Amnesty criticises EU laxity over arms trade

Arms export controls in the European Union are "dangerously ineffective" and stringent new regulations must be put in place to…

Arms export controls in the European Union are "dangerously ineffective" and stringent new regulations must be put in place to protect human rights in the developing world, says Amnesty International.

In a 107-page report released hours before a meeting of the EU's arms-control committee, Amnesty catalogued mostly secret transfers of weapons, technology and expertise from EU member states which have been used for human rights violations.

The report, Undermining Global Security, notes that Irish armoured vehicle technology appears to have been licensed, via a company in Singapore, to Turkey, where Turkish military have used armoured vehicles to abuse human rights, including the killing of a man who was crushed against a wall by a tank during Kurdish New Year celebrations in 2002.

It also notes the involvement of an Irish-registered company with an international arms smuggling operation.  The company, Balcombe Investments Limited, owned the aircraft operated by Renan Airways of Moldova which were used to fly "several shipments of illegal arms to Africa". The report states that Ireland's burgeoning high-tech sector is contributing indirectly to the arms trade.

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Other issues addressed in the report include the involvement of an Italian company in the manufacture of vehicles used as mobile execution chambers in China and the export of components from Britain for Chinese military aero engines despite an EU arms embargo on Beijing.

"The establishment of the EU Code of Conduct on Arms Exports in 1998 was a significant advance in regional arms control," the London-based watchdog said in a statement. "But the design and application of the EU Code are deeply flawed."

It expressed concern that a review of the code, promised for this year, would not be far-reaching enough to weed out the weaknesses, omissions and loopholes.

The Labour Party MEP Mr Proinsias De Rossa welcomed the new report and called on the Tánaiste to honour a commitment given in the Dáil yesterday to introduce new legislation to regulate and control arms exports from the State.

"While Amnesty is calling for a toughening of the EU code, the Tánaiste confirmed in the Dáil yesterday  to my colleague Brendan  Howlin that an independent report she had commissioned showed that Ireland was not even meeting EU  commitments. This is a totally unsatisfactory state of affairs and the introduction of new primary legislation is now an urgent requirement."

He said the Amnesty report and an earlier report by consultants Fitzpatrick Associates challenge the widely accepted view that Ireland is not a producer of arms in the normal sense and that, on a per capita basis, the value of our military export licences is "well above" many other European countries that are traditionally active in this area.

Mr Richard Boyd Barrett of the Irish Anti-War Movement said there was a "deep irony" that, at about the time the Belfast Agreement was being negotiated and there was a lot of talk about "taking the gun out of Irish politics", Irish companies were beginning to immerse themselves quite deeply in the international arms trade.

He believed a lot of Irish people were probably not aware of the extent to which certain Irish technologies were being used in arms.  Some components were being used by the US in Iraq and it was possible they were also being used by "rogue regimes and despotic regimes".  Mr Barrett said Ireland's ratification of the Nice Treaty had also committed this state to deeper involvement in the European arms industry.