Saturday 19 April 2008

Chinese Ship Turned Away

You sell someone a weapon, you know it only has one function and what it will be used for. You sell someone 77 tonnes of weapons you can fully expect a slaughter.
A ship carrying arms and ammunition from China to Zimbabwe has been forced to move away from a South African port after workers refused to unload it.
The South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (SATAWU) said it would not unload the weapons because they fear Robert Mugabe would use them to crack down on election opponents.
Three million rounds of AK-47 ammunition, 1,500 rocket propelled grenades and more than 3,000 mortar rounds and mortar tubes are among the cargo on the Chinese ship.
The shipment was due to dock in the port of Durban where the weapons would be transported through the country to landlocked Zimbabwe.
Shocked by the thought of this volume of weapons in Mugabe's hands, the workers stuck to their principles and the ship remained anchored outside the port before sailing away.
It is great to see the the shipment of arms being blocked by something called Humanity, something that all our Governments, not just the Chinese, give very little consideration to when it sells its weapons to despots, tyrants and countries that don't think twice about who they are aiming those weapons at.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gutsy.

Q

Anonymous said...

You'll get a visit from MI5 soon, Lucy, if you keep up this attack on the world's profitable armament industry.

Besides, China is small cheese compared to Britain and the U.S. in terms of arms production and sales.

That said, if we could get rid of all arms what a different place the world would be!

Falling on a bruise said...

If only we could David. As Zimbabwe is landlocked the ship will have to unload somewhere and the weapons be transported into Zimbabwe but it is too much to hope everyone will have the ethics of the SATAWU.

Nog said...

Vive la revolucion!

Stephen K said...

Very glad to see this. The Chinese government is so bloody hypocritical (not to mention bloody). They say countries shouldn't interfere in the affairs of other countries, yet that's exactly what they're doing with these kinds of actions.