Seven schoolgirls procure tools of torture

Lord of War tells the story of an arms broker who uses false documents and loopholes in the law to get weapons from Eastern Europe, and sell them on, to conflict zones in Africa – without any thought as to what horrors the weapons will be used to perpetrate. 

The dealer’s only concern is how to sell more arms. And more. “There are over 550 million firearms in the world in circulation – that’s one firearm for every 12 people on the planet. The only question is – how do we arm the other 11?” he says.
But this is the movies – and Nicolas Cage is doing the talking. Surely it doesn’t work like this in real life? Well, if you don’t believe that truth can sometimes be stranger (or in this case more sinister) than fiction, read on!
And to what far-flung, exotic location must one travel to uncover the truth about the utterly unscrupulous way in which the arms trade works? Yes, you guessed it…Co. Laois. That’s in Ireland. And to make it all the more strange, what you are about to read is all down to seven teenagers and a nun...

Last September, seven schoolgirls in the Presentation Secondary School in Portlaoise were approached by the Channel Four Dispatches documentary team, and the Irish peace and justice charity, Afri, to film a documentary, with the aim of revealing just how easy it is to set up an arms brokering company in Ireland and other EU countries.
The now ‘famous seven’ are students with a cause. They have an active human rights group in the school with support from Sr. Barbara Raftery, which deals with issues from fair trade to child slavery. On a quick walk around the school, you are greeted by a number of colourful posters, hand-painted by the girls, which advertise an upcoming Fair Trade cake sale. No sign of apathetic youth in this neck of the woods.
Once the arrangements for making the documentary were sorted with parents and the school, the girls, along with Mark Thomas from Channel 4 and Afri, got into action by setting up an office for their mock arms company (called “Seachtar” as in the Irish for seven), in a room in the Convent.
“We were shocked and surprised at how easy it was to find arms and torture tools on the Internet and to start arms brokering from Ireland,” says, one of the students, Laura Kearns. “We just googled small arms and torture weapons, and up came websites that initially were selling just washing machines and kettles – but when we went into them, we found that they were selling weapons.”
With the assistance of Afri and the Channel 4 Dispatches team, the girls made a number of incredible arms deals, brokering tools of torture and importing them into Ireland – or sending them on, to other countries.
“We rang dealers in South Korea and South Africa from the classroom,” says Laura. “Channel Four sent the money through Western Union to the dealers. We were able to broker a stun baton from South Korea to San Francisco – where a human rights activist picked it up – and to get leg irons from South Africa into the Afri office here in Ireland.”
The girls point out that stun batons, according to Amnesty International, are a universal tool of torture, causing extreme pain while leaving no marks on the body.
“The stun batons force confessions from inmates, and they have been used in Guantanamo Bay,” says Maeve O’Sullivan, another student. “So with all that’s going on now, with the war on terror, it’s a good time to do this project. The question Bertie Ahern and the Irish government have to answer is: how do we know the items being brokered from Ireland are not being used in torture?”
The students e-mailed companies who trade in serious weapons such as grenade launchers and Uzi sub-machine guns – and in one instance a Czech arms company said it would be a pleasure to co-operate with them, adding that a discount would be available for large orders.
“We asked them to send us samples,” explains Clare Coleman. “Once we said we were a large company, they were all on for it. It seems like it’s all about money because there’s certainly big money to be made. One guy even asked us to be an agent for his company in Ireland.”
There is indeed big money to be made: $950 billion is spent annually on global military expenditure and the arms trade. In the US, the country with the largest military expenditure in the world, the military is the country’s biggest business. In 2001, the defence budget was $305 billion; this year it’s a whopping $441 billion.
“It was crazy that the arms dealers dealt with us – we are just school girls,” says Maeve. “They even wished us happy Christmas! They obviously don’t care who they sell their arms to.”
Lord of War emphasised that point but, unfortunately, missed the human impact of the arms trade.
According to Amnesty International, Haiti, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Sierra Leone manufacture very few arms – yet they have been flooded with weapons, which have been used to kill, maim, displace and impoverish hundreds of thousands of people.
“Time and again, peacekeeping efforts have been undermined by the failure of governments to introduce effective arms controls for the sake of millions of men, women and children, who live in continual fear of armed violence,” says Jim Loughran, Amnesty International’s Campaigns and Communications Manager
Yvonne, a 29-year-old resident in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, interviewed in an Amnesty report describes an attack on 18th August 2005: “A group of bandits came to my home. They had machine guns, a lot of guns. They beat and raped me. We didn’t have violence like this before. Bandits are killing people, and the police are killing people. Women are raped all the time.”
Amnesty International has clearly documented evidence, linking Irish-registered companies to arms shipments to murder-zones like Liberia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sierra Leone. The absence of any legislation to control the activities of arms brokers operating out of Ireland has made Ireland’s involvement in the arms trade a matter of increasing concern in recent years.
Ireland now exports, annually, more than €400 million of military goods and €4 billion of what are commonly referred to as dual-use goods. An Afri report in 1996 identified thirteen companies in Ireland that are involved in the manufacture of military-related components, sub-systems or products, including stun weapons, armoured vehicles, small arms and ammunition. Amnesty International’s 2001 report, Ireland and the Arms Trade, found that had increased to 70 companies. One can only assume that has increased further since.
The Amnesty report notes with concern that the Irish Government has supported rapid growth in the high-tech industries, but these same hi-tech companies also produce the components or so called dual-use technologies military or security forces find less than thoroughly wholesome uses for.
Companies whose products or services have been used to support military, security or police equipment identified in the Amnesty report include, amongst others, Allied Signal Ireland, Analog Devices, DDC Ireland, Electronic Concepts Europe, Essco Collins, Microsemi Ireland and Moog Ireland. At the time of the report another Irish company, Timoney Holdings, continued to be involved in the supply of armoured personnel carriers and other military vehicles.
Worryingly there are also growing links between arms companies and Irish universities, with the endemic under-funding of the Irish educational system producing a dependence on private funding that runs the risk of hopelessly compromising our academic ethics.
Ireland is not alone in its ambivalence on the issue. No EU nation has introduced legislation comprehensive enough to ensure that arms brokering is properly controlled. However, the Irish Government has not even gone as far as implementing the EU common policy on arms brokering. It has promised legislation later this year – but the people at Amnesty will not be holding their breath.
“In 2006, the world has a choice. Either it continues to ignore the massive human cost of arms proliferation or it finally acts to control the arms trade,” says Colin Roche, Advocacy Executive of Oxfam Ireland. “No one but a criminal would knowingly sell a gun to a murderer – yet governments can sell weapons to regimes with a history of human rights violations, or to countries where weapons will go to war criminals.”
The Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, was the person the girls wanted to reach. They wanted to see if they could get some answers from him: like what is government policy on amrs manufacture in Ireland? “But he refused to meet us,” explains Clare. “We also rang Brian Cowen but he never got back to us. You would think he could have taken half an hour of his time to talk to us.”
Laura adds: “The government picks and chooses what they want people to know, what they want us to hear. We can see the Dáil meeting live on TV – but they don’t bring up things like arms brokering there.”
It seems that Bertie Ahern, the government and Irish arms companies, have been doing a good job keeping information on Ireland’s links to the arms trade hidden, but they’re probably kicking themselves now and thinking “If it weren’t for those pesky kids!”
And then there is our own Lord of War, Minister for Defence Willie O’Dea, who recently decided that Irish troops will serve with EU battle groups. Last November, a photograph of O’Dea grinning stupidly and pointing a gun at a cameraman, was splashed across all the front pages of the newspapers. Whatever was going through the gun-toting Limerick Minister’s mind, if he wasn’t considering the possibility of seven courageous teenagers messing it all up, he certainly must be now.