FIVE disarmament campaigners were arrested yesterday after mounting a human blockade on the road leading to the Trident nuclear weapons depot at Coulport.
The three men and two women – two Spaniards and three UK citizens – had locked themselves together using heavy concrete and metal tubes early in the morning, but they were cut out of their shackles by Ministry of Defence Police.
Retired Latin teacher and veteran protester Brian Quail, 79, from the Trident Ploughshares camp, who is also a member of the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), was one of those arrested, along with 66-year-old Angie Zelter, a peace and environment campaigner from Wales, and Sam Donaldson, 29, a community worker from Hull.
Almudena Izquierdo Olmo, 60, from Madrid, who works at a university in the Spanish capital and is an activist from the group Women in Black, was also arrested, as was 46-year-old Juan Carlos Navarro Diaz, 46, a university librarian from the Canary Islands and an activist with the anti-military group Alternativa Antimilitarista-MOC.
The protest was organised by the Trident Ploughshares Coulport disarmament camp.
Zelter said: “British nuclear weapons are illegal now there is a United Nations ban treaty.
“It is imperative that all of us get involved in non-violent nuclear disarmament as our government is engaged in state terrorism.”
Speaking for the 11 Spanish activists who took part in the camp, Almudena Izquierdo, said: “We demand our government, as part of Nato, signs and ratifies the UN Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty in order to prohibit nuclear weapons from entering foreign military bases and ports in Spain.”
The road was blocked for almost three hours, but traffic was diverted so no local people were prevented from travelling on public roads.
Police Scotland confirmed that five people had been arrested. It is expected they will appear at Dumbarton Sheriff Court today.
Activists say the action was part of the Trident Ploughshares nuclear disarmament international camp, which is taking place this week near Coulport.
Campaigners have travelled from across the UK and as far afield as Finland to take part.
Yesterday’s protest came after more than 120 countries last week approved the first United Nations treaty to ban nuclear weapons, a vote that was boycotted by all nuclear-armed nations, including the UK.
Elayne Whyte Gomez, president of the UN conference that negotiated the legally binding treaty, said the “historic” vote had seen 122 nations vote in favour, with the Netherlands opposing and Singapore abstaining. She said: “The world has been waiting for this legal norm for 70 years, since the use of the first atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 at the end of the Second World War.”
The treaty was “the first multi- lateral nuclear disarmament treaty to be concluded in more than 20 years”, added Whyte Gomez.
She said the treaty will be opened for signatories in September and will come into force when 50 countries ratify it.
UN member states overwhelmingly approved a resolution last December, calling for negotiations on a treaty that would outlaw nuclear weapons.
However, there was strong opposition from nations who already have nuclear weapons, as well as their allies.
Whyte Gomez said 129 countries had signed up to take part in drafting the treaty, which represents two-thirds of the 193 member states.
Nato members and all nuclear- armed states boycotted the negotiations apart from the Netherlands, which has US nuclear weapons on its territory and which had been urged by its parliament to send a delegation to the talks.
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