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Dear friends,
Please find below a
statement from Global Women’s Strike demanding that our dear friend and
colleague Margaretta D’Arcy, be released. She has been jailed for three months
in Ireland, for protesting the use of Shannon’s civilian airport for US wars.
She is only allowed one phone call a day and two half-hour visits a week of no
more than three adults.
Many people
internationally are shocked and furious that Margaretta has been jailed and are
demanding her immediate release!
We first met Margaretta
at Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp outside the US Air Force nuclear weapons
base in Berkshire UK, where we lived during 1983/84. Margaretta stayed there in
the ’80s and ’90s, living outside for weeks at a time, helping maintain the
camp’s presence and anti-war activities at Yellow (Main) Gate. Yellow Gate women
fought and eventually won the fantastic legal victory that the base was illegal
and the Common was restored to the people.
Please join the demand
for Margaretta’s release by any of the following:
·
Add your signature
and/or organisation, endorsing the GWS statement below. Please send back to
this email address and we will add to the final list to be handed in to the
Irish embassy in London at the demonstration in support of Margaretta on
Wednesday.
·
And/or write your own
statement in support, sending us a copy.
·
Circulate the
statement/s to your networks and put on your blogs, website, Facebooks, tweets,
etc...
·
Write to Irish Minister
for Defence Alan Shatter demanding the government release Margaretta -
alan.shatter@oir.ie
·
Send support cards to
Margaretta: c/o Limerick Jail, Limerick City, Ireland.
·
There will be a regular
picket outside Limerick prison on Fridays at 5-6 pm. See below for LINKS to
coverage of protest in Ireland.
Invest in caring not
killing!
Kay and Sian
(Orange Gate 1983-84)
Statement to the Press
and the Public
We are outraged to
learn that our dear sister and colleague Margaretta D’Arcy has been jailed – and
for three months! – for protesting the use of the civilian airport at Shannon
for US wars. And we are deeply worried about her health and well-being as a
cancer patient. One of the many public services Ms D’Arcy has performed is to
protest the Irish government’s many years of complicity in US war crimes and its
destruction of Irish neutrality. She has been dedicated to highlighting that
the most devastating impact of war is on women and our children, both directly
from the bombs that rain down on us, and by paying with our poverty for the
horrendous weapons of massive destruction that surround us all.
Ms D’Arcy is a veteran
of Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, which opposed the US military placing
cruise missiles on common land in England, and won – the camp is no longer a
military base. To dissent from a perspective of permanent war and austerity,
and demand the protection of life and the planet, is increasingly labelled
subversive and even criminal behaviour. While war criminals are allowed to pass
through Irish airports and financial criminals go unpunished, the Irish State in
thrall to the US, UK, EU and IMF Masters of War has imprisoned a pensioner who
has dedicated herself to highlighting and preventing war crimes.
An attack on courageous
and principled Margaretta D’Arcy is an attack on us all.
We demand the immediate
release of Margaretta D’Arcy.
Selma
James
on behalf of Global Women’s
Strike
Maggie Ronayne
on
behalf of Global Women’s Strike, Ireland
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