World Airways, Shannon and Rimini Airport

international | anti-war / imperialism | news report Wednesday March 16, 2005 10:53 by Global Women's Strike, Ireland Ireland at allwomencount dot net 087 7838688

From the Global Women's Strike in Ireland to Protestors who Stopped US Troops Landing at Rimini

This statement was sent by the Global Women’s Strike in Ireland to a demonstration and occupation at Rimini airport, Italy on Saturday, March 12th 2005 against the use of the airport for the refuelling of planes carrying US troops. There have been months of protests and the day before this occupation, it was announced that World Airways, the airline carrying the troops, was not going ahead with the plan to land in Rimini. An article in Il Manifesto on that day (‘Troppo Tensioni’, I Marines Non Atterrano by Cinzia Gubbini) says that when World Airways first contacted Aeradria on the 17 January, they let them know that they wanted to pull out of Shannon, Ireland and change the stopover to Rimini.

This statement was sent by the Global Women’s Strike in Ireland to a demonstration and occupation at Rimini airport, Italy on Saturday, March 12th 2005 against the use of the airport for the refuelling of planes carrying US troops. There have been months of protests and the day before this occupation, it was announced that World Airways, the airline carrying the troops, was not going ahead with the plan to land in Rimini. An article in Il Manifesto on that day (‘Troppo Tensioni’, I Marines Non Atterrano by Cinzia Gubbini) says that when World Airways first contacted Aeradria on the 17 January, they let them know that they wanted to pull out of Shannon, Ireland and change the stopover to Rimini.

The Il Manifesto article also says World Airways are not going to land in Rimini, Italy, for a stopover on their way to Iraq, because they had “to take into account the fact that the climate is certainly more tense after the liberation of Sgrena and the killing of the secret agent”. The President of Aeradria, which was organising the landing in Rimini, under political pressure, had to resign. The new president, Massimo Masini, was elected during a shareholders’ meeting under siege from the occupation on the 12th. Fascists also demonstrated in Rimini on Saturday in support of the troops in Iraq.

The statement below was written while the Pitstop Ploughshares were still on trial.


From the Global Women's Strike in Ireland: Congratulations to the sisters and brothers in Rimini on your great victory against the use of your airport by the US military, that is, against war and warmongers. In Ireland, we are the inheritors of a long and great struggle against empire, and we now find ourselves confronting a new master. Our government tells us jobs and welfare are threatened when people in Ireland speak out against the killing priorities of the US regime, because most investment comes from there. Despite this, most people oppose these priorities. Together with many others, the Strike has protested against the refuelling of US warplanes and troop carriers at Shannon Airport, on Ireland's west coast. Shannon is a civilian airport and its use to transport troops and weapons of mass destruction to Iraq and Afghanistan, and individuals from many countries to be tortured, is illegal, especially because under our constitution Ireland is a neutral country.

We have organised protests and pickets at the airport where women from the North of our island, still a part of the UK, joined women from the South to demand that the US military get out of Shannon. We were joining women in the Strike in over 60 countries who take action this week, International Women’s Week, against the twin terrors of poverty and war under the theme, "Invest in caring, not killing". Together we demand that the $1 trillion global military budget be returned to our communities, beginning with women the carers who work the hardest for the least. The Strike in Ireland, the UK, the US and Spain has highlighted the rape and other torture of women and children by coalition forces in these wars and every war, which has been largely hidden. We have campaigned first for her release and now for justice for Guliana Sgrena, who almost uniquely among journalists wrote about the rape of women in Abu Ghraib.

At our protests at Shannon on a number of occasions, even the police have refused to arrest or block us. Local women and men joined in. Airport workers signalled their support, at a time when the Irish government claimed that jobs at Shannon would be lost because of our protests. The Strike joined others to protest against the visit to Ireland of George Bush. It was women who spoke out to the crowds gathered at the airport and to international media as he arrived at Shannon. The next day, pensioners, mothers with pushchairs, young people and more, climbed over barricades and faced riot police to ensure that Bush, who is used to getting his way, was delayed in getting to his press conference, and never got the pictures he wanted of a supportive Irish public. There have been many trials of anti-war activists. Late last year, a woman who took an axe to a US naval warplane at the airport was convicted of criminal damage after three attempts to try her but in a fantastic victory for us all, received only a suspended sentence. Three women and two men from the Pitstop Ploughshares are on trial for similar non-violent direct action on a plane at Shannon. Some of these activists from the Dublin Catholic Worker and other anti-war groups and individuals have called on US troops to refuse to serve and seek asylum at Shannon.
Rimini and Shannon are together -- even if you hadn't won, your struggle would have strengthened ours. Our local anti-war struggles, which are so fiercely fought are usually hidden by the bigger organisations that hold centre stage and which are often not interested in ‘small’, that is, grassroots struggles. That's our experience internationally in the Strike. But our grassroots networks learn from each other how to win and how to give mutual support. It is doubly helpful that you have won because it tells us that we can win too.

Stop the world and change it!

Maggie Ronayne
for the Global Women's Strike in Ireland