Caught in the Act: H&K Selling Guns to Human Rights Abusers

Arms company Heckler & Koch has been in the news this week. It seems that H&K, whose international sales office is located in Nottingham, is still in the business of arming regimes that are well known to commit gross violations of human rights. We look at three examples from around the world.

Peace News to hold Winter Gathering in Nottingham

Anti-militarist magazine Peace News will be hosting a gathering of campaigners and activists in Nottingham this winter, in conjunction with Nottingham Student Peace Movement and Notts Anti-Militarism.

People from across the spectrum of the British peace movement will come together for a weekend of exploration, celebration and empowerment – learning from other movements, struggling with challenging issues, and creating greater cohesion and solidarity in a segmented peace movement.

The gathering will be held at the Sumac Centre in January, from the evening of Friday 15th until the afternoon of Sunday 17th. It will be followed by a mass non-violent direct action against a local arms company on the morning of Monday 18th.

Protesters march 25ft gun to Heckler & Koch

At mid-day on Friday November 13th, around 25 anti-arms-trade protesters gathered in the Arboretum park in Nottingham to take part in a unique, eye-catching demonstration against local arms company Heckler & Koch.

A 25-foot long model of a H&K weapon had been built from a frame of willow wood, covered and painted black, and bearing the legend popularised by Brighton’s anti-arms-trade campaign Smash EDO: “Every bomb and every bullet fired is made somewhere… Find it… Resist it!”

This gun was carried by the demonstrators in a long march from the Arboretum to the gates of Easter Park – the Lenton Lane industrial site that contains H&K’s warehouse. In returning the gun to the company that produced it, the demonstrators made a highly visible statement that H&K’s dirty business is not wanted by the people of Nottingham.

Heckler & Koch art links to anti-H&K info

Artist Alex Tsander has created a piece of artwork about Nottingham-based arms company Heckler & Koch. The North Somerset-based artist is exhibiting a series of images incorporating QR codes – two-dimensional bar codes. One of the images depicts a young woman holding a H&K rifle. When decoded, the QR code in the picture yields the address of a page on the website of War Resisters’ International, which contains information about the unethical nature of H&K’s business.

Nottingham Dealers at World’s Biggest Arms Fair

Once every two years, in the London Docklands, the world’s biggest arms fair takes place. It’s spelt DSEi, it’s pronounced “Dicey”, and this year it took place from 8^th-11^th September. Joining over 1 000 arms companies from around the world were a couple of outfits from Nottinghamshire, catering to opposite ends of the small arms market.

Peru protesters killed by police armed with H&K

Peruvian security forces armed with Heckler & Koch rifles and submachine guns have killed dozens of indigenous protesters near the northern city of Bagua.

Indigenous communities of the Peruvian Amazon have been protesting against new “Free Trade” laws that would open up their ancestral lands to drilling for gas and oil.  Since April 2009, indigenous protesters have stepped up their protest, blocking road and river transport and shutting down oil and gas pumping stations.  On June 6, Peruvian President Alan García ordered in the troops, and police opened fire using live rounds on a crowd of protesters.

Peruvian police armed with H&K rifles take up positions in Bagua

LV= profits from the arms trade

An anti-arms-trade campaign in Nottingham has discovered that Bournemouth-based company LV= is knowingly profiting from the arms trade.  LV=, formerly known as Liverpool Victoria, is a financial services company that sells insurance, savings and investments.  Nottingham-based campaign Shut Down H&K discovered that LV= is the landlord of none other than Heckler & Koch – the world’s second-largest manufacturer of small arms.

What’s wrong with NATO?

Saturday April 4^th is the 60^th anniversary of NATO, the world’s most powerful military alliance.  The NATO summit in Strasbourg will be attended by mass demonstration and resistance, and there will be local protests throughout NATO member countries.  So what’s wrong with NATO?

• NATO is militarising the world. NATO promotes the idea that militarism guarantees peace, and its members currently account for 70% of the world’s military spending.  From its origins as an ostensibly defensive alliance, NATO has developed a strategy of military intervention in order to expand its sphere of influence, as tested in 1999’s unjustified and tragic high-altitude bombing campaign against Serbia.
• NATO threatens nuclear war. As part of NATO’s arsenal, hundreds of US nuclear weapons are sited across Europe, in violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. NATO rejects a “no first use” policy, meaning that it reserves the option of a pre-emptive nuclear strike.  Britain’s Trident nuclear weapons are assigned to NATO, and could be used against any country perceived to be threatening a NATO member.
• NATO sponsored terrorism. From the 1950s to the 1980s NATO operated a network of clandestine army forces across Western Europe, codenamed Operation Gladio.  These secret NATO paramilitaries carried out terrorist attacks for which they framed communist groups in order to frighten populations into voting for right-wing governments.
• NATO is a tool of the “War on Terror”. The September 11 attacks provided the casus belli that NATO’s masters were waiting for.  Under the banner of a Global War on Terrorism, NATO immediately militarised the Mediterranean and went to war in Afghanistan.  Tens of thousands of Afghan civilians have been killed already and NATO forces are killing more every week in this expensive, bloody and unwinnable war.
• NATO is provoking a new Cold War. NATO was established to oppose expansion of the Communist Bloc.  However, far from dissolving after the Cold War ended, NATO expanded to the East, adding many former Warsaw Pact countries. Now NATO’s plans to place missile defence systems near Russia’s border have provoked Russia to aim its own missiles back at Europe.

NATO is not a benign force for peace, security and democratic values; it is an engine of war working to expand the domination of Western interests through military means.  It is an obstacle to global nuclear disarmament and world peace.

NATO’s expansion must be halted, its foreign interventions brought to an end and its military bases and nuclear weapons decommissioned.  NATO should be dismantled and its resources used to achieve a nuclear-free, less militarised and therefore more secure world.

Demo at German HQ of Nottingham arms company

Four activists from Nottingham travelled to Germany to take part in a demonstration against arms company Heckler & Koch at the company’s international HQ in March.  H&K is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of small arms, and its guns are used throughout the world; from Darfur to Iraq, from Nigeria to Nepal.  The company has long been opposed by peace campaigners in Germany, and since 2008 its Nottingham office has been the target of a local campaign called Shut Down H&K.

In 2009 Heckler & Koch will be 60 years old.  In order to pre-empt the company’s birthday celebrations, German peace groups organised a protest with the slogan 60 Jahre Heckler & Koch: kein Grund zum Feiern (60 Years of Heckler & Koch: No Cause for Celebration).  The Nottingham activists were invited to a March 7^th demonstration by the peace groups RIB, ORL and DFG-VK, who also funded their journey.