A group of peace activists grabbed headlines on 27 November last year, when they blocked the main road into the Pine Gap US-Australia Joint Defence Facility to highlight that the base, situated about 20 kilometres outside of Mparntwe-Alice Springs, has been providing surveillance intel to the state of Israel, which is being used to facilitate the genocide it’s continuing to run in the Gaza Strip.
Fifty-odd activists, comprised of Arrernte Traditional Owners, local health workers and community members maintained the hours-long blockade that commenced at 4:45 am that morning. And the peace activists were successful in disrupting around 100 Pine Gap employees, which basically meant that certain data that could have been used in a deadly manner failed to be gathered and processed.
The Northern Territory police took two of the activists into custody, Carmen Escobar Robinson and Tommy Walker, and they’re set to stand trial in the Alice Spring Local Court on Tuesday, 10 November, International Human Rights Day, and the two-day hearing will continue into Wednesday.
We in IPAN want our country to stop contributing to wars through allowing the US to base its war fighting capabilities on our lands. To join IPAN www.ipan.org.au
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