Glasgow airport protest announced — protesters arrested

6th April 2010

6th April 2010
4 men and 1 woman were arrest­ed and charged on Wednes­day 31st March for speak­ing in pub­lic about the cli­mate effects of avi­a­tion at the reopen­ing of Glas­gow Air­port Ter­mi­nal 2. The group from Stop Expan­sion at Scot­tish Air­ports (SESA), includ­ing a legal observ­er and two pho­tog­ra­phers, were leav­ing the air­port after hold­ing a ban­ner for a pho­to­graph out­side Ter­mi­nal 1 when a police van and police car pulled up and arrest­ed 4 of the group.

Late into the night, riot police lat­er went to the homes of the arrest­ed with­out war­rants. On Thurs­day the 5 were charged with obstruct­ing nor­mal air­port busi­ness. All of the accused deny the charges. The group believes that those arrest­ed were tar­get­ted because SESA is call­ing for a pub­lic non-vio­lent peace­ful protest at the air­port on Octo­ber 10.

Amelia Bir­rell, had riot police at her door after mid­night say­ing that they want­ed to ques­tion her son, Rob­bie. She said: “I think that this jus­tice sys­tem is a joke when it locks up peace­ful indi­vid­u­als until 6pm the next day when they are talk­ing about such seri­ous mea­sures as cli­mate change. We were made to feel like crim­i­nals when riot police searched around the whole of our house in the mid­dle of the night. I know that the air­port is a sen­si­tive place but they are all pas­sion­ate indi­vid­u­als wor­ried about the future of our coun­try and they were doing noth­ing to cause any dis­tur­bance. I am proud of my son, we are sup­posed to have free­dom of speech in this coun­try and such heavy hand­ed polic­ing is dis­pro­por­tion­ate and hyp­o­crit­i­cal.”

This is not the first time that Scot­tish anti-air­port expan­sion cam­paign­ers have been sub­ject to heavy-hand­ed polic­ing tac­tics. In Jan­u­ary 2009 Geoff Lamb, a pen­sion­er from Aberdeen was been held in a cell overnight for inno­cent­ly writ­ing ‘you fly, we die’ in the snow in food dye. Lat­er in 2009, Plane Stu­pid exposed a mas­sive police oper­a­tion to bribe and infil­trate peace­ful protest groups.

The dis­pro­por­tion­ate tac­tics we have seen by Strath­clyde police mir­ror those infa­mous­ly used by the Met­ro­pol­i­tan police. Arrest­ed for voic­ing con­cerns about the avi­a­tion industry’s mas­sive and grow­ing con­tri­bu­tion to cli­mate change? Who are the real crim­i­nals here?

http://sesacoalition.blogspot.com/