Hedge School 2012: Disarmament, Development and Democracy – Joining the Dots

Afri’s 2012 Hedge School will be organised in partnership with the International Peace Bureau, and will take place on Saturday 17th November. This will coincide with the first ever International Peace Bureau Council Meeting to be held in Ireland.

As our globalised world gets smaller, so the burning issues we are confronted with seem to overlap to a greater and greater extent. How to solve the challenge of poverty without re-allocating some of the huge sums devoted to militarism? How to ensure a stable future for our economies and our societies without taking into account the massive impacts of climate change and resource depletion? How to redeem the promise of a new democratic order in the Middle East and North Africa without ensuring true gender justice? And how can we achieve any of these things without a full, inclusive, transparent democracy? These are some of the issues we will tackle in the Dublin Dialogue.

On Friday 16th the MacBride prize award ceremony will be presented to two women activists from the ‘Arab Spring’ by President Michael D. Higgins.

The theme of the Hedge School will be “Joining the Dots: Disarmament, Development and Democracy”.

 

Programme / Clár

Saturday 17th November 2012

Woodlock Hall, All Hallows College, Dublin 9

10am: Registration and tea/coffee

10.30am:  Music by Fionnuala Gill, introductory remarks by Joe Murray and tree planting

11am:  Climate, Resources and War (with Rose Kelly, Paddy Reilly and Andy Storey)

1pm:  Lunch

2pm: Non Violent Struggles for Democracy (with Lina Ben Mhenni, Ruairí McKiernan and Tomas Magnusson)

3:30pm: Tea/coffee

3:45pm: Role of Women in the Arab Spring (with Nawal El Sadaawi, Ingeborg Breines and Iain Atack)

5:30pm: Music.  Concluding remarks by Colin Archer

7pm – 8:30pm: Special performance of “The Cambria” with Donal O’Kelly and Sorcha Fox. The Cambria is the story of freed slave Frederick Douglas’ journey to, and through, Ireland. “A powerful theatrical experience…a stirring production” (Irish Examiner). A small admission fee will be charged at the door.

Followed by Irish music, dancing, conversation agus craic!

*** Full details are available in our brochure which you can download here: Hedge School 2012 Brochure ***

As spaces are limited this year, please register for the event either by downloading our Registration Form 2012 and posting it back to us, or by registering online here: http://hedgeschool2012.eventbrite.ie/

Bhopal, the Leaks and the Legacy: Lessons for Leitrim?

Afri, in association with Love Leitrim, are hosting a talk called “Bhopal, the Leaks and the Legacy: Lessons for Leitrim?” on  Thursday, 27th September, in the Glens Centre in Manorhamilton, County Leitrim at 8pm.

Speaking at this event will be two activists from Bhopal in India who will be talking about their experiences of campaigning for justice for the victims of the Bhopal disaster.

Balkrishna Namdev

A union organizer before the disaster, Namdev survived the gas leak, set up the Gas‐Affected Destitute Pensioners’ Front and continues to work with Bhopal’s most vulnerable survivors.

Safreen Khan

19 year old Safreen inherited the disaster from her gas‐exposed parents and has lived with contamination from Carbide’s factory site which Dow refuses to clean up.  She co‐founded Children Against Dow/Carbide in 2008.

Death of Ireland’s Good Food Sector

Afri supported and participated in the recent mock ‘funeral procession’ which had been organised to mark the ‘death of the Ireland’s good food sector’, following the planting by Teagasc of genetically modified potatoes in County Carlow.

The ‘funeral’ proceeded to the Department of Agriculture where a letter and a spade were handed in calling on Minister Simon Coveney to ‘dig up the GM spuds’ and save Ireland’s reputation as a clean, green non-GM food producer.

To read an article in the Irish Times about this protest click here.

The Elephant and the Mouse

It would appear that Kevin Hegarty occupies the same delusional world as Christy Mahon, whom he quotes, if he believes that coverage of the Corrib Gas conflict is unbalanced in favour of the community rather than Shell and its apologists. The evidence of Shell’s well-oiled and well financed propaganda machine – in which he is an enthusiastic cog – spinning stories aimed at undermining the courageous and legitimate opposition of the local community to this destructive project is clear for all to see.

That Kevin Hegarty is happy to collude with this discredited company, which is synonymous with human rights abuses and environmental destruction around the world, from the Niger Delta to the Arctic Circle, is extraordinary. In doing so he conveniently chooses to ignore the fate of Ken Saro Wiwa and his colleagues who paid with their lives for standing up to Shell and who are appropriately memorialised at the gates of the refinery in Bellanaboy. I recently visited the Niger Delta and saw at first hand the devastation that Shell and other oil companies have wrought and how local communities have been robbed of their traditional livelihoods of farming and fishing as a result of the pollution of their lands and rivers. Continue reading “The Elephant and the Mouse”

EU Aarhus Rights Trampled by High Court

Press Release

29 August 2012

A blue-coloured bowler hat with 27 stars featured in Dublin’s High Court on Tuesday. The stars symbolised EU Member States while the hat starred as Exhibit A when ten EU citizens claimed their rights to affordable access to justice under the Aarhus Convention as copper-fastened by the Treaties of the European Union.

The ten EU citizens sought, in separate independent legal actions, a NPE Order, a Not Prohibitively Expensive Order, from High Court Judge Hogan. No2GM, a company limited, also sought an identical Order and all were refused. Judge Hogan’s ruling denied Access To Justice, demanding the applicants each risk hundreds of thousands of Euros in the most expensive legal system in the EU, by insisting on putting parties on notice. Continue reading “EU Aarhus Rights Trampled by High Court”

An Arrow Through Time

Afri commissioned Choctaw artist Gary (Waylon) White Deer to create this piece entitled “An Arrow Through Time” about the 1847 Choctaw donation to the victims of the Irish Famine.

“There is a teaching among our peoples that says feeding someone is the greatest thing you can do, because when you do that, you’re extending human life. We have to assume they told us of the depths of the famine, touching on the incredible loss of life and the dispossession… these were common themes to my people at the time. Having gone through that deprivation, there was an automatic empathy.

 

I guess we’re really trying to complete the circle. We don’t know, just like the Choctaw people in 1847 didn’t know, how their modest actions, their concern at the time, would result in something beautiful happening now…

 

If we can turn those tragedies round that’s the way the circle can be completed, because that’s the way it was started.

 

It’s an arrow being shot. It might land way in the future.  But someday your children, or grandchildren, are going to walk through time and they’re going to come to that spot where that arrow landed and there’ll be a blessing waiting there for them.”

 

– Gary (Waylon) White Deer of the Choctaw Nation talking about his people’s contribution to the Irish during the famine years.  

Ten Days That Shook My World

Donal O’Kelly and Sorcha Fox performing extracts from “The Cambria” at Afri’s 2009 Famine Walk in Louisburgh, County Mayo

Earlier this year we – Benbo Productions, Sorcha Fox and Donal O’Kelly – were invited to take our show The Cambria to the Harare International Festival of the Arts (called HIFA) in Zimbabwe, with the support of Culture Ireland, and in the International American School in Lusaka, at the invitation of the Irish Embassy, Zambia. The tour was also supported by Afri.

 

Day 1:

Monday 30 April

We meet our technical manager Ronan Fingleton at Dublin Airport and we pool luggage to get the combined weight under the limit. Our luggage includes the backdrop, floorcloth, costumes and props for our show The Cambria, about US anti-slavery leader Frederick Douglass’s journey to Ireland in 1845 on the steamer Cambria. We fly on Emirates Airline direct to Dubai, arriving there late evening. In the windowseat, I witness an incredible electric storm over the eastern Mediterranean, and a gigantic oil flare-off in the Arabian desert. Luckily, Sorcha has found a way to get us accommodated for free in a Dubai hotel, because we have a 9-hour wait before flying on to Harare.

 

Day 2.

Tuesday 1 May

The flight to Harare has quite a few musicians on board, trying to fit their instrument cases into the overhead lockers. The vertical camera facility on the video screen shows amazing images of East Africa from 50,000 feet. The airport at Harare has a 1970s feel, queues forming for immigration booths with early 1990s computers. We queue up with our $55 entry fees, and get our passports stamped. A HIFA minibus is outside to take us all to the Rainbow Towers Hotel, formerly the Sheraton who pulled out of Zimbabwe a few years ago. We meet the HIFA people and they give us HIFA brochures. HIFA is an enormous festival, with bands and acts from all over the world taking part. The theme this year is “A Show Of Spirit”. We’re glad to bring a little of Frederick Douglass’s resilient spirit to Africa, the homeland his ancestors were forcibly torn from by the slave trade.

Continue reading “Ten Days That Shook My World”

Occupation

Local resident Betty Schult spoke on the theme of occupation at Afri’s event organised in association with Friends of the Earth entitled “Ar Scáth a Chéile: Sustaining Hope and Humanity”  in Glenamoy Community Centre, County Mayo, on the 19th August 2012.

Rights group criticise Shell and Garda over traffic blockage

The justice and human rights group Action from Ireland (Afri) has condemned the actions of Shell and the Gardai in Erris, County Mayo, over the bungled transport of tunnelling equipment for a controversial gas pipeline that has seen roads closed in the area and local people arrested, and has re-iterated its call for suspension of the project.

Afri coordinator Joe Murray said that the latest incident “represents a continuation of the long established trend whereby the health and safety of local residents has been jeopardised to boost the profits of a multinational corporation”.

“If Shell are not to be trusted to carry a piece of equipment by lorry, then how can they be trusted to transport raw, flammable gas by pipeline under an estuary and past people’s homes?”, Mr Murray asked.

Mr Murray particularly criticised the arrest yesterday of local farmer Willie Corduff for his protest at the chaos caused by the fact that a lorry carrying Shell’s tunnelling equipment had jack knifed and blocked road traffic. “Instead of charging Shell with reckless endangerment, the Gardai chose to arrest a man doing nothing more than peacefully safeguarding the welfare of his family and friends”, Mr Murray said. Mr Corduff, the winner of the prestigious Goldman Medal which is often described as the environmental Nobel Prize, was later released without charge.

Afri has previously been highly critical of the policing of the Corrib Gas dispute and has pointed to what it says were abuses perpetrated even against human rights monitors. Afri is calling for immediate suspension of all work on the project pending a thorough review of all aspects of it, including human rights, health and safety and environmental impact. Afri pointed to Shell’s much criticized environmental and human rights record in many locations throughout the world, from the Niger Delta to, more recently, the Arctic Circle, as further evidence for the need to review and revise the Corrib project in its entirety.

Rights Group Criticises Shell and Garda over Traffic Blockage: Irish Times, 7th August 2012: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2012/0807/1224321631080.html

Afri expresses dismay at the EPA decision to grant GM potato licence

Press Release, 26th July 2012

The justice and human rights group Action from Ireland (Afri) has expressed dismay at the decision of the Environmental Protection Agency to grant a license to grow genetically modified potatoes in Ireland.

From left to right: Chef & TV presenter Clodagh McKenna, Clare O’Grady Walshe & Ruairi Quinn advocating a ‘GM-Free Ireland’ at an Afri press conference on the 21st February 2011 to alert the Irish public of an imminent decision by Minister Brendan Smith to allow GM products into Europe and Ireland. Photo Derek Speirs

Joe Murray of Afri described the move as short sighted and one that threatened Ireland’s economy by eroding its reputation as a ‘green, clean’ food producer. “The move by the EPA to grant approval for the GM potato trials by Teagasc is completely ill-advised. It will do serious reputational damage to Ireland’s flourishing organic industry at a time when there is an ever increasing demand for organic food. By contrast, there is little appetite for GM foods either in Ireland or in Europe” said Mr Murray.

“The argument that Ireland needs a blight resistant GM potato is ridiculous because there are already blight resistant potatoes in Ireland – and they are not genetically modified and therefore do not pose any risk of contamination to other crops,” Mr Murray continued.

Waylon (Gary) White Deer, Choctaw artist, whose ancestors sent a cash donation to Ireland during the Great Famine, also criticized the decision of the EPA calling it a “dangerous step”. Mr White Deer described the decision as having critical consequences for food sovereignty and biological diversity. “It is important that the Irish people don’t give up their food sovereignty. This is a risky experiment which, if unchecked, will eventually lead to the corporate control and manipulation of Irish food sources. Now that GM has gotten its tentacles into the Irish soil it is important that we don’t let them spread.”