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Irish Protesters Want the US Military Out of Their Airport

A 79-year-old cancer patient just got sent to jail for demonstrating against America's military activity in Ireland.

Margaretta D'Arcy (photo courtesy of the Galway Alliance Against War)

On the 16th of January, an Irish anti-war activist was sent to jail for three months. Margaretta D'Arcy had been protesting on the runway of the airport in the new town of Shannon, south-west Ireland, and was offered a suspended sentence on the condition that she sign a bond stating she would never enter any unauthorised areas of the airport again. She didn't want to do that, so – earlier this month – she was taken from her home in Galway to begin her sentence in Limerick prison. The fact that she's a 79-year-old grandmother of six with cancer is apparently of little mitigative concern to the Irish state.

Annoncering

D'Arcy's protest was against the continued use of Shannon airport by the United States military. Ireland is supposedly a neutral country, and has been since 1939. However, since the beginning of the War on Terror, the previous and current Irish governments have allowed the American military to use Shannon as a stopover for troops on their way over to Iraq and Afghanistan. The airport has also been used by the CIA in a number of "extraordinary renditions", the extrajudicial transfer – or kidnapping, essentially – of "enemy combatants", before they're taken over to Guantanamo Bay and all the horrors that await them there.

A protest in Bil'in, Palestine against Margaretta's incarceration (photo by Haitham Al Khatib)

Public reaction to D'Arcy's imprisonment has been mostly critical, with people angry at the Irish government making an example of a pensioner to prove its allegiances to the US military. There have been a number of protests against her detention in Ireland and abroad, including one in London and another, somewhat bizarrely, in Bil'in, Palestine. Fifteen MEPs have written to Minister for Justice Alan Shatter to demand her release, an online petition has been set up and the issue has been raised in the Dáil [Irish government] by TDs (Irish MPs) Claire Daly and Richard Boyd Barrett. D'Arcy has also been visited in prison by President Michael D Higgins’ wife Sabina, who is a close friend of hers, but she still remains incarcerated.

Annoncering

I went to the first protest in Ireland, held outside Dublin's Ministry of Justice on the 16th of January, and spoke to a few of the people there.

Mary Kirwan, aged 72, said: "It is absolutely disgraceful that this brave woman, aged 79 and suffering from cancer, is imprisoned for protesting against what is going on in Shannon – especially the rendition flights." Another demonstrator, Moira Heary, added that, "It is symptomatic of a developing culture of oppression in this country, and we have to be very careful of our rights as citizens. The decision to imprison a woman who is just expressing her opinion in her own artistic way is very, very worrying from my point of view. I’m wondering what kind of a republic we’re living in."

Margaretta D’Arcy was prosecuted along with Niall Farrell of the Galway Alliance Against War. I spoke to Niall about the protests and why the pair decided to enter the airport when they did. "We went into Shannon on two occasions," he said. "The one that we were done for in December had to do with our so-called incursion on the 7th of October, 2012, which was the 11th anniversary of the start of the invasion of Afghanistan. There was also an international week-long campaign on the use of drones, which started on the 7th. So, for those two reasons, we decided to go in on that day."

A protest in Dublin against Margaretta's incarceration (photo by Conor Meleady)

Annoncering

Niall explained to me exactly how much the airport is used to aid American warfare: "The troops were travelling through before October 2001, as there was a build up to the invasion, and they have been travelling through ever since," he said. "They use Hercules planes to transport not only troops and Special Forces, but also armaments, including – more recently – drones. The drones are taken apart and placed in boxes, which the Americans, being the cynical shower that they are, call coffins." He continued: "They have license to bring through depleted uranium, chemical weapons – anything. And, of course, we don’t know what’s going through, because one: they’ve got the license, two: Gardai [the Irish police force] never search any of the planes."

A report by Shannonwatch, a group that monitors US military use of Shannon, shows that, between 2002 and 2011, over two million US troops passed through the airport on their way to war. I spoke to John Lannon from the organisation about the CIA's use of the airport to try to work out how many of these murky "extraordinary rendition" flights have landed on Irish soil.

"It’s impossible to tell, since by their illegal nature they are covert and secretive," he explained. "However, Amnesty International reported in 2011 that there had been at least 50 CIA rendition landings at Shannon airport. Also, we at Shannonwatch have recorded 22 known or suspected rendition aircraft that landed at Shannon. Most of these landed many times. It’s also important to note that, as well as the 'civilian' planes used by the CIA for renditions, prisoners were also taken to torture sites by the US military. So many of the US military planes that landed at Shannon may also have been involved in renditions."

Annoncering

John also told me how the US military offered to discontinue its use of the airport, before the Irish government declined their offer. "It came to light back in 2011 that the US military would have been willing to withdraw from its use of Shannon Airport several years ago, but the Irish government did not want them to do so," he said. "So, far from being under pressure from the US to keep the Shannon military stopover, the Fianna Fail-led government was told by the US that they would quit if asked. No doubt Enda Kenny’s government could also have asked for them to stop using it. In fact, if they were following the will of the people, they would certainly do so. Remember that, in 2013, a Red C poll showed that 78 percent [of the population] were in favour of Irish neutrality, which means they are opposed to Ireland supporting US invasions and occupations."

A protest in Dublin against Margaretta's incarceration (photo by Conor Meleady)

So if the US were willing to withdraw from Shannon, why didn't the Irish government accept their offer? Perhaps they'd miss Obama telling them they were good boys during their White House visits, or wanted something else to talk about with the president other than Ireland's continued status as a tax haven for multinational corporations like eBay, IBM and Google.

Of course, there is the argument that those companies would pull out of Ireland if the government stopped the US from using Shannon, but Niall rubbished that theory. "It didn’t stop Dell computers leaving Limerick, and when – in 2003 – Chirac said that the invasion of Iraq was wrong, it didn’t affect US investment in France," he argued. "US companies are not interested in whether we assist the US war machine; they’re only interested in profits, and that’s that."

Annoncering

So, for now, Margaretta D’Arcy languishes in Limerick prison, where she remains defiant despite being told that all she needs to do to be released is sign the bond. Niall summed up her attitude to her incarceration: "The only good thing about Margaretta being in jail is that it highlights Shannon," he said. "She isn't interested in 'Free Margaretta'; her demand is to free Shannon from the clutches of the US military, and if her being there highlights the issue then she doesn’t mind sitting in jail for three months. She’s learning how to play the tin whistle."

Additional reporting by Conor Meleady

Follow David on Twitter: @davidfleming68

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