Margaretta D’Arcy and Niall Farrell’s incursion onto the runway at Shannon Airport on 7th October 2012. Shanonwatch
“This is not a regular airport,” Margaretta D’Arcy said to me as we heard a C-130T Hercules prepare to take off from Shannon Airport in Ireland after 3 p.m. on September 11, 2022. That enormous U.S. Navy aircraft (registration number 16-4762) had flown in from Sigonella, a US Naval Air Station in Italy. A few minutes earlier, a US Navy C-40A (registration number 16-6696) left Shannon for the US military base at Stuttgart, Germany, after flying in from Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia. Shannon is not a regular airport, D’Arcy said, because while it is merely a civilian airport, it allows hyppig US military planes to fly in and out of it, with Gate 42 of the airport functioning as its “forward operating base.”
I en alder av 88 år er D’Arcy, som er en legendarisk irsk skuespiller og dokumentarfilmskaper, fast medlem av Shannonwatch, bestående av en gruppe aktivister som – siden 2008 – har holdt månedlige vakter i en rundkjøring nær flyplassen. Shannonwatch's mål are to “end U.S. military use of Shannon Airport, to stop rendition flights through the airport, and to obtain accountability for both from the relevant Irish authorities and political leaders.” Edward Horgan, a veteran of the Irish military who had been on peacekeeping missions to Cyprus and Palestine, told me that this vigil is vital. “It’s important that we come here every month,” he said, “because without this there is no visible opposition” to the footprint of the US military in Ireland.
I følge en rapport fra Shannonwatch med tittelen "Shannon flyplass og 21st Century War,” the use of the airport as a US forward operating base began in 2002-2003, and this transformation “was, and still is, deeply offensive to the majority of Irish people.”
Artikkel 29 av irsk grunnlov fra 1937 setter rammen for landets nøytralitet. Å tillate et utenlandsk militær å bruke irsk jord er i strid med artikkel 2 i Haagkonvensjonen of 1907, to which Ireland is a signatory. Nonetheless, said John Lannon of Shannonwatch, the Irish government has allowed almost 3 million U.S. troops to pass through Shannon Airport since 2002 and has even assigned a permanent staff officer to the airport. “Irish airspace and Shannon Airport became the virtual property of the US war machine,” said Niall Farrell of Galway Alliance Against War. “Irish neutrality was truly dead.”
Pitstop of death
Margaretta D’Arcy’s eyes gleam as she recounts her time at the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, located in Berkshire, England, and involving activists from Wales, who set up to prevent the storage and passage of US cruise missiles at this British military base. That camp begynte i 1981 og varte til 2000. D’Arcy gikk i fengsel tre ganger under denne kampen (av totalt minst 20 ganger satt hun i fengsel for sin antikrigsaktivisme). «Det var bra,» fortalte hun meg, «fordi vi ble kvitt våpnene og landet ble gjenopprettet til folket. Det tok 19 år. Kvinner kjempet konsekvent til vi fikk det vi ønsket.» Da D’Arcy ble arrestert, strippet fengselsmyndighetene henne for å ransake henne. Hun nektet å ta på seg klærne igjen og begynte både i sultestreik og en nakenprotest. Ved å gjøre det tvang hun fengselsmyndighetene til å stoppe praksisen med å utføre stripesøk. "Hvis du handler med verdighet, tvinger du dem til å behandle deg med verdighet," sa hun.
Part of this act of dignity includes refusing to allow her country’s airport to be used as part of the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Since 2002, several brave people have entered the airport and have attempted to deface US aircraft. On September 5, 2002, Eoin Dubsky malt "Aldri” on a US warplane (for which he was fined); and then on January 29, 2003, Mary Kelly took an axe onto the runway and rammet a military plane, causing $1.5 million in damage; she was also fined. A few weeks later, on February 3, 2003, the Pitstop Ploughshares (a group of five activists who belonged to the Catholic Worker Movement) attacked a US Navy C-40 aircraft—the same one that Mary Kelly had previously damaged—with hammers and a pickaxe (a story fortalte levende av Harry Browne i Hamret av irene, 2008). De spraymalte også "Pitstop of Death” på en hangar.
I 2012 marsjerte Margaretta D’Arcy og Niall Farrell videre til the runway to protest the airport being used by US planes. Arrested and convicted, they nonetheless returnert to the runway the next year in orange jumpsuits. During the court proceedings in June 2014, D’Arcy grilled the airport authorities about why they had not arrested the pilot of an armed US Hercules plane that had arrived at Shannon Airport four days after their arrest on the runway. She spurte, "Finnes det to sett med regler – ett for folk som oss som prøver å stoppe bombingen og ett for bombeflyene?" Shannon Airports inspektør Pat O'Neill svarte: "Jeg forstår ikke spørsmålet."
"Dette er en sivil flyplass," sa D'Arcy til meg mens hun gjorde en gest mot rullebanen. "Hvordan lar en regjering militæret bruke en sivil flyplass?"
Ekstraordinære overføringer
The US government began illegally transporting prisoners from Afghanistan and other places to its prison in the Guantánamo Bay detention camp and to other “svarte nettsteder” in Europe, North Africa, and West Asia. This act of transporting the prisoners came to be known as “extraordinary rendition.” In 2005, when Dermot Ahern, Ireland’s minister for foreign affairs, was asked about the “extraordinary rendition” flights into Shannon Airport, he sa, "Hvis noen har bevis på noen av disse flyvningene, vennligst ring meg og jeg vil få det undersøkt umiddelbart." Amnesty International svarte at de hadde direkte bevis på at opptil seks CIA-charterde fly hadde brukt Shannon lufthavn omtrent 50 ganger. Fire år senere produserte Amnesty International en grundig rapporterer that showed that their earlier number was deflated and that likely hundreds of such US military flights had flown in and out of the airport.
Mens den irske regjeringen opp gjennom årene har sagt at det motsetter denne praksisen har ikke det irske politiet (Garda Síochána) gått om bord på disse flyvningene for å inspisere dem. Som underskriver av Europakonvensjonen om menneskerettigheter (signert i 1953) og FNs konvensjon mot tortur og annen grusom, umenneskelig eller nedverdigende behandling eller straff (adopted in 1984 and ratified in 1987), Ireland is duty-bound to prevent collaboration with “extraordinary rendition,” a position taken by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties. I 2014 var de irske parlamentarikerne Mick Wallace og Clare Daly arrestert at Shannon Airport for trying to search two US aircraft that they believed were carrying “troops and armaments.” They were frustrated by the Irish government’s false assurances. “How do they know? Did they search the planes? Of course not,” Wallace and Daly said.
I mellomtiden, ifølge Shannonwatch rapporterer, “Rather than take measures to identify past involvement in rendition or to prevent further complicity, successive Irish [g]overnments have simply denied any possibility that Irish airports or airspace were used by US rendition planes.”
I 2006 syklet Conor Cregan nær Shannon flyplass. Flyplasspolitiinspektør Lillian O'Shea, som gjenkjente ham fra protester, konfronterte ham, men Cregan kjørte av gårde. Han ble til slutt arrestert. Ved rettssaken til Cregan, O'Shea innrømmet at politiet hadde fått beskjed om å stoppe og trakassere aktivistene på flyplassen. Zoe Lawlor fra Shannonwatch fortalte meg denne historien og sa så: «Slik trakassering forsterker viktigheten av vår protest».
In 2003 and 2015, Sinn Féin—the largest opposition party in the Northern Ireland Assembly—put forward a nøytralitetsregning å nedfelle nøytralitetsbegrepet i den irske grunnloven. Regjeringen, sa Seán Crowe fra Sinn Féin, har "solgt irsk nøytralitet stykke for stykke mot folkets ønsker." Hvis ideen om nøytralitet blir adoptert av det irske folket, vil det være på grunn av ofrene til mennesker som Margaretta D’Arcy, Niall Farrell og Mary Kelly.
Denne artikkelen ble produsert av Globetrotter.
ZNetwork finansieres utelukkende gjennom generøsiteten til leserne.
Donere