Boeing

MEDIA RELEASE

Disruptive protest at Brisbane weapons company

10.00 AM Tuesday May 4th
Boeing Head Office, 150 Charlotte St Brisbane

The head office of weapons manufacturer Boeing has been occupied by a West Papuan solidarity group in Brisbane today. Activists have erected a memorial to murdered West Papuan civilians in the arms company’s lobby to commemorate over 30 civilian victims of military violence during 2020-21.

Boeing Apache helicopters are currently strafing villages in the Puncak and Intan Jaya regions of West Papua, after Indonesian President Widodo declared a major offensive against ‘separatists’ in the region. Civilian casualties have yet to be counted. The attacks have caused a refugee crisis, with thousands of Papuans fleeing their homes and farms to escape the Boeing aircraft.

“Wipe them out, we can talk about human rights later” was the injunction given by the head of Indonesia’s parliament, Bambang Soesatyo, on April 26, as the Indonesian parliament declared the ‘OPM’ or Papuan Independence Organisation to be a terrorist group. Additional troops, including Australian trained anti-terrorist D88 forces, are deploying to West Papua daily. Boeing profits from attacks on West Papua through lucrative sales to the Indonesian army, TNI.

Boeing is poised to sell 36 new F15EX fighter jets to Indonesia’s air force after meeting with Indonesia’s Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto in October 2020. The F15EX deal, negotiated after the Trump administration dropped a visa ban against Prabowo, is worth $USD billions to Boeing. Prabowo had been banned from entering the US under legislation prohibiting known war criminals from obtaining visas. Now Defence Minister, Prabowo was once head of the notorious special forces unit Kopassus and stands accused of multiple crimes against humanity.

Activists in Boeing’s Brisbane office are calling on the weapons manufacturer to cancel the deal with TNI, accusing the company of ‘collateral murder’.

Contact: Margaret Pestorius  0403 214 422

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Photos available 4th May 2020 (after the event)

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Boeing in West Papua

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Boeing is the fourth-largest harms dealer in the world. Boeing sells Apache and Chinook helicopters, 737 troop transporters F15 ‘counter-insurgency’ fighter jets to the Indonesian air force. Boeing weapons are directly implicated in war crimes against West Papuan people.

Arms dealers like Boeing are making a killing by exporting terror. Join us to demand that our taxes, our resources and our best scientists and engineers work for planetary health and human wellbeing, not for organised murder.

11 August 2020
Peace activists disrupted work at the Brisbane office of Boeing Defence this morning, saying the company’s construction of weaponised drones and other autonomous weapons is part of a militarism that is out of control.

Spokesperson Greg Rolles said “We are here today because Boeing builds aircraft for war crimes. The attack helicopter that killed journalists in the infamous ‘Collateral Murder’ video was Boeing’s. Boeing unmanned drones have destroyed civilian infrastructure in Yemen, enabled an unlawful campaign of extra-judicial assassination, and left countless people in fear of their own skies.”

Mr Rolles said “Boeing’s further research into artificial intelligence will take humanity even more out of the loop. Boeing is now building armed drones in Brisbane and siphoning money out of Australian communities into the production of weapons designed to kill. Boeing is out of control.”

The Australian government this year committed to contributing $40 million to Boeing’s development of the autonomous combat aircraft “Loyal Wingman”. The Department of Defence’s Force Structure Plan stated “new and existing aircraft will combine with remotely piloted and autonomous systems to provide increased lethality and survivability.”

Mr Rolles said “the impacts of the climate crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic this year have shown clearly that our real security comes not from bigger bombs but from better co-operation; from technology that conserves life rather than that which kills. Yet Boeing is taking our taxpayers money and some of the brightest engineering minds to develop weapons that increase conflict, and artificial intelligence that takes human connection and empathy out of the picture. The militarism embodied by companies like Boeing is out of control, and the future of humanity depends on us taking it back.”