war), Dr Shireen Al-Adeimi (who as an Ontario citizen and Yemeni-American powerfully called on Justin Trudeau and Joe Biden to end the war), Jeremy Corbyn and Dr Cornel West.

London CAAT posted a statement highlighting BAE Systems’ complicity in the devastation of Yemen. Their weapons have caused large amounts of death and destruction in Yemen. Since the war started, they have made £15bn from sales to the Saudi Arabian regime, mainly through sales and maintenance of Tornado and Typhoon aircraft that the regime use to bomb the country. The statement urged BAE to stop selling such weapons to the Saudis and halt their involvement in the Yemen war. You can see the statement here.

The days afterwards saw positive moves towards ending the weapons sales to the Saudi-led coalition. Joe Biden froze arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE and Italy blocked arms exports to those same countries. Boris Johnson must follow suit and we can keep the pressure on – write to your MP regarding these sales here. You can also sign this petition calling on Biden to reverse Trump’s designation of the Houthis as a ‘terrorist’ organization, a terrible move which has blocked aid getting to Yemeni civilians. Yemen cannot wait any longer for this devastating war to end.