Galway City to be world's first "Caterpillar Free Zone" ?.

galway | rights, freedoms and repression | news report Tuesday June 07, 2005 22:18 by Tommy Donnellan - Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Cross Party Motion From Cllrs. Cameron and O' Brolchain.

Galway City Cllrs, Billy Cameron (Labour) and Neill O' Brolchain (Green) have joined forces in tabling a ...

Billy is in the forefront with the noted, ne'er-do-well, notorious axtivist, St. Mary Kelly. Neill is directly behind her.

motion to the City Council calling on the Council to ban the use of Caterpillar plant on Council worksites from January 1st, 2006 and on traders in Galway City to implement a voluntary ban on the sale of Caterpillar merchandise.

The motion was tabled in April in the aftermath of the International Day of Protest Against Caterpillar and which was enthusiastically participated in by these two progressive Councillors in Shop Street, Galway.

In his recent press release, Billy stated that "my motives in tabling the motion were twofold, firstly, in memory of those who have been brutally murdered by the Israeli army with Caterpillar D-9 bulldozers and which it also uses to destroy Palestinian homes, farmlands and infrastructure in the occupied West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.

Nabil al-Shubi, who was seven months pregnant, as well as her three young children and four additional members of her family were left to die under the rubble of their Nablus home when it was bulldozed on April 6, 2002. On March 16th 2003, Rachel Corrie, a 23 year old American human rights observer was run over and killed by a Caterpillar bulldozer as she stood in clear view of the IDF driver, attempting to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian pharmacist's home in Rafah. no public investigation has been carried out into her death despite her family in the US campaigning for their government to hold a full and open enquiry. Secondly, I tabled this motion on a basis of human rights, Caterpillar Corporations machinery is directly implicated in grave abuses of human rights by the Israeli army, 12,00 houses in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jersulam have been destroyed since 1967, leaving tens of thousands of men, women and children homeless. The army has used equipment to uproot tens of thousands of olive trees as well as orchards of dates, prunes, lemons and oranges causing widespread economic hardship in rural areas of Palestine and it's also using Caterpillar equipment to build a seperation wall between the two factions with a significent portion of it inside the Occupied Territories. I believe Caterpillar have a strong case to answer and with the help of fellow Councillors we can send out a strong message of solidarity to the people of Palestine and join with groups the world over in our condemnation of the Caterpillar Corporation, its abuse of human rights and its flagrant contravention of International law".