Greens To Step Up Anti-War Campaign

national | miscellaneous | news report Monday March 24, 2003 14:51 by Graham Caswell - Green Party

Protests Planned for Shannon and Baldonnel

Press Release

The Green Party is to step-up its anti-war campaign in the coming weeks. The Party is planning protests involving its T.D.s and MEPs at Shannon and Baldonnel airports, which have been used by US forces in the past number of months.

Green Party Chairman and Foreign Affairs spokesperson, John Gormley, T.D., said that the public are now seeing the terrible reality of war on their television screens. He said that he believed anti-war sentiments would grow as civilian casualties mounted. "This is not going to be a clean, conventional war, as the US and British had hoped for. Instead it now looks set to be a guerrilla war with much of the fighting taking place in populated cities. Civilian casualties would therefore be unavoidable and the death toll would undoubtedly rise. If the war becomes protracted a humanitarian crisis will loom. How can a so-called neutral country be party to this barbarity? If, as the Taoiseach and Brian Cowen claim, this has always been a policy and that to refuse landing rights at Shannon would be a departure from this policy, then why was this not stated clearly before the proposed second UN resolution failed?"

The Green Party will be organising vigils outside Shannon Airport and Baldonnel, which is also being used by the US military, in the coming weeks. "These vigils will be attended by the Green Party's six TDs and two MEPs, as well as other representatives and party members in order to show the Party's total opposition to the Governments hypocritical stance. We will continue to call for this war to end. The American and British troops should be withdrawn now," he concluded.