View Actions map 2011 – 12 in a larger map
Find out about actions that have already happened this year and get inspiration for planning your own!
|
||
|
One of the students involved reports on the day’s action: The good news is we stayed for the whole event and managed to speak to, quite literally, everyone who visited the careers fair. Inspired by Charlie Brooker’s anti-arms trade “GUN SAAAALE” routine, we set up our own miniature arms fair on a nearby bench to draw attention to our protest. We labelled toy cars, planes and boats with the names of real weapons, their manufacturers, their prices and which “satisfied customers” (i.e. dictators) already had one. Dressed in a suit and shades with a big “Arms Dealer” badge on my label, I invited passers-by to the arms fair, because “we don’t care who buys our weapons or what they do with them, we’ll sell them to anyone”. I spent a while playing with the toys and threatening the protestors with them to show them off to the public.
Activists protested the presence of arms companies BAE Systems and Raytheon at the London Graduate Fair this week. Outraged at the presence of BAE Systems and Raytheon at the event, activists aimed to both disrupt the smooth running of the BAE stall and to inform students about the companies.
At their most recent careers fair, Warwick University students organised a die-in at the BAE Systems stall. While the students lay ‘dead’ on the floor, one student shouted loudly about BAE’s record. Outside the fair the group, Weapons out of Warwick, gave out a ‘Fair Information’ booklet, a guide to the ethical record of those companies attending the fair. Read the full story here. Students and local residents protest at the UAV Tactical Systems company based in Leicester. It builds the Watchkeeper and is in part set up by the Israeli company Elbit Systems. Elbit specializes in the manufacturing of electronic defence devices for the Israeli Army. Freedom of Information requests by the Oxford Anti-War Action group helped The Independent to write this article on Oxford University’s investments in Lockheed Martin. From a student at Bristol University This spring, many of us will have seen the Arab uprisings, and been shocked at the way peaceful people have been gassed, shot at, and otherwise attacked by their own governments. What will have passed many of us by however, is that many of the weapons used against these people were manufactured by companies in the UK. Every day around the world, British companies (with the support of the British government), are flogging weapons to some of the most repressive and brutal regimes in the world. Where might one go to find these arms dealers? Surely, they are ashamed, kept out of sight to avoid being held to account for their heinous deeds? Well, in fact one need look no further than Bristol University. BAE Systems for instance – one of the largest arms dealers in the world – has an active presence on campus. Despite involvement in numerous corruption scandals, and having sold arms to a long list of dictatorial regimes (including Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe and East Timor, to name but a few [1] ), this company is invited back year after year to recruit undergraduates at Bristol University. They have a prominent place at every engineering careers fair, where undergraduates are told about exciting careers opportunities, with no mention whatsoever about ethics, or that it might be questionable to work for such a company. Surely, it is the duty of the careers service to inform students of the actions of the companies they consider working for?
Report on the recent action in Edinburgh: Once again we returned to Edinburgh University to flyer students heading in to the careers fair about the presence of arms companies on campus, as we had already discovered that the arms companies BAE Systems, Thales and Selex would be attempting to recruit students inside the fair. We had a generally positive response from students, many expressing surprise that arms dealers would be present inside, especially considering the role of British arms companies in arming dictators such as Libya and Egypt prior to the Arab Spring. We even got a good number of sign ups to our petition. More » Abi Haque and Hilary Ekad have written an excellent piece for CAAT in the Huffington Post. Find out about the links between universities and the arms trade and what students are doing about it. |
|
|
Universities Network, Campaign Against Arms Trade, 11 Goodwin Street, London N4 3HQ
|
Tel: +44 20 7281 0297
|
Email: universities(at)caat·org·uk Powered by WordPress & Atahualpa |
||
Campaign Against Arms Trade | Universities Network