Pacifists fined for nonviolent arms trade protest
The Defence Systems and Equipment International Exhibition (DESi) is the world’s largest ‘fully integrated’ arms fair held every other year in London’s Docklands. 1,200 companies from 36 countries come together in an ‘optimal business environment’ to exhibit their wares and ‘network for future growth’ with thousands of visitors over four ‘packed’ days.
At the 2007 exhibition, on the first day of business (11 Sept), activists demonstrated outside, some enacting victims of the weapons on display (right).
Others ‘auctioned’ a tank to a crowd of some 200 gathered at the main entrance to the venue (below right), having diverted police with a decoy armoured personnel carrier. (The SpaceHijackers auctioneers declined offers of first-born children and human organs; the tank eventually sold for $50, "as the arms dealers considered cold hard cash to be worth more than human life.")
Two other demonstrators, Zelda Jeffers (59) and Catholic priest Martin Newell (40), planned a ‘Rivers of Blood’ action in which they poured fake blood on the ground. They then knelt down to pray, until they were arrested by transport police. The entrance affected was closed to the ‘defence and military aerospace community’ for the rest of the day.
Zelda Jeffers and Fr. Martin Newell (pictured with Ciaron O’Reilly) are members of the London Catholic Worker, inspired by nonviolence icons Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King and the US founder of this international movement, Dorothy Day. Jeffers and Newell live in a community that offers hospitality to the "poor and homeless, refugees and other migrants."
Zelda Jeffers said of the protest, “We are horrified and saddened when children and young people are gunned down on the streets of Britain. . . profits are made at the cost of life and suffering.”
Fr. Newell said,
“The rivers of blood that flow around the world start here. This is the reality . . . This is the price of our privileges and prosperity. The guns and weapons sold here are used by the powerful to kill and exploit and intimidate the poor and powerless. By promoting the arms trade, our government buys influence around the world . . . We pray for an end to both international wholesale and local retail gun [trade].”
He called on governments and arms companies and dealers to "promote peace with as much determination as they promote war.”
The two were charged with criminal damage and faced a magistrates’ court last week. They denied their action was criminal, citing the Nuremberg Principles in their defence. They claimed they were upholding rather than breaking the law, in the same way it would be legal to break down the door of a burning building to save anyone trapped inside.
Found guilty, Jeffers was given 12 months’ conditional discharge and ordered to pay £175 in costs and £50 compensation. Newell, with a prior record of nonviolent direct action, was fined £200, plus £175 costs and £50 compensation. A further £15 surcharge was added to each for victim support.
Both told the court they would not pay any fine, thus they are likely to return to court on 18 March.
The next DESi exhibition is to be held in September 2009, despite "massive local opposition".
‘Following Jesus in love and anarchy‘ by Greg Watts.