Showing posts with label # Elbit 5 # Parc Aberporth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label # Elbit 5 # Parc Aberporth. Show all posts

Thursday 14 September 2017

Diolch yn fawr BBC


Diolch yn fawr BBC  Cymru ,"No drones over Gaza!" was chanted by  protesters from Ceredigion, Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire at the  drones testing airfield, known as Parc Aberporth .
Based in the city of Haifa, Elbit produces military and civilian-use equipment, including drones, aircraft, weapon control systems, and artillery. The company's customers include the Israeli army, US Air Force, and the British Royal Air Force.
Operations at the Elbit owned drone factory at Shenstone near Birmingham was shut for two complete days  as protestors called for the closure of the factory and for a complete embargo on arms sales between Israel and the UK. On Thursday 6th July over a hundred people had gathered at the factory and took part in a number of activities to remember the thousands of Palestinians killed by Israel’s attacks on Gaza. Names of those killed, written on hundreds of strips of material,were tied to the fence surrounding the factory and the top of the fence was festooned with Palestinian flags. Small cardboard coffins, each with a photograph and name of a child killed in Gaza, were laid across both entrances to the factory. Palestinians at the protest reminded people that each of the people killed by an Israeli drone is a person, with a name, an age, a family and a story of their life.
On Friday 7th July activists returned once more to the factory, where the Palestinian flags and ribbons of names of those killed continued to surround the factory. All three entrances to the factory were blocked, forcing its closure for a 2nd day. Five protestors were subsequently arrested but as they were taken away the names of those killed in Gaza were still fluttering from the fence and 50 or so flags were flying defiantly. The protesters believed that the factory is complicit in illegal activity and that they were preventing a crime,"
The chanting  in Aberporth was heard loud and clear in the background as Bethan Williams of Cymdeithas yr Iaith (pictured below on far right) spoke to BBC Wales reporter Matt Murray who happened to be there in connection with the Telegraph report about the two drones that had crashed into the sea off Aberporth http://www.telegraph.co.uk/…/army-grounds-1bn-drone-fleet-…/. Bethan's excellent clear, cogent interview was broadcast on Radio Cymru's "Post Prynhawn": http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b094hx7h#play. @ 37.41 The references to the drones' impact over Gaza were not edited out of Bethan's interview the way they were from the other interview with my comrade Harry Rogers. Harry of Bro Emlyn Peace and Justice and  also of the Drones Campaign Network Cymru  (far left in photo above waving Palestinian flag )  in a greatly shortened interview, omitted any mention of Gaza, but was at least broadcast in the evening news on BBC Wales http://www.bbc.co.uk/…/bbc-wales-today-evening-news-13092017 @ 6:45
And well done to Elizabeth Morley for coming up with the idea for us to go to Aberporth.. Incidentally I try not to smile for camera on occasions like this. But charges  were dropped against 3 defendants. The trial of the remaining 2 will be on 24 November. Palestine will be free.