Trident Ploughshares/ Voices in the Wilderness
Contacts: David Mackenzie 0870 458 3117 (07876593016) (Trident Ploughshares)
Richard Byrne 0845 4560282/ 0794 783 9992 (Voices)
Saturday 3rd August

Don't Nuke Iraq Message at Hiroshoma Day Faslane Die-in

Two of Britain's largest non violent direct action groups Trident Ploughshares (1) and Voices in the Wilderness UK(2) will join forces on Hiroshima day to send a clear "Don't fire Trident at Iraq" message to Geoff Hoon, Britain's Defence Secretary. Gabriel Carlyle, of Voices in the Wilderness will be among the hundreds expected to "die" in a symbolic "Die In" at the gates of Faslane Naval Base in Scotland (where Britain's Trident subs are based) at 8 am Tuesday 6th August. Gabriel, who visited Iraq in May this year said, "Geoff Hoon has issued nuclear threats against Iraq three times in the last few months, even saying that Britain might launch a nuclear strike if British troops were threatened with chemical or biological weapons, a clear escalation in the level of nuclear threat."(3)

"We will join our friends in Trident Ploughshares at the gates of Faslane fifty seven years after an atom bomb killed 140,000 people in Hiroshima and twelve years after the UN imposed the economic sanctions which UNICEF says has contributed to the deaths of over 500,000 children under the age of five in Iraq(4), a weapon of mass destruction which goes on killing day in, day out. We are coming to Faslane to remember Hiroshima and say never again. We are coming to say drop sanctions, not bombs."

David Mackenzie 0870 458 3117 (07876593016) (Trident Ploughshares)
Richard Byrne 0845 4560282 /0794 783 9992 (Voices)
ENDS
(1) Trident Ploughshares activists have pledged to disarm the UK Trident nuclear weapons system in a non-violent, open, peaceful, safe and fully accountable manner
(2) Voices in the Wilderness UK is a group which campaigns for the immediate and unconditional lifting of economic sanctions.
(3) Hoon's 3 threats- On 20 March 2002, British Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon told the House of Commons Select Committee on Defence that states like Iraq can be absolutely confident that in the right conditions we would be willing to use our nuclear weapons.
On 24 March, Geoff Hoon appeared on ITVs Jonathan Dimbleby show and insisted that the government "reserved the right" to use nuclear weapons if Britain or British troops were threatened by chemical or biological weapons. (Richard Norton-Taylor, Bush's nuke bandwagon, Guardian, 27 Mar. 2002)
On 29 April Hoon was asked about his threats in the House of Commons in a debate. Hoon said, "ultimately and in conditions of extreme self-defence, nuclear weapons would have to be used." See  http://www.justicenotvengeance.org for more details.
(4) The economic sanctions on Iraq, imposed on August 6th 1990, were described as one factor responsible for the massive increases in infant mortality in Iraq after 1990 identified in their 'Child and Maternal Mortality Survey 1999, Preliminary Report.