Nottingham Student Peace Movement will be hosting a ‘Die in’ on the Portland Building steps.
- We will be painting ourselves before we ‘die’ to highlight the damage done by the arms trade worldwide and how our university directly and indirectly supports the arms trade.


THE PLAN:

PLEASE NOTE: We will be meeting on the grass on the 'non lakeside' of the Portland at 1:00 to do make up before moving to the Portland Steps.

Lots of people will 'die' on the steps for a while (we could do shifts etc).... Others will be handing out our awesome new Anti-Arms-Trade flier (coming soon!), or manning the Megaphone!

Some people will dress in military atire and wave fake weapons with Uni branding. We'd advice everyone to wear a T-shirt or something that they dont mind covering in fake blood.

We will also have CAAT's 'CONTROL BAE' postcards for people to fill in and send to their parliamentary representative calling for the re-opening of the SFO investigation into BAE's Saudi corruption scandal.


BACKGROUND

What’s going on?

- Global military spending reached well over $1.2 trillion in 2006, and is on the rise.
- Every year, throughout the world, roughly half a million men, women and children are killed by armed violence – that’s one person every minute
- By 2020, the number of deaths and injuries caused by war and violence will overtake those caused by diseases, such as malaria and measles.
- Arms companies such as BAE and Rolls Royce consistently market and export arms to oppressive regimes, regions of conflict and to countries where military spending exceeds social development spending.
- These companies makes a profit through the sale of equipment used to kill, intimidate, destory and torture.
- The arms trade creates and exacerbates poverty. It saps the resources of poor countries and fuels conflict.
- From 1998 to 2001, the USA, the UK and France earned more income from arms sales to poor countries than they gave in aid.

How is our university involved?
- Investment: The University of Nottingham invests our money via Barclays Global Investors, which invests in arms companies.
- The University of Nottingham has directly invested £222,750 in BAE systems.
- Research: Nottingham has receieved at least £29,133,566 from arms companies since 2001 for conducting research in 46 separate projects
- Careers: Arms companies such as BAE Systems, Rolls Royce and QinetiQ are regularly invited come to the university and recruit students at careers fayres and presentations; aided by expensive buffets and flashy corporate literature.