How can countries that market arms to tyrannical regimes pretend that they do not support human rights violations? What is even more two-faced is that they then get on their high horse and interfere militarily, or subtly, in other countries because of atrocities caused by weapons supplied by themselves?
I am so nauseated by politicians supporting and selling arms to dictators then turning all shocked and appalled when those weapons are used to ensure the tyrants retain their power.
UK anti arms campaigners have expressed dismay that Bahrain, which has killed scores of mainly Shias (who are treated as second-class citizens) since protests broke out in February, has been invited to one of the World’s largest arms fairs being hosted in London’s docklands.
When, in the early hours of 17 February, Bahrain security police stormed the roundabout where a protest was being held, doctors, nurses and paramedics went to the aid of people who had been shot, beaten and tear-gassed.
The security forces were not well pleased and according to reports at least one doctor was attacked by baton-wielding officers while tending to an injured demonstrator.
Doctors staged a protest after word spread that security forces were preventing the wounded from being taken to hospital. They blocked the entrance to the hospital, demanding the resignation of the health minister.
Other hospital workers, including nurses, joined in the protests. This led to 47 medics held under arrest in March. In early June, those doctors and nurses who had treated injured protesters in Bahrain appeared in a special military court in Manama charged with attempting to topple the monarchy.
The list of invitees to the Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) exhibition, which also included included Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, the UAE and Kazakhstan, had been held back from the campaigners until the press started asking for it last week.
More than 1,300 companies, around half of which are British are participating in the exhibition. Sixty-five countries have been invited.
In February, we saw the embarrassment of the US government in the early days of the revolution in Egypt, when the media was ever so careful not to call it that. Tear gas used against the regime protestors, obviously supplied by the US, flashed on our TV screens and we discovered that countries, notably the US, had subsidised Mubarak’s military to the tune of 1.3 billion dollars a year.
Although President Barak Obama applied pressure on the Egyptian military for it not to attack the protestors, had the Egyptian people not been so resolute to overthrow Mubarak, the so-called democratic countries would still be propping him up.
He would no doubt have been invited to the current UK arms fair as well as Gadaffi.
And all is not over in Egypt, last week the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), (whose representatives have no doubt visited the arms fair) widened the scope of the emergency law – restricted in 2010 by Mr Mubarak to narcotics and terrorism – to include strikes, traffic disruption and the spreading of rumours.
Hundreds are again gathering in Cairo’s Tahrir Square to protest against the recent expansion of the emergency law. The Egyptians are now protesting at the military’s handling of transition from autocratic rule.
When the price of oppression was being counted in Egypt in February, UK prime minister David Cameron told reporters “If we see on the streets of Cairo today state-sponsored violence by thugs hired to beat up protesters, the regime will lose any remaining credibility it has in the eyes of the watching world, including Britain.”
My question to Mr Cameron is how can Britain pretend to hold the high ground over “state sponsored violence” while defending the arms industry as a vibrant and lucrative part of the UK economy and inviting authoritarian regimes to buy its weapons?
No doubt there will also be loads of information relating to the use of weapons and companies marketing arms training and more at such fairs.
What is the point of inviting Bahrain, where political parties are banned, when earlier this year the British Government revoked a number of export licences after it emerged that in 2010 the Department of Business approved the export of a host of crowd-control weapons.
The Foreign Office is defending the invitation adding that export licences are under review following the Arab Spring. And in true double-speak a spokesman said, “An invitation does not mean that licences will be automatically issued for the goods exhibited. We will not issue licences where we judge there is a clear risk that the proposed export might provoke or prolong regional or internal conflicts, or, which might be used to facilitate internal repression,”
I see, the invitations are sent just to tempt tyrants and other unsavoury heads of State and to let them know what is on the market. After all they can always find a way to procure the goods as long as they have loads of money.
In 2009 Britain’s future defence secretary, Liam Fox, future development secretary Alan Duncan and former Tory leader Michael Howard all had stays in Bahrain for “security conferences” or meetings with the sheikhs paid for by Bahrain.
In December 2010 foreign secretary William Hague, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton and other world leaders attended the International Institute for Strategic Studies Conference (IISS) in Bahrain. All heaped praise on Bahrain’s royal family. The conference agenda had five headings under “Security”; however, “Democracy” did not feature.
Bahrain is a vital US ally because it is home to the US Navy's Fifth Fleet and the US has been far more supportive of the ruling al-Khalifa family than it was of President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt or President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia.
The UK anti arms campaigners are right in insisting that Britain's determination to sell arms abroad is ethically unacceptable. But, since when have ethics stopped governments doing what they please.