Workshop at the European Peace Action forum in Malmö 2008
From War Resisters International:
The workshop on campaigns against war profiteers was part of the Globalisation of militarism theme, the other workshop in that theme was on military infrastructure.
This workshop was coordinated by WRI, bringing together different European campaigns.
The first presentation came from Centre D'Estudis Per a la Pau from Catalonia, Spain. They began with a presentation on the arms trade in Spain - production, exports and military budget - followed by a presentation about their campaign 'BBVA without arms'. BBVA is a bank with investments in the arms trade.
Inez Louwagie from Vredesactie presented the campaign 'My Money Clear Conscience' speaking about the successes of this campaign in pressuring Belgian institutions to disinvest from what they call 'controversial arms'. She finished her presentation telling the story of how as part of the campaign they created a fake bank 'Ace Bank' in the centre of Brussels, which said that they invested in controversial businesses, so that way they could secure good investments. People were shocked from what they heard, and in the end they made a press conference saying that it was a fake bank, an opportunity that they used to show that what they showed as illegal in their fake bank was the same that many 'legal' banks are doing on a daily basis.
Cajsa Nykvist and Anna Sanne Göransson from Ofog told us about the disarmament work of Ofog, focusing on their Disarm Camp 2008, which is a camp that takes place in Karlskoga, home of the two big companies - BAE Systems Bofors and Saab Bofors Dynamics (together known as ”Bofors”). Weapons produced in Karlskoga are used in wars all around the world and Sweden is today the 9th biggest seller of weapons in the world.
Finally we had a presentation from Rolf Lindahl from the Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society (SPAS) presenting the work of SPAS against Swedish arms exports. Rolf also presented the European Network Against Arms Trade network which is an important place for sharing information and working together against arms trade in the region.