Science Museum’s sponsor Adani is complicit in Gaza Genocide

Please pause and contemplate the plight of the innocent children and families being targeted every minute by the Israeli government in its genocide of the Palestinian people, in the Gaza strip. The Science Museum takes money from Adani, a group of companies with wide-ranging financial interests and dubious ethics in unsustainable mega coal mining projects, in Australia, and as an arms manufacturer / investor supplying weapons to Israel; making it complicit in Gaza genocide.

In just 12 weeks to-date:

In Gaza, killed: At least 20,915, including over 8,200 children
In Occupied West Bank, killed:  At least 311, including over 76 children
 

Who is Adani? 

●    An Indian-owned, multi-national corporation, Adani has a well-chronicled history of human rights abuses, fraud, stock manipulation, environmental destruction and green-washing. 

●    In a joint venture and ever-evolving partnership, Adani and Elbit Systems (Israel’s largest armaments manufacturer) collaborate to produce the only Hermes900 drones outside Israel. Promoted as “combat proven” and “the primary platform of IDF operations”, the armed Hermes900 has been used since 2014 to surveil and bomb Gaza and Lebanon. Adani and Elbit have also “agreed to build a Design and Development Centre focusing on co-developing technologies aligned to the global requirements [and] needs of the armed forces”.

●    In a joint venture with Israel Weapon Industries (IWI), Adani holds a 51% stake in PLR (Precise, Lethal, Reliable) Systems Ltd, manufacturing small arms. These include assault and sniper rifles, light machine guns and UZI submachine guns. The weapons have been tested by the IDF on Palestinian human-targets. 

●    At a cost of $1.2 billion, Adani has acquired 70% of the port in Haifa which will be used in the planned trade route from India to Europe. This trade route map shows Israel encompassing the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, from the (Jordan) River to the (Mediterranean) Sea.

●    Adani have plans for further investment and expansion into Israel.

Accepting Adani money is accepting blood money

Announced in October 2021, Adani’s multimillion-pound sponsorship deal of the Science Museum’s Energy Revolution Gallery, due to open in spring 2024, has attracted almost continuous controversy.  One director resigned; forty prominent figures and several leading scientists severed ties; and over 400 science teachers and innumerable climate activists have protested. They have accused the museum of “reprehensible behaviour in allegedly allowing crisis-hit Adani to greenwash its huge fossil fuel business” by association with – and at the expense of  - the museum’s global reputation. It has emerged only this month that chief executive, Ian Blatchford, “did not pass on a due diligence report on Adani to the museum’s trustees” when “reviewing the ethics of its sponsorship deals” such that “Blatchford’s office will be bypassed in future reviews”. 

Meanwhile, allegations made by the US-based private investment firm Hindenburg Research suggest that “intra-company loans tie Adani Green Energy to its sister companies within the group”, such as with its fossil-fuel and armaments operations, “much more closely than previously thought” and, consequently, it is suspected that their companies’ respective funds are “co-mingled”. These “revelations have led to Norway’s largest pension company, KLP, selling its shares in Adani Green Energy due to fears it could inadvertently be funding the broader group’s coal investments”. 

So to return to where we began, all this begs the question:

What is the UK’s flagship science museum doing accepting funds from a war-enabler?!

Demand the Science Museum cut ties with Adani or they, too, become complicit in genocide:

Tweet: @ScienceMuseum      

Email:info@sciencemuseumgroup.ac.uk   

Phone: 033 0058 0058          

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