DOWN UNDER FIRE

Desert war games involving 30,000 US and Australian troops rehearsing Afghanistan manoeuvres in the Australian bush was interrupted last week after seven activists occupied the land – with two lasting for the full eleven days – stopping the live fire phase of the exercise. It was similar to the action by Ofog in June in Sweden (See SchNEWS 680).

The Talisman-Saber ‘09 military exercise at the Shoalwater Military Exercise Area in central Queensland is a biennial event - in 2007 it was also interrupted by protests and a rare white humpback whale (See SchNEWS 594). This year again there was a range of protests including community events, leafleting the troops, conducting a hokey cokey at the perimeter of the military zone, stopping army trucks and occupying the Shoalwater Bay Military Training Area. 

On the last day of the exercise the final two activists - Yulanji Bardon and Emily Nielsen - handed themselves into military police and were arrested for trespassing. Of the other five, three were also arrested, and two not, having voluntarily walked off the site. Emily said “These exercises are not just a ten-day long game of laser tag as Brigadier Bob Brown and the media would have us believe. They represent Australia joining the United States in the illegal invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan where thousands of civilians have been killed.”

Groups stayed in camps dotted around the range, forcing the limit of live fire. In a parody of the US coalition’s inability to find al Qaeda in the Afghan hills, again, despite helicopters, military dogs, and thousands of soldiers patrolling the land, they still couldn’t find protesters living in tents in the bush! In a separate action earlier in Talisman-Saber ‘09, four Christian peace campaigners were discovered – by soldiers playing insurgents.  

* See www.peaceconvergence.com