CPTnet

21 January 2005

ONTARIO: CPTers participate in Martin Luther King Day witness at Canadian
bullet manufacturer

by Murray Lumley

"Why are you hiding? What are you afraid of? We have no weapons, we have no
guns, we have no bullets!" CPTer David Milne of Belleville, Ontario
thundered outside the office complex of bullet manufacturer SNC Lavalin,
located in west Toronto. The 17 January 2005 (Martin Luther King Day-U.S.)
action in which six CPTers took part marked the second time the organization
Homes not Bombs had organized a witness at the SNC TEC offices.

"I have been in Iraq. That is why I am here. I have seen what happens when
you profit off these bullets!" he cried out. His plea appeared to affect
the line of police officers blocking Milne and eight other activists from
entering the building to conduct a teach-in on war crimes.

SNC Technologies (SNC TEC)--a subsidiary of SNC Lavelin located in Le
Gardeur, Quebec--joined an international consortium in May 2004 to supply
small calibre bullets to the US army. The US occupation of Iraq will
require an estimated 300 to 500 million bullets per year for the next five
years.

According to Chris Spannos of Znet, "Because the single [U.S.] army-owned,
small-calibre ammunition factory in Lake City, Missouri, can produce only
1.2 million bullets annually, the army is suddenly scrambling to get private
defence contractors to fill the gap."
(http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=6188&sectionID=15)

Matthew Behrens of Homes Not Bombs wrote twice to SNC's president requesting
a meeting but has received no reply. Homes Not Bombs is asking SNC Lavalin
to divest itself of SNC TEC.

At the beginning of the action, Milne spoke about his three trips to Iraq.
He told the group of sixty anti war activists, "I interviewed an Iraqi
orphan whose mother, father, sister and brother all died in one night when
coalition forces shot their way into his home." He called on SNC-Lavalin to
transform SNC TEC into a company which does not produce weapons of terror
and mass murder. The British journal Lancet has estimated that 100,000 Iraqi
civilians have been killed by US-led occupation forces.

The action included a staged Iraqi checkpoint massacre and a "human
transformation" machine that converted weapons and ammunitions into peaceful
products. Blood money and photographs of Iraqi casualties were attached to
trees on the SNC property. The names of Iraqi casualties were read to the
assembly throughout the public witness. Three of the six CPTers who joined
the event have served in Iraq.

According to Ken Epp of Ploughshares Monitor, Canadian military industry
exports about two billion dollars a year--mostly to the US. One billion per
year is sold to the Ministry of National Defence.

At the conclusion of the action, some activists shook hands with and shared
potato chips with the police.