Republican News · Thursday 5 December 2002

The other arms inspectors

As the US continues toprepare for war and the UN inspectors get on with their job in Iraq, civilian weapons inspections have also been taking place across Europe.

On Friday, 15 November, two peace protesters entered the HMS Vanguard undetected. The Vanguard, one of four British Trident nuclear submarines, was undergoing a refit at Devonport docks in Plymouth. The two activists broke into the base and wandered through the sub for almost half an hour. They had to set off a fire alarm to draw attention to their presence.

In February this year HMS Vanguard, the first of four Trident submarines, arrived in Devonport for its scheduled refit. It is expected that refitting the four submarines will take a total of eight years. This poses appalling hazards from radioactive emissions and horrifying danger from an accident or attack to everybody who lives within at least a 30 mile radius of Plymouth, adding to the existing grave risk posed by the 12 nuclear-powered submarines already sited at Devonport. And all in the middle of a major and densely populated city.

The two activists, members of Trident Ploughshares, Petter Joelson (22) from Sweden and Elisa Silvennoinen (19) from Finland, appeared at Plymouth magistrates' court on 18 November charged with criminal damage to a fence valued at £250. The fence in question was not the perimeter fence of the Devonport Royal Naval base but a small fence protecting HMS Vanguard in its dock. They were released on bail not to enter the city of Plymouth, including Devonport, until a pre-trial hearing on 16 December.

Petter said: "I can't see the logic of a situation where Tony Blair is threatening Iraq with war if they don't grant access to weapons inspectors, when at the same we were arrested for a peaceful inspection of Britain's illegal weapons of mass destruction."

The Trident Ploughshares activists showed MoD security to be woefully inadequate. Since its creation in 1998, Trident Ploughshares has pledged to dismantle the British nuclear arsenal in a peaceful, non-violent, open and accountable manner. So far in the campaign there have been 1,790 arrests, 366 trials, 1,675 days spent in prison and £49,945 of fines and compensation orders.

Britain has four Trident nuclear submarines with a destructive capacity of more than 1,000 Hiroshima bombs. In March this year, the British minister of defence, George Hoon, threatened to use nuclear weapons against Iraq.

However, while the British government was one of the loudest voices for an attack against Iraq should that country fail to grant access to UN weapons inspectors, Blair's administration is ignoring a 1996 advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice stating the possession or threat to use nuclear arms is generally illegal.

On the day the two protesters appeared before the court, a group of civilian weapons inspectors blocked Plymouth's Devonport dockyard and organised a 'die in' outside the gate. The police presence was huge, and seven people were arrested.

On 16 November, 80 civilian inspectors approached the Kattenberg Naval Base in Amsterdam to determine the extent to which the base was cooperating in preparations for an attack on Iraq. Two inspectors managed to get into the base, where they were overpowered by military police, while others in a boat were also stopped by police.

On the same day, a delegation of the PVDA (Labour Party of Belgium) Youth occupied Antwerp City Hall, unrolling a banner saying 'No US troops in the Harbour' and demanding clarification regarding the presence of US weapons in Antwerp Harbour.

other major civilian weapons inspection was planned at the US Air Force Lakenheath base in East Anglia, where it is believed there are at least 30 nuclear missiles, and at the US airbase in Fairford in response to the arrival of B-2 Stealth bombers.

Lucio Gutiérrez - In the steps of Chavez

History repeats itself, and the election of former Ecuadorian coup leader Lucio Gutiérrez will remind many of that of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. The ex-army colonel polled 54.3% of the votes, compared with 45.7% for his rival - billionaire banana magnate Alvaro Noboa.

Gutiérrez owes his presidency to the trust and support of social groups long sceptical of institutional politics. Ecuador's poor - who compose nearly three quarters of this country's 12 million people - have ushered a former army colonel, a leader in the January 2000 uprising that toppled the presidency of Jamil Mahuad, into office, creating the most promising administration in years.

His party, the 21 January Patriotic Movement, campaigned in alliance with Pachakutik, the political arm of Ecuador's campesino and indigenous groups with a strong presence in Congress. At the centre of this alliance are 16 working groups, involving 1,000 people, who have been working daily on a Plan for Government, which the newly elected president will present in mid-December.

The blueprint for Gutiérrez's 21January Patriotic Movement demands the rejection of "neoliberal globalisation or any form of external intervention of international powers". However, in early November, Gutiérrez stripped off his military fatigues, donned a suit and toured three US cities, meeting with IMF officials and assuring a group in New York that he wasn´t "a populist, but rather popular".

Lucio owes his popularity, and his support, to his condemnation of the IMF-led reforms that have crippled Ecuador, impoverishing 65 per cent of the population, leaving 32 per cent "underemployed," and forcing an exodus of 2 million people, who have fled to find work in other countries.

Lucio has promised to promote Ecuador's oil sector, an objective that could alienate the Indigenous groups displaced by past and current oil projects, such as the OCP pipeline, a project intended to double Ecuador's oil exports, but at the cost of destroying Amazonian ecosystems and Indigenous lands in the process.

Mexico women march for justice

More than 1,000 women marched through Mexico City on Monday 25 November to demand that those responsible for killing hundreds of women in the border town of Ciudad Juarez be brought to justice. More than 300 young girls and women have been killed in the town since 1993.

The "Women in Black" procession was held to coincide with the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. The marchers, dressed in black and holding candles, were joined by families and friends of the victims as well as politicians and celebrities.

The case of the murdered women of Ciudad Juarez has caused widespread outrage. Dozens of suspects have been arrested over the years, but the deaths still continue, while drug-related killings and sex slavery are among the lines of investigation being pursued.

On Thursday 21 November, more remains were found in the northern border town.

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Two more deaths in Turkish Hunger Strike

Over the weekend, two more political prisoners died on hunger strike in Turkey.

These became the 100th and 101st deaths in the struggle against the isolation prisons.

Zeliha Erturk died in Sisli Etfal Hospital (Istanbul) onSaturday 30 November. She had continued her Death Fast action opposing isolation in the F-Type prisons for 551 days. Born in Sivas-Zara (in central Turkey) in 1977, Erturk started her Death Fast on 3 June 2001 as part of the 5th Team and became the 100th person to lose her life.

On Sunday morning, Feridun Yucel Batu (33) died. She had embarked on hunger strike eight months previously in Buca Kiriklar Prison, Izmir, and for a time was also in the prisoners' ward of Ataturk Teaching and Research Hospital. At the time of the December 19 massacre she was in Umraniye Prison, then she was put in Kandira F-Type Prison, later being released. But a short time later she was imprisoned again. She became the 101st person connected with the Death Fast to die when she lost her life in the prisoners' ward of Ataturk Teaching and Research Hospital.

A ninth team of death fasters have now embarked on hunger strike to protest the high-security isolationist prisons for political prisoners introduced by the Turksh government.

'Solidarity with Hunger Strikers in Turkey' will hold a protest vigil at the Turkish Embassy in Dublin (11 Clyde Road, Ballsbridge) on Friday 6 December at 6pm. All welcome.