Press Releases & Updates 1998

Support is rapidly growing, both in Scotland and abroad, for the Trident Ploughshares 2000 movement, as three British and one Australian anti-nuclear activist, were taken to Scottish prisons following a series of non-violent direct disarmament actions at the British Trident nuclear submarine base located in Faslane, Scotland.

Alex Salmond, the leader of the Scottish National Party, granted his support for the Trident Ploughshares movement in a letter dated 29 July 1998.

Also the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and National CND are stepping up their involvement in this direct disarmament campaign which wants to force the British government to abide by the July 1996 UN World Court’s decision outlawing ’the threat or use of nuclear weapons’. Dave Knight, CND Chair says: ’The protestors are exposing the hypocrisy of the UK over war crimes. On the one hand the UK has taken the lead in setting up the International Criminal Court, but at the same time it still refuses to accept the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) Advisory Ruling, which judged weapons of mass destruction like Trident to be unlawful’.

Rob Green, a former UK Navy Commander, and today Chair of the UK World Court Project, sent a message of support all the way from New Zealand: ’The non-violent activists are using direct action to uphold the self-evident legal case against any use of Trident. This is why I am supporting the courageous people’.

George Farebrother, UK’s Secretary of the World Court Project, stated: ’The wrong people are being arrested. International law, as clarified by the International Court of Justice, has a great deal to say about what the military can, and can not do to people in time of war. So who are the criminals? The activists who are putting their bodies and their freedom on the line to prevent a criminal cataclysm? Or the high officials and politicians who devise plans contrary to international law?’.

Ben Oquist, assistant of Australian Senator Bob Brown, already proposes to table a motion in the Australian Senate demanding the immediate release of Australian activist Jens Light, and the start of negotiations leading to a global ban of all nuclear weapons. Australia has been for many years on the forefront of nuclear disarmament. Former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating reported on the 14th of August 1996 the historic report of the ’Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons’. With seventeen leading international figures they agreed that ’nuclear weapons pose an intolerable threat to all humanity and its habitat’. The Canberra Commission proposed practical steps towards a nuclear weapons-free world, and urged the nuclear weapon states to commit themselves, immediately and unequivocally, to eliminating all nuclear weapons.

Also Corbin Harney, spiritual leader of the Western Shoshone Indians in Nevada, sent his support to the activists. Britain has detonated for many years its nuclear bombs on the Treaty land of the Western Shoshone Tribe in Nevada.

Sylvia Boyes, a vicar’s wife from Birmingham (56 yesterday), and Rachel Wenham (25) a housing coop worker from Leeds, will both be tried in the Victoria Hall, Dumbarton Court next Wednesday 26 of August, at 10 a.m.. Both women are now in the Cornton Vale women’s prison. Angie Zelter (49) a potter from Norfolk, will be on trial in Dumbarton on September 22nd, together with Jens Light (32), a public servant from Canberra, Australia. He is now in the Greenock men’s prison.

Anja Light, his sister, who is also at the Trident Ploughshares camp says, ’Jens is a prisoner of conscience. He has been locked up while attempting, peacefully and responsibly, to prevent crimes of unimaginable magnitude.’

Angie Zelter is one of the four women who disarmed the Hawk aircraft bound for Indonesia two years ago. Although having damaged the Hawk fighter for an estimated 2.5 million pounds, the jury found her not guilty, and she was acquitted ’for prevention of crimes against humanity’ by Indonesia in East Timor.

More arrests are being expected the next days as already 97 people have pledged to disarm the Trident system if Westminster does not take immediate steps to abolish nuclear weapons, as promised in Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968.

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