Government 'putting gun back into Irish politics'

GOVERNMENT 'PUTTING GUN BACK INTO IRISH POLITICS'

The Government is "putting the gun back into Irish politics" by deploying armed gardai and soldiers to deal with May Day protests, according to protest organisers.

"It is ironic that a government that has spent so much time talking about taking the gun out of Irish politics seems so eager and willing to put armed soldiers and police out on the streets", said Mark Malone, a spokesperson for Dublin Grassroots Network (DGN), which is organising a May Day weekend of events for an alternative Europe.

"This is a deliberate effort to both discourage the public from joining a legitimate demonstration, and to distort the motivations of the organisers by creating a climate of fear," Malone said.

Responding to comments made on Monday by Dick Roche TD that the protesters had no democratic mandate, Malone said that the use of armed force to police the weekend's events was "an attempt to suppress the fastest growing democratic movement across the globe, of which these protests are an expression."

"We condemn the deliberate use, or threatened use, of live ammunition against unarmed civilian protestors, while simultaneously talking about removing all guns from politics in the north of Ireland, as hypocritical doublespeak."

"At the very least this is a cynical attempt to intimidate people from coming out and supporting these events, but it also carries an implicit threat to those who organise and make vocal their dissent about the dehumanising neo-liberal agenda that EU leaders seem intent on imposing upon us," Malone said.

"Real and meaningful social change only occurs when people organise and demand it. The abolition of wage slavery, the struggle of landless peasants across Latin America, farmers' collectives in India fighting to stop GM multinationals patenting their indigenous crops and those protesting about Irish companies such as Top Oil making money out of an illegal war in Iraq are all linked in their opposition to right wing neo-liberal politics.

"If Dick Roche cares about democracy he should be working for the abolition of powerful, unelected bodies such as the World Bank and IMF, not putting armed gardai and soldiers on the streets of Dublin."

ENDS

For more information, including Mayday event plans, see: www.struggle.ws/eufortress

In case their are site problems we have created three mirror sites. The URL's for these sites are below, please make sure you bookmark/link them. http://struggle.ws/eufortress   http://www.anarchomedia.org/eufortress http://geocities.com/eufortress