Nottingham campaigners to visit Germany

Four Nottingham anti-arms trade campaigners are visiting the German town of Oberndorf-am-Neckar in early March to attend a major protest at the international headquarters of arms manufacturer Heckler & Koch, whose British branch is based in Nottingham.

The Nottingham delegation

The Nottingham activists will be joining their German counterparts to protest about Heckler & Koch’s role in supplying arms used in murderous conflcts around the world. It has been revealed that H&K guns have been used by the Janjaweed militias in Darfur, by Blackwater mercenaries in Iraq, by the Georgian army in South Ossetia, and by criminal gangs in the UK.

The four will represent a Nottingham-based campaign called Shut Down H&K, which has been building friendship links with German organisations who also oppose the arms trade. A German peace group caled the Armaments Information Office (RIB) invited them to attend the demonstration and offered to pay their travel expenses.

The March 7^th protest has been organised by German campaign groups to pre-empt H&K’s 60^th anniversary celebrations. The theme of the demonstration will be “Masquerade of Death” and the marchers will be split into two columns – one mourners dressed in black to commemorate the victims of war, and one dressed as arms dealers celebrating their booming business. There will also be a rally at which the delegation will deliver a speech about the Nottingham campaign against Heckler & Koch.

Making a killing: Heckler & Koch guns in the hands of an African child soldier, a Taliban fighter in Pakistan, Serbian special forces, a Nepalese soldier and a Palestinian militant

press release in PDF

Quantum Of Solace: Don’t Buy Bond

Bondmania is back! Everyone loves Bond, especially since the franchise’s gritty 2006 reboot, fronted by a brooding, steely-eyed Daniel Craig. As with recent Bond films, Quantum Of Solace is being used to sell various lifestyle products. Big name brands pay handsomely to be associated with Bond, and Quantum Of Solace has racked up £50 million pounds for product placement. Let’s take a look at what the film is selling.

Promotional tie-ins for Quantum of Solace include Heineken lager, Smirnoff vodka, Coca-Cola, Ford cars, Virgin Atlantic airline, Sony TVs, National Lottery Scratchcards and The Sun newspaper. Launching a new perfume, Avon claims that “through this unique partnership, every woman can feel like a Bond Girl – smart, empowered, confident, and sexy,” while package holiday company Orbitz tells us “you can’t do it better than Bond, but you can certainly travel like him.”

If some of those promotions make you feel slightly queasy, hold on; the best is yet to come. The new Bond films feature product placements for, yes, you guessed it, Heckler & Koch firearms. In Casino Royale, Bond defeats the villainous Mr White with a H&K UMP9 submachine gun – a weapon that he carries on using in Quantum of Solace.

Promotional graphic for Quantum of Solace showing James Bond wielding a Heckler & Koch UMP9 submachine gun

Karaoke To “Heckle Those Kochs”

The Sumac Centre hosted a hilarious fundraising event for the campaign against local arms company Heckler & Koch. On Friday September 19^th, singers of varying abilities, some solo and some in groups, took to the stage for a karaoke night billed as Heckle Those Kochs.

Reflecting H&K’s lethal trade, several of the songs had a gun theme, including Shot You Down and Guns Don’t Kill People, Rappers Do. Other songs had their lyrics specially altered for the occasion, including Gun Shack and These Guns Are Made For Shootin’.

done

Not only was the night hugely entertaining for all, it raised nearly £50 for the campaign, which has helped to pay for new flyers to be printed. To carry our message of joyful defiance, the recorded songs will be replayed at future demonstrations outside the office of Heckler & Koch.

Aussie arms fair cancelled due to protest fears

Inspiring news for anti-arms-trade activists around the world: A major international arms fair – the Asia Pacific Defence & Security exhibition – has been cancelled due to protests planned against it. Organised by Alex Nicholl, the man behind the UK’s DSEi arms fair, APDS was due to be held in Adelaide in November but the event organisers and the South Australian government folded, citing “cost of security” and “possible threats of violence”.

Arms fair organiser Alex Nicholl (l) and South Australian acting Premier Kevin Foley (r)

Government leaders, who want South Australia to be a big player in the global arms trade, have been left seething. Speaking through the right-wing Murdoch press, acting Premier Kevin Foley smeared the peace campaigners as “feral, low-life people that want society to be in a state of near anarchy for their own perverse pleasure” and “dangerous to society”.

Responding to Foley’s tirade, OzPeace, one of the groups organising the protest said “The protest had a policy of non-violent direct action and the peace movement was doing everything within its power to ensure that the protests remained peaceful.” Looking for a bogeyman, the media has demonised Sydney-based anarchist collective Mutiny, describing them as “ultra-militant” and repeating the bogus claim that they were responsible for violence at past demonstrations.

Needless to say, accusing the protesters of “violence and destruction” betrays a breath-taking double standard. Had the arms fair gone ahead, corporations including small arms manufacturer Heckler & Koch and the notoriously corrupt BAE Systems would have been there marketing the machinery of war to repressive regimes including China, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Israel.

The axing of this arms fair should give succour to opponents of the arms trade everywhere. Yes, the military-industrial complex is mighty, but we can take it on, and we can win.

H&K guns illegally exported to Georgian war zone

Georgian elite forces fighting in South Ossetia have been illegally armed with Heckler & Koch assault rifles.

According to Human Rights Watch, the Georgian military “used indiscriminate and disproportionate force resulting in civilian deaths in South Ossetia”. However, that hasn’t stopped these war criminals from being customers of Heckler & Koch!

When Heckler & Koch applied for permission to supply 230 assault rifles to Georgia, the German government refused on the grounds that Georgia was involved in a war. But as any successful arms company knows, there are many ways to get around these obstacles, and sure enough, the German-made weapons showed up in Georgia anyway!

To quote the head of BITS, “It doesn’t matter how these weapons landed in Georgia; whether they were illegally exported from Germany, whether a licensed exporter violated German laws or whether a recipient of the weapons who acquired them legally in Germany, further exported them.”

The point is, that’s just how the arms industry works.

And which department of Heckler & Koch is responsible for sales to Georgia and other non-NATO countries? Check the corporate website: It’s Heckler & Koch GB, based at Unit 3, Easter Park, Lenton Lane, Nottingham NG7 2PX.

So next time you see pictures of wretched South Ossetian civilians clutching the bodies of their loved ones amid the shredded ruins of their homes, just remember: a company in Nottingham helped to make that happen.

Police give H&K guns to children

Child posing with police H&K submachine gun at a summer fete in London

Police are giving young children Heckler & Koch guns to handle at community events in England. At a recent summer fete in east London, the Met ran a stall displaying a H&K MP5 submachine gun. Children as young as seven were allowed to pose for photos holding the police weapon, which has a firing rate of 800 rounds per minute.

The stunt has been sharply criticised by MPs and anti-gun campaigners. MP Jim Fitzpatrick said  “Giving young children real guns to handle is inappropriate. It could be glamorising the weapons and creating familiarity which is plainly wrong.”

George Galloway MP said “The foolish display at this festival can serve only to normalise firearms or make they appear attractive, even glamorous. We are tragically used to seeing images of primary school aged boys handling assault rifles in Liberia or Mogadishu, but in Limehouse?!”

Police defended the initiative, claiming that it is intended to “divert people away from gun crime”, but Lyn Costello, co-founder of Mothers Against Murder and Aggression, called it ”a serious error of judgment.”

And it seems that this event was not a one-off: “We’ve done this kind of thing in other places” said Superintendent Tarrant of the Met’s CO19 firearms unit. “We will continue doing it in future.”

Shut Down H&K at Sumac Garden Party

The campaign against arms manufacturer Heckler & Koch was represented at a Garden Party at Nottingham’s Sumac Centre on Sunday. The Garden Party was organised by Eastside Climate Action to raise funds for their presence at this year’s Climate Camp. It featured live bands & DJs, food & drink, games and stalls.

The Shut Down H&K campaign ran a stall to raise awareness and funds. Visitors were invited to partake in a macabre competition: guess the number of people killed by H&K weapons every week (represented by kidney beans in a glass jar). 40 people entered the competition, and guesses ranged from 100 to 3000! The answer, guessed correctly by Rhiannon, was 720, based on an estimate of one person killed every 14 minutes (from DAKS – the German Action Network to Stop Small Arms).

The event was a great success, both for Eastside Climate Action and for Shut Down H&K. There are more pictures on Indymedia, 1, 2 & 3.

Water pistol demo at Heckler & Koch

July’s monthly demo against arms company Heckler & Koch had a theme: To represent H&K’s products, protesters brought guns to the picket. There were several shootings, and protesters even staged an “execution” by firing squad!

Of course these guns were super-soakers, and the victims suffered nothing worse than soggy clothes. But beside the fun there was a serious message: The victims of Heckler & Koch’s guns don’t get away so lightly. Victims such as the villagers in Kosovo massacred by Serbian police armed with H&K submachine guns. Victims such as the prisoners in Thailand tied to a cross and executed with a H&K machine gun.

Despite the secrecy that surrounds Heckler & Koch, the Shut Down H&K campaign continues to uncover more information about the dodgy regimes that buy these weapons, and the abuses being carried out with them. At July’s demonstration, the charges against H&K were read out over a megaphone while protesters handed out leaflets to passers by. Meanwhile a sound system provided music, and Veggies catering campaign provided vegan food so good that even the police were asking for some!

For more words and pictures, see Tash’s write-up on Indymedia.

DSEi gets new owner

The world’s largest arms fair has a new owner. The Defence Systems & Equipment International (DSEi), which takes place in London every two years, has been bought by Clarion Events. DSEi’s previous owner, publisher Reed Elsevier, was shamed into selling DSEi by a long-running campaign involving activists, doctors, academics, shareholders and writers.

Campaigners have already vowed to apply the same pressure to Clarion, which has responded with much bluster about DSEi being a “legitimate” event selling “legitimate” weapons to “legitimate” regimes for “legitimate” purposes.

Clarion - everything you need for your growing baby and/or military dictatorship

Clarion’s portfolio includes the The Baby Shows - a series of events billed ”to give your baby the best start in life”. Campaigners will be highlighting the incompatibility of these family-friendly events with what is essentially a market for mechanised mass murder.

June demo at Heckler & Koch

On Tuesday June 10th around 40 protesters returned to Lenton Lane to picket arms company Heckler & Koch. Protesters were entertained by music in the sunshine while distributing hundreds of leaflets to workers and passers by.