Afri Campaigns
After school Arms Club
‘I am here to see a nun about a gun’ is how Mark Thomas describes his first visit to Scoil Chriost Rí in Portlaoise to meet Sr. Barbara Raftery. He had come to Portlaoise to discuss the possibility of students setting up an ‘after school arms club’ to highlight the Irish government’s failure to introduce legislation to deal with the issue of weapons brokering in Ireland.
‘The human rights group Afri had worked with Sr. Barbara before on various school projects. It was Afri who recommended I get in touch with Sister Barbara with a view to setting up a school arms project in Ireland. It was Afri who kindly agreed to mentor the project, should it happen.’
‘Ireland is one of those countries that hasn’t quite got around to introducing brokerage laws yet. There are five countries in the EU that have no arms brokering controls: Cyprus, Portugal, Greece, Luxembourg and Greece…Not surprisingly arms brokers have and can work from Ireland with no restrictions. In fact, Leonid Minim, the Ukranian/Israeli gunrunner who broke Sanctions by transporting massive arms shipments into Liberia and Sierra Leone, was until recently, a board member of an Irish company’.
‘So six convent schoolgirls and a nun (after some lengthy chats with myself, the team working on the show and Joe from Afri) decided that they should inject some urgency into the Irish government’s thinking. They do so by setting up an arms company called Seachtar Associates…Just normal schoolgirls, who made contact with a Korean company to broker electro-shock stun batons, which although illegal to possess in Ireland can still be brokered. Seachtar Associates sent a baton to a human rights activist in California, to prove they could. To prove that Ireland needs to introduce brokerage laws. Six convent girls and a nun were even asked if they would consider being agents for the Korean stun batons in Ireland. On top of that, they imported leg irons into Dublin.’
Mark then goes on to describe the purchase of the MCS mini cannon stone thrower.
‘The MCS was developed and made by the Israeli company RD Peled. It hurls approximately 600 egg shaped stones a minute, can cover a distance of 100 metres and has been deployed by the Israeli security forces. It can be mounted on a vehicle or tripod; a sample one costs $7,500. So we buy one and RD Peled ships it over to Dublin, having sent us a note saying:’ we would like to let you know that in order to pass customs and security checks without delay we will write that the product is for agricultural use’.
Not only do they ship it to Ireland but Rafi Peled and his wife Dinah offer to come to Ireland to demonstrate how the stone thrower works.
First thing in the morning on a farm in Portlaoise, Ireland, and the crows
are scrambling round the sky. Spring was on its way but got delayed, so the
trees were still leafless as the crows infested their branches. In the middle
of the field is the stone thrower, erected and on a tripod. It has a hopper
for pouring the stones in, which feeds them into the motorised drum, which
rotates very, very fast and throws stones out of the front of the contraption…
Sr Barbara and I are standing next to Rafi Peled and his wife Dinah, the company
of RD Peled…
The stone thrower is powered by two car batteries and makes a noise like a
loud hover lawnmower when it is switched on. Rafi holds the handle, points
the machine into the air, releases a mechanism to let the stones into the cylinder
– and BOOM! The stones clink and clank loudly with a fast erratic rhythm. They
fly out from the metal cover like a vicious mist, a hurtling black cloud of
stone, hundreds and hundreds of stones spraying an area, arcing high into the
air. It takes only seconds, then the machine is switched off and silence descends.
Even the crows are shocked. Rafi stands back with a big grin, holding out his
hands and grunting, Uh-huh uh-huh’ in a what-do-you-think-of-that kind of way.
‘I have to know’, I say ‘is it lethal?’
‘No it is not for killing!’ Rafi says emphatically.
‘But if I got in the way of it …’ I say, gingerly stepping towards the front
of the inactive machine.
‘No not for killing’
‘But if I stood here’ I say in front of the machine.
‘Then I will kill you’
‘Right’
‘It is lethal at twelve metres’.
From 300 yards away, five of the girls watch through a top-floor window of
a lone house the events that are taking place in the field. They are wired
into the cameras dotted around the place and can hear the conversation.
If I wanted to get these into somewhere sensitive in West Africa, could you
label it agricultural equipment? I ask Dinah
Sure,’ she says ‘no problem.’
‘You can move it without having to get licences’
‘Sure’
‘Would Sudan be a problem?’ I ask, punting a country with a record of genocide
and a UN arms embargo to boot.
‘No, no problem.’
Finally the girls from Seachtar Associates walk down the wooden steps, out
of the house along the gravel driveway and across the field. Dressed in their
school jumper and tracksuits, a group of 17 and 18 year old convent schoolgirls
walk up to Mr and Mrs Peled to ask them how they can sell something that can
take a human life in so bizarre a fashion.
As the girls walk towards us, Rafi jokingly turns to me and says, ‘You want
me to get rid of them?’
‘What, with that? ’I say, looking at the stone thrower and having a serious
sense-of humour failure.
‘Yes, you want me to stop them?’ he says with a grin.
‘No’
I inform Rafi he is being filmed by Channel 4 and the girls, being the new
owners of a mini canon stone thrower, have a few questions for him. The grin
goes.
How can you sell this when it could kill someone?’ says Maeve, who is possibly
the feistiest of them
‘No it does not kill.’
Yes it does. You said at twelve metres it would kill someone.’
‘No’
‘Those rocks will kill someone.’
‘It could not fire rocks,’ says Rafi, gripping the stone thrower. It could
fire plasticine balls.’ He motions his hand in a flicking gesture to indicate
the balls leaving the machine. ‘Or sweets. It could fire sweets.’
‘Sweets!’ says Maeve. ‘Sweets!’ I have never seen such awesome incredulity.
‘Sweets,’ attempts Rafi, slightly desperately…
Schoolchildren have exploited loopholes in Britain's arms controls by importing torture equipment including thumb and wall cuff restraint devices and a Chinese "sting stick" - a metal bar covered with spikes. (Mark Thomas, UK Channel 4, Dispatches, 2006) Watch this movie