IRISH ANTI WAR MOVEMENT (IAWM) PRESS RELEASE, 1st APRIL 2025
- STOP ARMS FLIGHTS THROUGH IRISH AIRSPACE
- END U.S. MILITARY STOPOVER AT SHANNON WARPORT
- DEFEND MOTHERS AGAINST GENOCIDE RIGHT TO PROTEST – NO TO GARDA BRUTALITY
- IRISH GOVERNMENT MUST SANCTION ISRAEL NOW
The IAWM will partake along with other groups in a rally organised by Collective Action for Palestine at Dáil Eireann from 12.00pm on Wednesday 02 April.
The rally is called to coincide with the debate in the Senate on the Arms Embargo Bill which is being brought forward by Senator Alice Mary Higgins, Lynn Ruane, Frances Black and Eileen Flynn and that “seeks to ensure that munitions of war, weapons and dangerous goods are not being transferred to Israel through Ireland, either directly or indirectly.”
There has been a huge increase in flights granted exemptions since October 2023 which coincides with Israel’s genocidal war on the people of Gaza.
The IAWM has always protested the use of Shannon Airport as a stopover for US troops, rendition flights and flights that may be carrying arms, since the start of the US war on Iraq in 2003. Today the situation has got worse which shows the direction that the Irish government is going.
Weapons flights exemptions have increased almost 70% in a decade. Recent increase coincides with Israel’s invasion of Gaza after October 7th, 2023, and the Ukraine Russia war. The number of aircraft permitted to bring military weapons and ammunitions through Ireland or on Irish registered aircraft hit a 13-year high, with 1,354 flights sanctioned last year. In 2020, just nine such flights were approved by the department. Last year there were 519.
We will also be protesting the violence meted out by the Gardai on peaceful protesters from Mothers Against Genocide on Monday morning when 14 people were arrested. Three of these women were later strip searched in Garda custody, including one of them undergoing cavity searches and touching of her private areas, according to allegations made in Dáil Éireann. It is beyond grotesque that the Guards would behave in this manner against peaceful protesters, not least against Palestinian women who have already suffered so much.
Jim Roche, Secretary and PRO of the IAWM Steering Committee said:
“Revelations by the Ditch over the last year, including over the last week, indicate clearly that planes carrying arms to Israel are passing unhindered through Irish airspace. Such weapons may have been used by Israel on the over 130 children murdered the night Israel recently broke the ceasefire or that may have been used to murder in cold blood the 15 aid workers some weeks ago. The Irish Government, by allowing the passing of weapons unhindered through Irish airspace, is unquestionably complicit in Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza.”
Mark Price, Co-chair of the Steering Committee, IAWM said:
“The Irish government has been killing Irish neutrality with a thousand cuts. Every exemption for weapons overflights chips away at international law without anyone noticing. Our leaders have been selling us out to Western imperialism while we slept. Now we must wake up and demand an end to this complicity in war and genocide, with a proper inspections regime of military flights passing through our airspace.”
ENDS
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