Five activists walk straight into Faslane nuclear weapons base – *breaking news*

Tri­dent Ploughshares, Mon­day August 17, 2009 – 16:40pm – for imme­di­ate release

This after­noon five peace activists from non­vi­o­lent direct action group Tri­dent Ploughshares walked unchal­lenged straight into Faslane naval base in Scot­land, the home of Britain ’s nuclear-armed Tri­dent sub­marines, mak­ing a mock­ery of secu­ri­ty for Britain’s “strate­gic nuclear deter­rent.” The five are cur­rent­ly still inside the base.

The activists, one man and four women, released the fol­low­ing state­ment:

“We invite oth­ers to fol­low us through this gate to restore human­i­tar­i­an law.”

Fur­ther infor­ma­tion to fol­low.

Notes to edi­tor:

Tri­dent Ploughshares is a cam­paign ini­ti­at­ed in 1998 to dis­arm Britain ’s Tri­dent nuclear weapons sys­tem in a non-vio­lent, peace­ful, safe, open and account­able man­ner

Web­site: http://www.tridentploughshares.org

Tri­dent Ploughshares Media
tridentp.media [at] yahoo.co.uk

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State­ments from the cit­i­zen inspec­tors; arrestee details

17.08.2009 17:25
The five Tri­dent Ploughshares cit­i­zen inspec­tors, who are now in cus­tody after the “ban­dit alarm” went off at Faslane for around half an hour, are as fol­lows:

Bri­an Larkin 49 Amer­i­can , unem­ployed teacher liv­ing in Scot­land

Sylvia Boyes 65 Peace Cam­paign­er from Keigh­ley

Mary Milling­ton 61 Retired welsh lan­guage tutor — lived at Green­han for 5 years

Ang­ie Zel­ter 58 Human Being!

Pen­ny Stone 25 Musi­cian

They issued the fol­low­ing state­ment:

Dear Friends at Faslane,

A group of us from Tri­dent Ploughshares have entered the base today to call for the process of dis­ar­ma­ment of Tri­dent nuclear weapons to begin. We are here to remind all con­cerned that the UK gov­ern­ment, as sig­na­to­ry to the Nuclear Non Pro­lif­er­a­tion Treaty under­took more than 40 years ago to com­plete the dis­ar­ma­ment of its nuclear weapons. The con­tin­u­ing deploy­ment of Tri­dent seri­ous­ly threat­ens glob­al secu­ri­ty and peace, encour­ag­ing fur­ther pro­lif­er­a­tion. In 2009 Judge Bed­jaoui, Pres­i­dent of the Inter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice, gave an opin­ion on “the legal­i­ty of a nuclear weapons sys­tem that deploys over 100 nuclear war­heads with an approx­i­mate yield of 100 kilo­tons per war­head.” He stat­ed: “Bear­ing in mind that war­heads of this size con­sti­tute around eight times the explo­sive pow­er of the bomb that flat­tened Hiroshi­ma … and killed over 100,000 civil­ians, it fol­lows that the use of even a sin­gle such war­head in any cir­cum­stance, whether a first or sec­ond use and whether intend­ed to be tar­get­ed against civil­ian pop­u­la­tions or mil­i­tary objec­tives, would inevitably vio­late the pro­hi­bi­tions on the inflic­tion of unnec­es­sary suf­fer­ing and indis­crim­i­nate harm as well as the rule of pro­por­tion­al­i­ty…. In my opin­ion, such a sys­tem deployed and ready for action would be unlaw­ful.”

The Scot­tish gov­ern­ment formed a work­ing group for a future of a Scot­land with­out nuclear weapons near­ly two years ago but has failed to release a report let alone take any rel­e­vant action while the peo­ple of Scot­land over­whelm­ing­ly oppose the pres­ence of nuclear weapons in these waters. As long as the gov­ern­ments fail to begin a process of dis­ar­ma­ment mem­bers of Tri­dent Ploughshares are com­mit­ted to what­ev­er non­vi­o­lent action pos­si­ble to begin that process. We invite oth­ers to join us or con­tact us to dis­cuss your con­cerns.

The process of dis­ar­ma­ment would not have to mean the loss of jobs in the area. We urge the gov­ern­ment to redi­rect the resources cur­rent­ly allo­cat­ed to Tri­dent to meet real human needs. The skills of peo­ple work­ing at this base could well be employed in the area build­ing the infra­struc­ture for renew­able ener­gy, alle­vi­at­ing the threat of cli­mate change, among oth­er pos­si­bil­i­ties. We invite you to con­tact us so that we can enter into plan­ning for the future of a Scot­land and world with­out nuclear weapons.

Rather than con­tin­ue to threat­en oth­er nations and mil­lions of inno­cent civil­ians with nuclear weapons Scot­land and the UK could lead the world by scrap­ping Tri­dent.
We entered the gate ful­ly aware that we might be charged with vio­la­tion of SOCPA. That laws was estab­lished osten­si­bly to deter “seri­ous orga­nized crime.” But it is the pres­ence of Tri­dent sub­marines each car­ry­ing 48 war­heads ten times more destruc­tive than the Hiroshi­ma bomb which con­sti­tutes a seri­ous orga­nized crime. We invite oth­ers to fol­low us through this gate and restore human­i­tar­i­an law.

In peace and hope,

Sylvia Boyes Con­tact:
Mary Milling­ton 07768 312675
Pen­ny Stone
Bri­an Larkin
Ang­ie Zel­ter

Mem­bers of Tri­dent Ploughshares 17 August 2009

Mary Milling­ton addi­tion­al­ly issued the fol­low­ing state­ment:

“Hav­ing recent­ly moved to Glas­gow, I am so proud that Scot­land has decid­ed we do not want Tri­dent or any oth­er nuclear weapon.

“I have entered Faslane Naval Base today to express my sense of urgency for this weapon of mass destruc­tion to be gone, for just the very pos­ses­sion of it, let alone its poten­tial use, is immoral, ille­gal and caus­ing pro­lif­er­a­tion and dan­ger across the plan­et.”

Tri­dent Ploughshares Media
tridentp.media [at] yahoo.co.uk
http://www.tridentploughshares.org

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All five arrestees were released at around 9pm on Mon­day evening (17 August) and charged with crim­i­nal tres­pass under the Seri­ous Organ­ised Crime and Police (SOCraP) Act 2005 (also known as SOCPA) s.128 and under the Min­istry of Defence byelaws (entry to the base with­out author­i­ty). A report is being sent to the Procu­ra­tor Fis­cal who will decide whether or not to pros­e­cute.

The five were in Scot­land to take part in the Tri­dent Ploughshares dis­ar­ma­ment camp at Coul­port, near Faslane. The camp is a week long gath­er­ing dur­ing which peace activists share ideas, plan actions and enjoy them­selves. The camp will run until the 23rd of August and every­one is invit­ed to come and par­tic­i­pate. Details can be found here: http://www.tridentploughshares.org/article983