Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Surprise, surprise: yet again this week we have a European Council meeting and the top agenda item is migration and internal security. Brexit is, of course, on the agenda, but it is not going to be allowed to interrupt the relentless pursuit of a securitisation agenda at the top levels of the European Union. The agenda peddles the lie that migrants are a threat and that the solution lies in weaponised borders and high tech surveillance systems supplied by the arms manufacturers that are pushing their agenda at the top levels of the European Union.

As the European Council gathers to discuss more ways to keep refugees out, scant attention is paid to the reasons refugees are forced out of their homes in the first place by bombs made in EU member states and full throat EU support for war criminals like Saudi Arabia. The European Council meeting should be dominated by the slaughter in and destruction of Yemen, the famine and the targeting of civilians aided and abetted by the United States. There has not been so much as a murmur from the European Union about imposing an arms embargo on Saudi Arabia. The blockade and bombardment in Syria saw an embargo swiftly being imposed on that state, but the same does not apply to Saudi Arabia.

Back home, despite the fact that the Government could implement a presumption of denial policy unilaterally overnight with regard to the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia, we consistently refuse to do so. We are no different from Mr. Donald Trump who puts the interests of American big business and the arms industry ahead of justice and human rights. The Government is not passive in this situation. Shannon Airport is a crucial cog in the machine. On 10 July this year a National Air Cargo aeroplane on contract to the US military refuelled at Shannon Airport en routefrom an air base in the United States. It went on to make deliveries to airbases in Kuwait and Afghanistan and a US base in Djibouti before returning through Shannon Airport on 12 July. Djibouti is just across the Red Sea from Yemen and frequently used by the US military and the CIA to launch special forces and drone strikes in Yemen in support of the Saudi attacks. On 10 October no fewer than seven aeroplanes on contract to the US military refuelled at Shannon Airport, five of which were en routeto the Middle East. As long as the Government allows Shannon Airport to be used in this way, our neutrality is a hypocritical farce. It is absolutely beyond shameful. Whatever the supposed intention of the European Union at the start, the upper echelons are now fully arm in arm with the arms industry. We should be speaking out, not aiding and abetting it.

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