Protestors call for Castledawson firm to 'stop arming genocide'

Members of the Mid Ulster Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign have protested Moyola Engineering in Castledawson and leafleted workers about the complicity of the factory.

The protest took place this morning (Wednesday), which is also UN International Day of Innocent Children Victims of Aggression.

Participants have demanded 'an immediate end to the manufacture of F35 parts for planes which are raining bombs down on Gaza'.

Directly on their website, Moyola Engineering states: “Moyola manufactures a wide range of components, for various defence applications. This includes airframe parts for F35, Gripen A400M and performance critical precision components for missiles, optical and sonar equipment and launch and guidance platforms.”

Recently the MUIPSC held a protest in Toome, where hundreds of people marched to demand an end to the slaughter of Palestinians and for InvestNI to come clean on money being spent on Moyola Engineering.

Later they held a film screening in Bellaghy in solidarity with the Filton18 activists currently being persecuted for standing up to genocide and dismantling weapons of genocide in Israeli weapons company Elbit systems factory.

MUIPSC chair Pádraig Mac Niocaill said: “On our doorstep in South Derry is a factory which boasts about it’s part in the creation of F-35 warplanes, death machines complicit in the genocide of Palestinians and murdering of innocents the world over. Over 20,000 children have been murdered in just 2 years of this genocide. The vast majority of people in Mid Ulster will be abhorred to know that there is a factory on their doorstep creating parts for the same warplanes that bomb children in Gaza. We demand an immediate ceasing of the manufacture of these parts, a stringent investigation into where these parts are ending up, and for a total divestment from companies complicit in genocide.

“Invest NI, part of the Department for the Economy run by Sinn Féin Minister Caoimhe Archibald, has given over £19 million pounds of public money to companies based in Belfast, Crumlin, Newtownabbey, Dunmurry and Castledawson who make parts for F-35 warplanes. Currently in Gaza 2.2 million people are being deliberately starved to death by Israel and slaughtered by the unrelenting bombing with arms supplied by the US, EU and UK. 

“The MUIPSC calls on all of our local politicians, councillors and MLAs to investigate the full component pipeline and immediately take action against this factory.”