Press Releases & Updates 1998

Twenty five peace walkers of nine different nationalities are well on track to complete on Sunday 9 August (Nagasaki Day) their For Mother Earth 1000km walk from the NATO headquarters in Brussels in to Faslane on the Clyde, in protest against the UK’s contribution to the escalation of nuclear weapons and in the hope of a world without weapons of mass destruction. They will join Trident Ploughshares 2000’s two weeks of direct disarmament actions which begins on the 11 August at the Clyde nuclear bases.

The walkers, from Belgium, Canada, France, Finland, Scotland, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United States and India, are gathering disarmament petitions and spreading flyers as they go, inviting local people to join with them for a day or more. Another twenty walkers from Romania, the Ukraine, Sri-Lanka, Russia and Belarus were refused entry to Belgium by the immigration authorities.

Pol D’Huyvetter, one of the Belgian walkers and For Mother Earth Campaigner stated " The British nuclear weapons are illegal. They are weapons of mass destruction, best compared with mobile human incinerators. The obvious illegal status of nuclear weapons was confirmed by the International Court of Justice in a historic ruling in July 8th 1996 and as citizens we have an obligation to stop this crime. Britain and all nuclear weapon states have to start negotiations for a treaty to ban nuclear weapons."

Tomorrow at 9 minutes to 12 the walkers will have a commemoration ceremony for the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, as they reach the outskirts of Glasgow. Katri Silvonen, from Finland, who is one of the foreign activists preparing themselves to carry out a non-violent direct disarmament action at the Trident base in Faslane stated: "There are nuclear warheads equal to 1152 Hiroshima bombs in Faslane, carried by Trident subs. By attempting to disarm the Trident System I feel I am doing what every responsible citizen should do under the Nuremberg principles to prevent preparations for war crimes and genocide."

On Friday 7 August, at lunchtime, the walkers will carry out a brief ceremony at the Peace Tree in Rutherglen High Street, arriving in Glasgow in the late afternoon. On Saturday they will walk from Kinning Park to Bell’s Bridge via the cycle path and then on to Clydebank by the Lomond Cycle Path. Actions are planned for the arrival at Faslane to mark Nagasaki Day (9th August).

The walkers receive the support of the Campaign For Nuclear Disarmament while in the UK.

Notes:

About Trident Ploughshares 2000 - The Ploughshares Movement began in North America in the 1970s as a confrontational but non-violent resistance to the arms race and nuclear weapons. Over the years its members have been involved in many disarmament actions, including the disabling of a Hawk aircraft bound for east Timor at the Aerospace plant for which four women were acquitted in 1996. Trident Ploughshares 2000 began in 1997 and was publicly launched in May of this year. All 97 activists have pledged to prevent nuclear crime in a non-violent manner. The organisation and individual activists see themselves as fully and openly accountable for their actions. TP2000 has also been attempting to engage the government in dialogue, so far without success. If this continues the activists will initiate peaceful disarmament attempt from August 11 1998 until 1 January 2000 or until the government commit to immediately disarming Trident themselves, whichever is the soonest.

About The Disarmament Action - If there is no significant response by that time from the UK government or the Clyde Base Commander there will be "open season" on the nuclear installations after the opening ceremony at the North Gate, Faslane Base, at 4 p.m. on Tuesday 11th August 1998. The Clyde bases are notoriously vulnerable to intrusion. This will be the first of a series of disarmament attempts, which will later have other trident related sites as targets, including the vulnerable command, control, communications and intelligence networks around the country.

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