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3 days of resistance against arms fair

Ontwapen! (Disarm!) | 23.04.2006 11:17 | Animal Liberation | Anti-militarism | Ecology | World

From wednesday the 19th to friday the 21st, several protests and direct actions took place in Amsterdam, opposing the military fair 'Marelec'. Marelec was not only a military fair, but was also a place for companies producing sonar technology, which kills whales and dolphins.

Spearhead Exhibitions is organising most of the world's arm fairs, like ITEC, DSEi, Marelec, etc. The owner of Spearhead is Reed Exhibitions. Therefor we need to step up actions against Spearhead and Reed. Upcoming arm fairs organised by Spearhead and Reed are:

ITEC, May 16th-18th 2006, ExCel, London

UUVS, 27-28 September 2006, National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, UK

DSEi 2007, 11-14 September 2007, ExCeL, London

Apparently some 50% of the arm fairs around the world take place in the UK.
We hope to be able to organise something (i.e. a picketline at Reed in Amsterdam) to coincide with these UK arm fairs.

At Spearhead's arms fair 'Marelec', several actions happened:
- at april 11th, the Reed office in Maarssen was attacked by 'Onkruit' activists using spray paint
- at wednesday the 19th, 100 protesters joined a demonstration at the marine base 'Kattenburg', where 'Marelec' took place. The main gate was blocked for two hours. One person got arrested.
- wednesday evening, a group called 'Anarchist Bridgemen' threw paint bombs and rotten fruit at two canal boats taking Marelec visitors for a guided tour. The boats stopped and probably the tour was cancelled.
- at thursday the 19th, the clowns army marched towards the marine base and tried to get in, which was prevented by the marine
- thursday evening, 50 protesters joined a noise demonstration at the Marelec-visitors dinner. When the group left after 1 hour of noise, the riot squad rounded up 42 of the protesters and arrested them, because of "ignoring the police command to leave", which was impossible to hear because of the noise. People with ID released the same night, anonymous protesters the next day.
- friday morning, 5am, some protesters woke up the Marelec visitors with another noise demo at the main conference hotel, using air horns and banging on traffic signs. After one minute the protesters left, because police arrived. But at that point the Marelec visitors were probably already awake.

Ontwapen! (Disarm!)
- e-mail: ontwapen@hypocrisy.org
- Homepage: http://www.ontwapen.org