Last week a group of anti-arms trade campaigners enacted the annual ritual of traipsing down to Farnborough air base, for the Annual General Meeting of the UK’s largest arms company, BAE Systems. Each of us possessed one share, allowing us to attend the meeting and ask questions of Sir Roger Carr, Chairman of the Board of Directors.
We go to this because we want to hold the country’s top arms dealers to account. We’re not going to let them have their annual jamboree without someone there to spoil the party and remind them of the human cost of their profits.
Our questions were, unsurprisingly, mostly about Yemen, where BAE-made fighter aircraft form a key part of the Saudi Air Force that is wreaking such utter devastation in the country. The Saudi-led coalition’s ongoing bombing campaign has caused thousands of civilian deaths, while destroying schools, hospitals, factories, and agricultural land and facilities. Together with the Saudi-led blockade, the bombing campaign is driving Yemen into famine, with the UN estimating that the total death toll of the war, direct and indirect, could reach 230,000 by the end of 2019.
