arms trade

Australia’s largest weapons expo, Land Forces, was held in the city of Melbourne from September 11 to 13 last week, with several thousands of us showing up to protest and disrupt the event as much as possible.

In recent weeks we have seen a number of significant acts of violence that have directly impacted WRI affiliates. We want to draw attention to two of them – not to compare them (they are radically different in scale, context and level of brutality), but to highlight the way different manifestations of militarism around the world are interconnected, even when they are being experienced in very different contexts nearly 14,000km apart.

Accuracy International (AI) is a British company based in Portsmouth, specialising in the production of high-end, hand built, precision sniper rifles and associated equipment. Weapons manufactured by AI have been used extensively in conflict zones, including states accused of human rights abuses.

The website War on West Papua was launched in July. The website identifies a wide-range of weapons and military equipment used by the Indonesian security forces in their ongoing occupation of West Papua.

In December, a Belgian civil court heardr the arguments by a coalition of Belgian NGOs to end the export of military components to the Turkish air force. Earlier in 2021, WRI’s affiliate Vredesactie together with CNAPD and supported by Amnesty International Belgium, sued the Flemish government for its involvement in the production of the Turkish A400M military transport planes. As the court session was taking place activists organised a protest in front of  the Palace of Justice in Brussels. They demanded an end to arms exports to conflict areas and stricter controls on the end use of Flemish arms exports. Read more here.

Activists demand better control on the end-use of Flemish arms exports.

A new database of Israeli military and security exports – www.dimse.info - has been launched. The new database, developed by the American Friends Service Committee, is a tool for journalists, academics, campaigners, and other civil society actors critical of Israel’s arms export and its effect on human rights around the world.

In December the city of Seville cancelled the Electronic Warfare Europe arms fair due to take place in the city in May 2021.

A Danish independent media and research centre has published a report accusing the country’s largest arms manufacturer, Terma, of war crimes after continuing to supply arms to the United Arab Emirates, despite a decision by Denmark to stop arming Saudi and the UAE because of their involvement in the war in Yemen.

The Australian government has been accused of “freedom of information abuse at its worst” and unnecessarily dragging out an already lengthy legal battle over a $1.3bn arms deal. The government has spent nearly two years trying to stop the release of a report by the auditor general, that criticised the purchase of 1,100 Hawkeis combat vehicles built by Thales.

Activists in London -including WRI affiliates Campaign Against Arms Trade and Peace Pledge Union - have taken direct action to protest and disrupt a major networking and social event held by the UK’s Aerospace, Defence, Security, and Space Trade Association.

Data released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) in March shows that the volume of international transfers has been increasing.