H&K weapons on display at the DSEi 2009 international arms fair

The first protest against Nottingham-based arms company Heckler & Koch took place in May 2000, but it wasn’t until May 2008 that another demonstration launched the Shut Down H&K campaign, which has been running ever since.

18 months in, the campaign has decided that it’s about time to speak to Heckler & Koch. So, the campaign has written H&K a letter summarising the people’s concerns and asking the company to come clean about its dirty business…

Dear Sir,

We are sure you must be aware of our campaign, Shut Down H&K. We are a group of Nottingham residents, students and anti-arms-trade campaigners who are concerned about the role of Heckler & Koch in the international arms trade.

We hope that you can appreciate that our campaign has arisen out of a genuine concern about the consequences of your trade. We are writing to request information about the recent operations of Heckler & Koch, and to ask you to address our concerns.

We are aware that:

1. Heckler & Koch weapons have been sold to many countries whose armed forces are well known to have committed serious and widespread violations of human rights in recent years, including the Philippines, Thailand and Saudi Arabia.
2. The British National Archives show how Heckler & Koch has used the UK to manufacture and sell weapons to countries such as Nigeria and Kenya when such sales were restricted by the German government.
3. Heckler & Koch has licensed manufacturers in countries such as Turkey and Pakistan to produce H&K-designed weapons. Through these arrangements, H&K has profited from sales to countries engaged in armed conflict including Indonesia and Sri Lanka during periods when direct sales to these countries were prohibited by the EU or by the governments of Germany and the UK.
4. In recent years, the security forces of Nepal, Lebanon and Georgia have been armed with Heckler & Koch G36 assault rifles after the German government had denied export licenses for those transfers amid concerns about armed conflict and human rights violations.
5. Heckler & Koch weapons have fallen into the hands of child soldiers in Africa, terrorists in the Middle East, militias in Darfur, rebels in Nigeria, arms traffickers in the Philippines, mercenaries in Iraq and organised criminals in Serbia. Heckler & Koch weapons have been used by armed forces in conflicts in which those forces have been accused by international monitors of war crimes, including Bosnia in 1991, South Ossetia in 2008 and Sri Lanka in 2009.

With H&K continuing to advertise its weapons on the international market, we would like to make sure that the company is no longer directly or indirectly supplying weapons to regimes guilty of human rights violations, war crimes or crimes against humanity. In order to ascertain this we would like to know about the business activities of the H&K Group during the period of time since its change of ownership in 2002 (hereafter referred to as the Period).

As the office responsible for “international customer sales and customer services” for non-NATO countries (according to the H&K Group website) we trust that you have the relevant information. By making this information available you would be addressing the growing concerns about Heckler & Koch, and demonstrating that the company has nothing to hide.

1. We would like to see details of all sales (including training, service and repair) made by the H&K Group during the Period. We would also like to see details of any contracts for H&K to provide service or repair that have been in effect during the Period.
2. We would like to know if Heckler & Koch’s UK division (aka NSAF Ltd) has had any involvement, during the Period, in sales to customers that had been denied export licenses by the German government. If so, we would like to know the details of that involvement.
3. We would like to see details of any contracts that have been in effect during the Period whereby a third party was licensed to manufacture products for which the H&K Group owned the designs.
4. We would like to know the full extent of the H&K Group’s involvement in the supply of weapons (or parts of weapons) to Nepal, Lebanon and Georgia.
5. We ask H&K to provide an assurance that none of the weapons it is currently selling will pass into the hands of repressive regimes, arms traffickers, child soldiers, terrorist groups, organised criminals, or armed forces that deliberately target civilians, as so many H&K weapons have in the past. If H&K is prepared to make such an assurance, we would like to know how this can be guaranteed, given the lack of regulation of the international trade in small arms.

If you are willing, a delegation from the Shut Down H&K campaign would like to meet with representatives of Heckler & Koch to discuss our concerns in person.

We hope to hear from you soon.

Yours faithfully,

Shut Down H&K

Picture from the Trent Vineyard website with H&K lurking in the background

In an industrial estate in Nottingham, an anonymous warehouse serves as an international sales office and distribution depot for Heckler & Koch, a major small arms company, whose assault rifles and submachine guns are sold around the world. Next door to H&K is an evangelical church called Trent Vineyard, whose support local anti-arms activists are seeking in their campaign to close down the arms company. Shut Down H&K’s messages to the church leadership have gone unanswered, so campaign supporters decided to take their message to the regular churchgoers…

On December 13th, three supporters of the Shut Down H&K campaign took flyers to offer to people arriving for the Sunday morning service at Trent Vineyard, seeking to raise awareness about the arms company and find common ground with worshippers just a fortnight before the birthday of the Prince of Peace.

The leaflet in question

The campaigners began leafleting at the entrance to the church itself. The early arrivals were generally pleased to accept leaflets and surprised to hear that the world’s second-largest manufacturer of assault rifles and submachine guns was right next door. It was clearly not common knowledge among the congregation.

After about 10 minutes a representative of the church came to speak to the campaigners. She said that although she wasn’t unsympathetic to the cause, the campaigners should not be on church property. Handing out leaflets at the door might give churchgoers the impression that they were endorsed by the church when they were not.

Another church staffer then came out and took over the discussion. He said that campaigners had already been told (on a similar leafleting mission in January) that the church does not want leafleting on its property, and that their return demonstrated that either the campaign was untrustworthy or that its supporters were uncoordinated “loose cannons”.

He continued that while the church would be pleased to see H&K go, it could not be seen to endorse the campaign as this could violate the church’s tenancy agreement (with car insurance company LV=) and could lead to losing its premises.

Shut Down H&K demonstration, May 2009, with Trent Vineyard and Heckler & Koch in the background

He said that the church’s researcher had checked and found inaccuracies with the campaign literature, causing them to question the validity of the leaflets; another reason for not wishing to be associated with them or the campaign. The “inaccuracies” in question were not discussed, but the campaign will be writing to the church to seek clarification.

He felt it would have been polite for the campaign to have contacted the church earlier, to seek support in engaging with the congregation. In fact, the campaign has tried to do that several times. In May 2008 a member of the congregation repeatedly sought an audience with the pastor on behalf of the campaign, and in May 2009 the campaign wrote to the church. No reply was ever received.

Police filming protesters near Trent Vineyard, Jan 2009. The pastor has asked police to prevent anti-arms-trade banners from being tied to the church railings.

Whilst the conversation was civil, the staffer suggested that the campaigners were “hijacking” the church’s congregation and his time, which should have been spent with Sabbath arrangements and engaging with the congregation. A Sunday service was not the time and place for this kind of activity, he said.

The campaign regrets the lack of trust between itself and the leadership of the Trent Vineyard church. However, the campaign believes that the congregation of the church has a right to know that the church is next-door to a controversial arms company with an indisputable history of supplying guns that have fuelled conflict around the world.

Shut Down H&K strives for accuracy in all of its claims, relying only on authoritative sources and cross-checking its research with arms trade experts in the UK and Germany. If any of the campaign’s claims are shown to be inaccurate, they will be corrected immediately.

Although Trent Vineyard did not respond to Shut Down H&K’s requests for a meeting, the campaign has been told by a churchgoer that Vineyard leadership has been in conversation with Heckler & Koch. The campaign urges the church not to accept assurances from the arms company on face value, and remains willing to meet with church representatives at any time.

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.

Manipur, India

Victims of police violence: a pregnant woman and an unarmed suspect, executed in a crowded market in Manipur, July 2009.

Ever since the state of Manipur was annexed by India in 1949, there has been armed conflict between separatists and the Indian government. In 1958 the Indian government passed the notorious Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA), which gives military personnel powers to arrest or kill anyone they want within a so-called “disturbed” area.

The state of Manipur was declared a “disturbed” area, and was heavily militarised, with land across the state being confiscated to set up army camps. There followed decades of grievous human rights abuses, with Indian police and paramilitaries inflicting beatings, rapes, torture, forced labour, disappearances and extrajudicial killings, all the while protected from prosecution by the AFSPA.

Here’s one example: In 2004, Indian troops raided the home of a 32-year old woman called Manorama Devi, whom they suspected to belong to a separatist group. They arrested her and took her away. Her bullet-riddled corpse was found the next day outside a nearby village. She had been tortured and raped, and then shot in her vagina at close range.

Heckler & Koch cannot be unaware of the gross human rights abuses of its latest customers. The situation in Manipur has been documented for many years. However, that would not appear to be an impediment to business.

The Philippines

To discover the connection between Heckler & Koch and the worst ever atrocity against journalists, we have to go to South-East Asia and the Philippines. This archipelago nation has a terrible human rights record, with state security forces practising vigilantism, arbitrary arrest and detention, torture, disappearances and extrajudicial killings.

Filipino soldiers armed with modern Heckler & Koch G36 assault rifles.

The Philippines has also been one of H&K’s best customers. Over the years the Filipino police and military have been equipped with a variety of H&K assault rifles, sniper rifles and submachine guns.

The endemic corruption of the Filipino security forces provides one of the many routes by which H&K weapons flow from the legal arms trade to the black market. Last year, several high-ranking military and police officials were arrested for taking 72 H&K submachine guns from a police depot and selling them to a Taiwanese-led gunrunning syndicate.

The President of the Philippines is Gloria Arroyo. Until very recently, her chief ally in the south of the country was the Ampatuan clan, which ruled province of Maguindanao. The Ampatuans delivered many votes for Arroyo in the 2004 and 2007 General Elections, which were marred by widespread fraud and violence. In return, the Arroyo administration tolerated the Ampatuan clan’s internecine chainsaw murders.

The scene of the Ampatuan massacre

In the aftermath of the massacre, an arms cache was discovered next to the mansion of the Ampatuan regional governor. Among the weapons recovered was a Heckler & Koch HK11 machine gun.

Once again, there can be no way that Heckler & Koch is unaware of the state-sponsored violence and corruption in the Philippines. And yet the company has continued to arm the regime with the latest in assault weapons.

The US Marine Corps

During the US-led “War on Terror”, the US Marines have committed numerous war crimes and serious abuses of human rights. Among those that have come to light:

US Marine with H&K submachine gun

• During the 2004 offensives against the Iraqi city of Fallujah, US Marine snipers deliberately shot civilians and medical personnel and vehicles, killing thousands. The Marines’ tactical siege and destruction of the city amounted to collective punishment, which is a war crime.
• In November 2005, a US Marine unit went on a rampage in the Iraqi town of Haditha, using guns and grenades to slaughter 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians including women, children and old people. When interviewed, US Iraq war veterans described such acts as common, and said they often go unreported and almost always go unpunished. The Marines are responsible for similar massacres in Afghanistan.
• There has been widespread torture and abuse of detainees by US Marines in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo. Documented abuses include beatings, electrocution, burning, sexual abuse and mock executions.

Of course, none of this matters to Heckler & Koch, which stands to profit a great deal from the Marine Corps. H&K already supplies the Marines with submachine guns, and it was announced this week that H&K is almost certain to win a contract to supply the Corps with thousands of state-of-the-art automatic rifles in a deal worth millions of dollars.

Conclusion

In one week, three separate news stories have illustrated how forces that are well known to commit serious human rights abuses, war crimes and crimes against humanity are continuing to be armed with modern Heckler & Koch weapons.

These are only the latest examples in a disgraceful history of arming the world’s oppressors. If there is one lesson to be learned from 60 years of Heckler & Koch, it is that the company should not be allowed to reach 61. It should be shut down and its employees tried for complicity in the abuses that they have knowingly profited from.

There is a campaign against Heckler & Koch based in Nottingham called Shut Down H&K. Check the events listing for the next meeting or demonstration, and get involved!

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.

Highlights will include:

• Reports from the Gaza Freedom March
• Building for the February blockade at Aldermaston
• Activism workshops with Seeds for Change
• No Borders report on recent immigrant solidarity campaigning in Calais
• George Farebrother on law, peace and applying pressure
• Afghanistan: Strategies to end the war
• Anti-war art, with Peace News co-editor Emily Johns
• Radical climate change activism after Copenhagen

The full schedule for the weekend will be made available on the Peace News Gathering website as soon as it is finalised.

BOOKING

The cost of attending the gathering is £10-£40 per person for the weekend (not including food – see below). You can book now, either online or by sending a cheque payable to “Peace News” to Peace News Winter Gathering, 5 Caledonian Road, London N1 9DY. You will be sent a full programme.

FOOD

Food will be provided on the Saturday and Sunday by Nottingham’s own vegan catering campaign Veggies, priced £4-£6 per day. It’s best to pay for food in advance, which you can do the same way as booking (above). Remember to specify which days you want food for.

ACCOMMODATION

Crash-pad accommodation is available nearby. If you need a bed or family space, contact Peace News on +442072783344.

ABOUT THE GATHERING

Peace News Winter Gathering 2010 has developed out of Peace News Summer Camp 2009, which created a real sense of liberation for participants. The Gathering is a space of mutual respect in which activists from different groups and movements, who hold diverse views on fundamental issues, can share experiences, information and insights – and can learn more about each other.

THE ACTION

A non-violent action against a local company will take place at 10:00 on Monday (18 January). This will be organised by participants in the Gathering at a meeting on the Sunday. Participants will be able to choose arrestable or non-arrestable roles.

The target of the action will be one of the companies on the Notts Map of Militarism. Those who miss the planning meeting can learn the details of the action by calling +447929123314 on the Monday morning.

For more information about the Peace News Winter Gathering, visit the official website.

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.

This demonstration was organised by the Nottingham Arms Dump project, independently of, but in solidarity with the long-running Shut Down H&K campaign, whose monthly picket took place four days earlier. For the first time, there were two demonstrations against Heckler & Koch in the same week!

Despite the fact that this was a peaceful demonstration, H&K’s landlord, the car insurance company LV=, asked police to prevent demonstrators from delivering the gun to the gate of Heckler & Koch. The Shut Down H&K campaign has called for a boycott of LV=, which knowingly profits from the arms trade.

The 25ft gun was modelled on the Heckler & Koch MP5. Developed in the 1960s, this submachine gun remains one of H&K’s bestselling products. Among the infamous users of the MP5:

A child poses with an MP5 in an al-Qaeda propaganda video. Not a good look for Heckler & Koch.

• Indonesia’s feared special forces unit Kopassus, which has been accused of many human rights abuses.
• Thailand, which until 2003 used the MP5 to execute prisoners in Bangkwang prison.
• The Sri Lankan army, which was recently accused of war crimes as it moved to crush Tamil resistance in the north of the country.
• Children in Iraq trained to fight by Al-Qaeda.

Anti-militarists hold Heckler & Koch and its employees responsible for the death and destruction that has been caused by weapons such as the MP5, and will continue campaigning against the company’s UK office until it has been shut down.

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.

This is not the first time that Heckler & Koch has appeared in contemporary art. Earlier this year, German artist Johannes Kreidler released a video showing music generated by corporate stock charts during the global financial crisis. A jolly tune generated by H&K’s stock chart showed the company in the ascendant even as other stocks tumbled, thanks in part to the arms company’s contracts with the forces illegally occupying Iraq.

You can see Alex Tsander’s QR code artwork at the Amoeba bar in Bristol throughout October 2009.

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.

Heckler & Koch

As followers of this blog will know, Heckler & Koch is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of small arms, with millions of its weapons in use in over 90 countries around the world. These days H&K styles itself as “the world’s premier small arms system company”. Its high-quality products, as used by human rights abusers from Iraq to Georgia to Sri Lanka, were laid out for display on its stand at DSEi:

Heckler & Koch has a long history of using licensed production deals to evade arms export controls. Basically, if the government or the EU forbids H&K from selling weapons to country X because of some dodgy situation there, then H&K does a deal with country Y so that country Y can make H&K’s weapons and sell them on to country X.

One of the countries that H&K licenses to make its weapons is Pakistan. This long-standing relationship has allowed H&K weapons to reach various embargoed conflict zones including The Philippines, Sudan and Sri Lanka. The Pakistan Ordnance Factory even offered to sell 200 H&K submachine guns to Zimbabwe when asked by comedian Mark Thomas. At this year’s DSEi, Pakistan’s gun cabinet was stuffed with H&K weapons, including a gold-plated submachine gun:

Global Sourcing & Supply

Elsewhere at the arms fair, another Notts-based company was catering to the “budget” small arms shopper. Global Sourcing & Supply is a rather grand trading name for Easy Tiger International Ltd – a one-man import/export business based in Cotgrave.

One of GS&S’s lines of business is buying guns from Europe and Asia to be sold in the US by American Tactical Imports (which co-incidentally is being sued by H&K for selling rip-offs of its designs). Now it seems that GS&S has acquired some 40 000 Kalashnikov assault weapons and 500 grenade launchers, which company director Guy Tinsley was seen trying to flog at DSEi:

The AK-47 and its variants seen here are the most widespread and worst regulated weapons in the world. They have been used by child soldiers, insurgents, criminal gangs and terrorists to massacre, maim, rape and rob in every country from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, and even in Britain.

In case you’re thinking a British company wouldn’t be allowed to sell weapons to bad guys, consider this: Among the 25 000 visitors to DSEi were delegations from repressive regimes and conflict zones including China, Colombia and Angola that were actually invited by the British government! Furthermore, due to a lack of effective controls, guns that begin in the legal arms trade all too often end up being trafficked into warzones or in the hands of criminals. And once those guns are out there, they will remain in circulation causing death and destruction for decades to come.

The registered business address of Easy Tiger International is 10 Kingston Drive, Cotgrave, Nottingham NG12 3LL – a detached house in a quiet residential estate. I wonder if the neighbours know about the arms dealer next door…

If you would like to do something about the issues raised in this post, you can get in touch with other activists through Notts Anti-Militarism. There is a already a local campaign against Heckler & Koch called Shut Down H&K. Check the events listing for the next demo or meeting.

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

The shots came from rooftop snipers and a hovering helicopter as well as ground forces.  A representative of Save The Children reported that children as young as four years old were wounded by indiscriminate police shooting.  The bloody crackdown continues, with some estimates putting the death toll in the 80s.  There are eyewitness reports of the Peruvian police hiding bodies by burning or dumping them in the Utcubamba river.

The Peruvian armed forces are only one of many deadly actors employing H&K’s tools for killing and repression in the world today.  Two other conflicts that have been in the news lately are the bloody conclusion to the Sri Lankan Civil War, in which government forces were armed with H&K submachine guns, and the Taliban insurgency in Pakistan’s Swat district, in which both Taliban and government forces are armed with H&K rifles and submachine guns.

And to whom do the armed forces of Peru, Sri Lanka and Pakistan go in order to keep their weapons serviced and maintained?  Could it be the Nottingham office of Heckler & Koch, which according to the company’s own website is responsible for “international customer sales and customer services outside NATO”?

Make no mistake about it:  Heckler & Koch is not a respectable company.  It is a purveyor of the tools of murder and repression, staffed by people without a conscience, owned by crooked millionaire playboys, and it needs to be shut down.

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.

Describing itself as “the world’s premier small arms system company“, Heckler & Koch makes assault rifles, submachine guns and pistols. Their weapons are used around the world, and have been responsible for an estimated 1.5 million deaths.  H&K weapons have armed repressive regimes in Burma and Indonesia, and been trafficked into warzones in Bosnia and Darfur.  The company’s recent customers include Georgia, Thailand, Lebanon, and the notorious private military company Blackwater.

Kopassus, the notorious Indonesian stormtroopers, marching with H&K weapons

All of this seems shockingly incompatible with LV=’s friendly, caring image.  The so-called “friendly society” has a Corporate Social Responsibility programme that aims to raise awareness of “everyday safety and good citizenship,” and its website proudly proclaims that “Our focus is on doing the right thing”.  However, it turns out that LV= owns a small business park on an industrial estate in Nottingham, on which is an unmarked warehouse that serves as H&K’s UK office; responsible for international sales and customer service to non-NATO countries.

When the campaigners learned of this, they wrote to LV=, explaining the nature of H&K’s business, and asking LV= to consider not renewing the arms company’s lease, or at least making a statement condemning the arms trade.  LV= replied unequivocally.  Not only are they “pleased to have invested,” they have “no wish to disinvest” in Heckler & Koch and they are not prepared to make any statement that may be seen as “victimising” a business.  They also rebuffed the campaigners’ offer to meet with them.

This position is shockingly hypocritical:  In order to avoid “victimising” Heckler & Koch with harsh words, LV= is prepared to turn a blind eye to the Janjaweed “victimising” Darfuri villages, Indonesian armed forces “victimising” Papuans, and the Georgian army “victimising” South Ossetian civilians, to name just three of the many armed conflicts around the world in which human-rights-abusing aggressors have been armed with Heckler & Koch guns.

The Shut Down H&K campaign is now calling for a public boycott of LV=, with the aim of securing from the company a commitment to disinvest from the arms industry. This press release is for UK-wide distribution.

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.