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CounterPunch
February
12, 2003
The View from
Dublin
A Funny Thing Happened
on the Way to Iraq
by HARRY BROWNE
This Saturday, when Ireland takes its place among
the nations of the world and thousands of its people march through
Dublin and Belfast against the coming war, five of the island's
most honourable activists will be forcibly missing from our ranks.
Deirdre Clancy, Karen Fallon, Nuin Dunlop,
Damien Moran and Ciaron O'Reilly are still in jail after their
early-morning incursion onto a runway and into a hangar at Shannon
Airport on February 3rd. The five of them are charged with criminal
damage to a US Navy cargo 737 a plane that was already
in for repairs after a hatchet-attack a week earlier by another
activist, Mary Kelly.
Their actions, launched from the 'peace
camp' established at the airport, have seriously discomforted
the Irish government, whose commitment to Ireland's military
neutrality is now barely nominal. Tens of thousands of US troops
en route to the Gulf have stopped at Shannon most of them
aboard chartered civilian aircraft and it became obvious
in January that the US had been flouting aviation rules that
required it to request permission to land munitions at the airport.
After Irish officials spent several days playing word games about
whether unloaded sidearms constituted weapons, the permissions
began to be requested, and were duly granted.
After nearly a week in custody, Mary
Kelly accepted the onerous bail terms set by the district court
in Ennis, Co Clare. Ciaron O'Reilly and Karen Fallon have been
refused bail, while the three others who are still incarcerated
refused to comply with terms that included a personal surety
of about $3,000 each; twice-daily appearances at a designated
Garda (police) station; staying out of Clare; agreeing not to
confer with each other before their trial; and steering at least
one mile clear of the US embassy in Dublin. (One of them, Dunlop,
is a US citizen, but it's fair to say she'll neither be seeking
nor receiving consular assistance.)
Moran, the youngest of them at 22, is
a seminarian, and the five have described themselves as representing
the Dublin Catholic Worker. The burly Irish-Australian O'Reilly
- at 42 the oldest of the bunch and, with his dreadlocks, its
media icon has longstanding connections with Phil Berrigan's
Jonah House in Baltimore, and spoke, electrifyingly, on a platform
with Dan Berrigan in Dublin last summer. He and the other four
who are still in jail fasted for five days before their last
court appearance. They're due before the judge again on the 21st.
In a country that is ostensibly secularising,
and which was never too keen on mixing enthusiasm with religion
anyway, the Shannon activists' commitment which smacks
of actual belief has been surprisingly popular, despite
some government and media spinning against them. The papers particularly
enjoyed O'Reilly's response to the question of whether he was
the group's 'leader': "The Holy Spirit led our group."
There has been a suggestion, too, that
once they had breached the fence they indulged in 'bizarre rituals',
including daubing "Pitstop of Death" in their own blood.
The implied criticism is hard to sustain in light of half the
population's continuing adherence to a weekly ritual in which
wine is transformed into human blood, and bread into flesh. (Moran's
own court account of the action mentioned nothing more bizarre
than a good old-fashioned recitation of the Holy Rosary.)
The government is deadly serious in its
propaganda against the group. When Kelly damaged the Navy plane
initially, it was announced that the taxpayer would be forced
to foot the half-million-plus dollar bill for repairs. (No one
mentioned that a military contractor charges that much to change
a washer.) The party line turned more sinister when the next,
embarrassing incident occurred. State broadcaster RTE reported
that the group of five had "overpowered a member of the
Garda"; the Taoiseach (prime minister) Bertie Ahern denounced
the "so-called peace campaigners" for using violence,
and transport minister Seamus Brennan and others echoed his anger.
We were told via the broadcast media on various occasions throughout
the day of their arrest that the policeman in question had received
medical attention and even that he was hospitalised.
However, when the five arrived in court
that evening there was no sign of any assault charges, and their
lawyer turned angrily on the government for its "wild allegations".
(Sources close to the defendants suggest quietly that the single
Garda sergeant guarding the plane may have had an early-morning
panic attack when he was awakened by five peaceniks going about
the Lord's work.)
In the meantime, another court action
against the 'peace camp', where a large majority of campers weren't
involved in any 'direct action', forced the camp off airport
property. One of those campers, linking the struggle for peace
with that for justice in the Middle East, was Caoimhe Butterly,
a young woman only recently returned from a courageous year bearing
witness in and around Jenin, where she was wounded by Israeli
soldiers. Now forced out of Shannon, she is planning to go to
Baghdad.
The government says the US military build-up
to date has been in accordance with UN resolution 1441, passed
when Ireland served on the Security Council. An actual, unmandated
shooting-war, spokesmen suggest, might just be another story.
One of the main charter operators, World Airways, has already
switched its stopovers from Shannon to Frankfurt, and key EU
states are making anti-war noises; but once the bombing starts,
the smart money is on the Irish finding a 'nuanced' way of doffing
the cap to our political and corporate sponsors in Washington,
and letting the planes continue to land at Shannon.
Arguing against bail for the Catholic
Worker group, Garda Inspector Tom Kennedy told the district court:
"On the basis of the information given to the court, these
people see it as their right and duty to interfere with aircraft
landing at Shannon." Now that the Irish army has moved in
to protect those aircraft, anti-war 'direct actors' may have
to look elsewhere.
Harry Browne
writes for The Irish Times and is a lecturer in the school of
media at Dublin Institute of Technology. He can be contacted
at harrybrowne@eircom.net
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February 8
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