September Events for Richmond and Twickenham Amnesty

Our next monthly meeting will be from 8 - 9.30pm on Thursday 12th September at St Mary's Hall, Church Street, Twickenham TW13 NJ.

Our speaker will be Kate Cargin, presenter of Eye Witness stories from Palestine.

Kate spent three months last year on the Palestinian West Bank as a human rights observer. Living in a Palestinian village, she witnessed first-hand what it is like to live under military occupation. She will recount stories of some of the ordinary people she met, both Palestinians and Israelis, who are striving for peace in an increasingly intractable situation.

Kate is a Quaker and passionate about peace and nonviolence. All we normally hear about is war and violent conflict. Come and hear what life is really like for ordinary Palestinians and how the presence of international observers is part of a long road to peace.

We shall also be discussing the forthcoming October Street Collection and some Actions due to take place during the Autumn.

Forthcoming Actions for R&T Amnesty Group

DSEi Arms Fair

From the 10 – 13 September international weapons companies will be meeting warmongers and human rights abusers at the Defence and Security International (DSEi) arms fair in Docklands, one of the world’s largest arms fairs to make the deals that will send deadly weapons around the world.

The government is welcoming the world’s worst human rights abusing regimes to shop for weapons in London. The UK government plans to invite human rights abusing regimes, such as China, Zimbabwe, Indonesia, Bahrain, Russia and Saudi Arabia, to the London arms fair to court them and sell them weapons. The arms fair brings together 28,000 international buyers and sellers. The deals that begin here fuel the arms trade the world over. Death, injury, fear and repression are exported from the arms companies on our doorstep.

CAAT (Campaign Against the Arms Trade) are planning a demonstration on Sunday 8th September 2013 at 12:00 near the ExCel Centre, which hosts the arms fair. Address: ExCeL London E16 1XL (see http://www.caat.org.uk/)

It is likely that a group of Amnesty and TRAKNAT members will demonstrate together this event, so please come along and join us.

Vigils outside Vince Cable's Office

TRAKNAT (Twickenham Richmond and Kingston Against the Arms Trade) are also planning to demonstrate outside Vince Cable's Office on Friday 6th and Friday 13th September between 5.30 and 7.00pm.

This demonstration will highlight concerns about the Arms Fair, Vince Cable's continuing support for weapons sales to repressive regimes, the need for action on arms brokers and how Dr Cable's department promotes arms sales to the developing world, thus encouraging conflict and taking away resources from health and education.

We hope that many of us will be able to join TRAKNAT on one or other of these days. More details to be announced.

Please note there will not be a demonstration on Thursday 12th September, the evening of our Amnesty monthly meeting.