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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