SHANNON DEMO SCARES OFF US AIR FORCE.

national | miscellaneous | news report Saturday August 17, 2002 21:25 by Tim Hourigan - Green Party, Gluaiseacht, L4C, RefuellingPeace

Hercules turns tail when protestors turn up.

USAF turned up on time for the demo, but made a hasty retreat while most of the activists were still at the gate. Aer Rianta would make no comment on the aircraft. I guess we were all suffering from a mass halucinatation

As we were driving into Shannon this afternoon we saw the unmistakable outline of a C-130 Hercules descending towards the airport.
We decided not to stop at the main arch, where police were denying entry to the main group of protestors.
We proceeded up to the terminal where we saw the clearly marked US AIR FORCE plane being parked near the cargo area. (They weren’t dumb enough to park it by Westair this time)
The Garda, Airport Police and Aer Rianta security were visible in numbers at all doors and were quizzing all passengers for boarding cards or ID.
Ciaron and I decided to stand outside the terminal to see who else was about and to try get a look at the Hercules. We were constantly shadowed by Airport police.
One over aggressive Aer Rianta official started giving Ciaron guff about loitering and that he had to leave the premises. This is a usual line. I’m getting sick of having to assert the right to assembly at the Terminal. The inside of the terminal is a different story, but the outside and public road in front are perfectly legitimate places of assembly so we refused to move.
I then asked the Aer Rianta official if he could tell us any details about the plane, registration number, squadron etc. He steadfastly refused to give me any info and told me to ask the Dept of Transport. I asked him why he wouldn’t tell me the info. He said he didn’t need a reason.
Now, I know some of the Aer Rianta staff are only doing their job, but it’s not at all unusual to let people know the registration of a plane. This guy just didn’t want to tell us anything. Least of all his reasons for not telling us anything.
All the time the police are refusing to let people at the arch come to the terminal (even though we’ve been through this before and the law is clearly on our side)
I met a press photographer who I brought to photograph the Hercules.
As we got up there we saw the Hercules was taxiing out for take off.
The photographer have a fairly hefty telescopic lens so I’m sure he got a good shot of the herc fleeing the scene of the crime. Given the time it landed and left, there was no way they had finished fuelling it when it left. The plane was obviously moved because of the demo.
A few of us started putting up banners and handing out leaflets.
Mr. Aer Rianta again told us we were violating an airport bye-law. When I asked him what bye-law he was referring to he couldn’t name it, so the airport policeman with him told us it was 425. I walked over to the poster of bye-laws and there is no such bye-law. There is a bye-law 4.2-5 referring to motor vehicles at the airport!
We propped up some banners and received support from exiting passengers, some who were surprised to learn of the presence of the US military at the airport.
After a period of standing in the sun with our banner, and the airport police trying to obscure our banner by parking in front of it, the main crowd decided they were going to assert their right to march. And we were shortly joined by a large crowd of protestors others, and then the demo started in earnest, with Pat-the-Picket leading the vocals.
The march went right up along the road, and despite requests to clear the road, everyone stood their ground.
A large circle was formed, with everyone saying who they were and why they had come to protest. This went on for almost an hour, including :
our sympathy with the bereaved in New York as well as in Afghanistan,
our objection to the violation of Articles 28 and 29 of the Constitution
and the fact that using a civilian airport for military purposes turns in into a terrorist target. And Shannon does not have anything near the security needed for military operations.
The demo ended with a reading from the Herold report on Afghan civilian casualties (several thousand since Oct 7, - more in fact than died on 9/11 and just as terrible.)
This includes the deaths of 13-19 women in the gynaecological ward on the top floor of a hospital hit by a US bomb, as well as the people killed in a double strike on a mosque. Perhaps 30 on the first strike, and as people came to clear the rubble over 120 were killed by the second wave of bombs. The report goes on for many pages with similar reports.
At the end there was a minute’s silence as everyone stood in a circle before dispersing peacefully.
I got home and then about 6:30 I got a call that Mary Kelly had been arrested for jumping the fence and getting on the empty runway. (see what I mean about inadequate security?)
After a bit of a rough time with airport security, she was taken to Shannon Garda station where she was treated in a more profession manner. A few of us went back out from Limerick to collect her. She was eventually released without charge at 7:30. and was in good spirits.