6 Peace Activists Arrested at Pine Gap : Melbourne Indymedia

9th December, 2005 for immediate release

MEDIA RELEASE: CHRISTIAN PACIFISTS ENTER PINE GAP

Jim Dowling (50, from Dayboro), Bryan Law (51, from Cairns); Adele Goldie (29, from Brisbane); and Donna Mulhearn (37, from Sydney) are all currently in police custody in Alice Springs.

A fifth person was arrested when asking Australian Federal Police about their authority to seize goods from the vehicle on the main road to Pine Gap.

After being refused official permission by Senator Robert Hill, the group initiated their own independent inspection. “We could not allow the US and Australian governments to continue to conceal the role of Pine Gap in the ongoing war in Iraq,” said Sean O’Reilly of the group. “It’s time the Australian public knew the reality of what is happening on our land”.

In the same week ‘anti-terrorism’ laws passed through Australia’s Parliament with the support of both major parties, this group of Christian Pacifists, concerned about the terrorist threat of the Pine Gap facility, initiated this anti-terrorism activity.

“We believe that killing children with a bomb dropped from a plane is as much an act of terrorism as doing it with a suicide bomb,” Mr O’Reilly said. “If we condemn suicide bombings, we must also condemn military bombing of civilians. We must bring some intellectual and moral honesty to the issue of terrorism.”

“While the deaths from September 11, the two Bali bombings and the British subway attacks total nearly 3000, the retaliatory attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq have claimed the lives of more than 100,000 innocent civilians,” he said. “All these lives must be seen as equally sacred, and their deaths as a horrible blight on our humanity”.

Thousands of Iraqi non-combatants have been killed in this war declared illegal by the United Nations, and immoral by the world’s spiritual leaders. The US is using weaponry such as cluster bombs, depleted uranium and phosphorus explosives in Iraq which contravene international law. By hosting the Pine Gap facility, and failing to act on this evidence Australia has become complicit in those crimes,’ added Mr.O’Reilly.

“In the words of Michael McKinley, strategic analyst at the ANU Canberra: “certainly in relation to identifying specific targets, Pine Gap is important. The Pine Gap contribution (to the Iraq war) is much more significant than any sending of Australian soldiers.”

The group undertook the inspection after extensive prayerful consideration of their action. Earlier this week the group sought entry to the facility to conduct an independent inspection but were refused access. A prayer vigil was held with members of the Alice Springs community last night prior to the four activists’ entering the restricted area.

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Since publication of this MR a 6th person has been arrested, reasons unknown.