[syfaslane365] 42 arrests at Faslane

[Jill]

Press release

Monday 16th October 2006


23 Swedes and 19 Finns arrested this morning at UK Nuclear Weapons Base

This morning 23 Swedes and 19 Finns were arrested by the Scottish Police
after
having blockaded  Faslane Nuclear Base. They will probably be held until
tomorrow at noon, and possibly fined or released with a warning letter. Among
the arrested were Alexander Chamberland, spokesperson for the youth
section of
the Swedish Green Party.

The blockade began at 06:20. The Swedes blockaded the North Gate and the
Finns
blockaded the South Gate with the help of a Tripod. The different affinity
groups had chosen different ways to block the big gates leading in to the
Nuclear Base; a majority locked themselves to each other, a few sat calmly
in a
circle on the ground, while others preformed
street dancing and cheer leading on
the road. The Police stepped in to action quickly but calmly and without
violence. The blockaders were arrested for Breach of the Peace after
having blocked the road about two hours. Both deliveries to the Military Base
and workers on the way to work their morning shift inside formed a long car
queue, until the Police had removed everyone from the road ahead of the
gates.

"To me, it feels like the obvious thing to do to participate in peaceful
civil
resistance against nuclear weapons, since they
are powerful enough to extinguish
all humanity. To be arrested doesn't really
matter to me, what's important to me
is to work against the existence of humanity's suicide bomb. Great Britain
and
the other Nuclear Powers must begin to disarm, but right now Tony Blair
rather
speaks of new billions for nuclear weapons", says Alexander Chamberland, 20
years old, spokesperson for the youth section of the Swedish Green Party.

Today's nonviolence action is part of the Faslane 365 campaign, which is a
year long relay blockade of Great Britain's Nuclear Base. Four Nuclear armed
Trident submarines are based at Faslane. The Faslane 365 campaign, which
started on the 1st of October 2006, aims to highlight the Nuclear Weapons
issue
and to practically stop the work at the Nuclear Weapons Base, by the
thousands
of people who are going to blockade. Already in 1970 Great Britain made a
promise to start disarming its Nuclear Weapons, when the Non-Proliferation
Treaty came into force. Instead, Great Britain now has plans to develop new
Nuclear Weapons to a cost of around 76 billion pounds over a 30-year period.

"When it comes to speaking of Nuclear Weapons in the media, it's almost
always
a discussion about Iran, Iraq and North Korea. I
think that's very unfair, since
many western countries have Nuclear Weapons with a power equivalent to one
thousand times the bomb that was dropped at Hiroshima. It's absurd to demand
from other countries not to develop Nuclear Weapons at the same time as they
themselves are upgrading their own Nuclear weapons", says Elin Larsson, who
was also arrested at the blockade. She is a 28 year old student from the
Swedish city of Gävle.

Contact: Martin Smedjeback, +46 70 257 90 97,
Alexander Chamberland, +46 70 436 86 91