Category: Technologies of Control

Sat­ur­day 17th Octo­ber 2009

This after­noon, around 70 peo­ple gath­ered in Chad­der­ton, Greater Man­ches­ter at the launch demon­stra­tion of the Tar­get Brimar cam­paign.
The cam­paign oppos­es the activ­i­ties of Brimar, a Man­ches­ter-based com­pa­ny which makes mil­i­tary com­po­nents used by the British and Amer­i­can armies in Iraq and Afghanistan and by Israeli forces in Pales­tine and Lebanon, and which have also been sold to oth­er mil­i­taries around the world. Although the com­pa­ny stress­es the ‘sit­u­a­tion­al aware­ness’ and defen­sive role of many of the items it man­u­fac­tures, it also con­tributes parts to F16 fight­ers, Apache attack heli­copters and Javelin mis­siles and lists ‘tar­get acqui­si­tion sys­tems’ for ground-launched mis­siles amongst its prod­ucts.
In sun­ny weath­er the demon­stra­tion – which includ­ed gen­er­a­tions of Man­ches­ter res­i­dents, from babies to vet­er­an peace cam­paign­ers – start­ed peace­ful­ly and in good spir­its. Meet­ing at the Gar­den­ers Arms round­about in Moston, it pro­ceed­ed along the Green­gate to the indus­tri­al estate where Brimar’s fac­to­ry is sit­ed, where food and a chil­dren’s play area had been set up. The pro­ces­sion includ­ed Crit­i­cal Mass cyclists, ban­ners and music.
Unfor­tu­nate­ly, dur­ing the talks and music which fol­lowed, Old­ham Police chose to abuse their pow­er by arrest­ing three co-defen­dants from the Edo Decom­mis­sion­ers tri­al who were present to show their sup­port for the Tar­get Brimar cam­paign. The three were arrest­ed for alleged­ly breach­ing dra­con­ian bail con­di­tions which spec­i­fy that var­i­ous co-defen­dants are not allowed to com­mu­ni­cate with one anoth­er. Wit­ness­es at the demon­stra­tion stressed that the three had delib­er­ate­ly not been com­mu­ni­cat­ing with one anoth­er and were appalled to see that being in the same geo­graph­i­cal area was regard­ed by Old­ham Police as grounds to haul them away, threat­en­ing oth­er peo­ple with arrest when they tried to inter­vene.
The Tar­get Brimar demon­stra­tion con­tin­ued after the arrests and wound up ear­ly to allow sup­port­ers to head to Old­ham police sta­tion to offer sol­i­dar­i­ty to the arrest­ed three.
The Tar­get Brimar cam­paign would also like to express its sol­i­dar­i­ty and respect for the Edo Decom­mis­sion­ers and their prin­ci­pled action in Jan­u­ary this year in car­ry­ing out an account­able action which destroyed up to £300,000 worth of equip­ment used by Edo in Brighton to pro­duce weapons com­po­nents involved in mas­sive human rights abus­es in Pales­tine, Pak­istan and oth­er con­flict zones.
At the time of writ­ing, sup­port­ers at Old­ham police sta­tion have been informed that the three will be tak­en to Brighton for a hear­ing next week (w/c 19th Octo­ber 2009) but that the time of their trans­porta­tion is in the hands, not of Old­ham Police, but of the pri­vate Group 4 secu­ri­ty com­pa­ny.
For more infor­ma­tion on future Tar­get Brimar cam­paign plans, see http://www.targetbrimar.org.uk

Tar­get Brimar cam­paign press release
Mon­day 5th Octo­ber 08:00
— for imme­di­ate release

Cit­i­zen Weapons Inspec­tors vis­it Man­ches­ter Fac­to­ry

At just before 8 o’clock this morn­ing, sev­er­al cit­i­zen weapons inspec­tors from the Tar­get Brimar cam­paign vis­it­ed the Chad­der­ton premis­es of mil­i­tary com­po­nent man­u­fac­tur­er Brimar.[1] They were seek­ing infor­ma­tion on pos­si­ble con­nec­tions between Brimar’s prod­ucts and human rights abus­es com­mit­ted in Gaza and the West Bank, Iraq, and Afghanistan.[2]

Tar­get Brimar cam­paign­ers, in a research dossier released today,[3] have raised con­cerns that the com­pa­ny’s prod­ucts may have been used in the com­mis­sion of human rights abus­es includ­ing attacks on civil­ians dur­ing the ‘Oper­a­tion Cast Lead’ inva­sion of Gaza by the Israeli Defence Forces in Decem­ber 2008/January 2009. Brimar direc­tors admit­ted in 2006, dur­ing the war in Lebanon, that the com­pa­ny sup­plied com­po­nents used in Apache attack heli­copters sold to the Israeli mil­i­tary.

There is also evi­dence that prod­ucts devel­oped dur­ing a research col­lab­o­ra­tion between Brimar and the US Marine Corps were deployed with Marine tank bat­tal­ions in Iraq in 2004–5, includ­ing with forces direct­ly involved in the Sec­ond Bat­tle of Fal­lu­jah in Novem­ber 2004. And there is con­cern that Brimar prod­ucts may be incor­po­rat­ed into heli­copters cur­rent­ly being used to fire ther­mo­bar­ic mis­siles in Afghanistan.

The Tar­get Brimar cam­paign is call­ing on the com­pa­ny, which is owned by pri­vate investors and has a sig­nif­i­cant finan­cial rela­tion­ship with the Bank of Scotland/Lloyds Bank­ing Group and there­fore with the British tax­pay­er, to return to its his­tor­i­cal­ly peace­ful man­u­fac­ture of spe­cial­ist screens and view­ing equip­ment, and on the British gov­ern­ment to reviews its arms export pol­i­cy and to cease its immoral and eco­nom­i­cal­ly dis­tort­ed sub­si­dis­ing of the arms indus­try.

The Tar­get Brimar cam­paign is call­ing for a pub­lic demon­stra­tion on 17th Octo­ber 2009 call­ing on Brimar to rethink its mil­i­tary man­u­fac­ture oper­a­tions. Full details are avail­able on http://www.targetbrimar.org.uk

Notes for edi­tors

1. the weapons inspec­tors are, at the time of writ­ing, still at Brimar. They can be con­tact­ed direct­ly for inter­view on 07866 001207. Video footage and stills images will be made avail­able as soon as pos­si­ble via press@targetbrimar.org.uk and http://www.targetbrimar.org.uk. Gen­er­al ques­tions regard­ing the cam­paign and research should be made to 07506 551323 or to press@targetbrimar.org.uk.

2. the inspec­tors will be direct­ing ques­tions to Brimar regard­ing its aware­ness of doc­u­ment­ed human rights abus­es which are like­ly to have involved the use of its prod­ucts, and the com­pre­hen­sive­ness of its knowl­edge of the final des­ti­na­tions of its prod­ucts once sold.

3. copies of the dossier can be down­loaded at: http://www.targetbrimar.org.uk/downloads/target_brimar_dossier_october_2009‑1.pdf