Stop The Hawks
Four East Timorese refugees, a Catholic priest, Fr. Arthur Fitzgerald, and three parishioners decided to celebrate Easter this year by trespassing at British Aerospace's Warton plant in protest at the sale of Hawk ground-attack aircraft to Indonesia. Suharto and his cronies in the military are responsible for the genocide of the East Timorese people and the exploitation of their sandalwood forests and mineral reserves, and have used the Hawks to suppress resistance. The Australian and Indonesian Governments have signed an illegal treaty which legitimises drilling for oil in the Timor Gap. There is also the question of West Papua, another island invaded by the Indonesians and which suffers from the attentions of one of the largest mining multinationals in the world, Rio Tinto Zinc. Resistance erupted when the expansion of the Freeport mine was announced. The Amungme tribe are demanding better compensation and an end to the pollution and destruction of their sacred lands:
"They are digging in our mother's brain, that is why we are resisting." The eight people arrested were supported by a further hundred people outside the main gate, with 50 or so going on to surround the police station at Lytham St. Annes and sing songs until four people were released: It doesn't matter if you should jail us We are free and kept alive by hope Our struggle's hard, but victory will Restore our lands to our hands. The four Timorese, meanwhile, veterans of Embassy occupations in Indonesia, refused to give their names and were held overnight - they were released, without conditions, at a special Magistrate's hearing in Blackpool.
Two of the Timorese, Costa and Lopez, are part of the Liverpool Catholic Worker community (whose politics are a heady mixture of radical catholicism, non-violence and respect for the earth), which came out of the trial and acquittal of the Seeds of Hope Ploughshares women. It is a very powerful statement for the victims of British arms exports to return to the scene of the crime and try to hold British Aerospace and the British government responsible for their part in aiding and abetting the death of East Timorese life, ecology and culture.
Look out for a steady flow of court cases and resistance to the new 16 Hawk deal signed recently, and also against the sale of Alvis tanks and Glover-Webb armoured vehicles.
Contacts: Liverpool Catholic Worker: 0151-264- 8741. Stop the Hawks - No Arms to Indonesia: 0161- 834-0295. Action: Court Support: April 16th17th, Lytham Magistrates. BAe A.G.M. - 0171- 281-0297. (C.A.A.T.)