BarcelonaBarcelona and Sabadell will host the Unvex 2024 drone and unmanned systems fair on June 4 and 5, which brings together experts, companies and institutions to promote this technology. More than 150 Catalan civil society organizations have launched this Wednesday a campaign to denounce the participation of companies that, they say, are linked to the Israeli army and the occupation of the Palestinian territories.
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The signatories of the campaign, promoted by the Coalició Prou Complicitat with Israel and the Palestinian Community of Catalonia, which also pushed for the break in relations between the Barcelona City Council and Tel-Aviv, last year, affirm that ” it cannot be tolerated that after more than 35,000 Palestinian people have been killed, including more than 10,000 children, and South Africa’s accusations of a crime of genocide, a fair with companies that manufacture military technology takes place in Catalan cities.” That’s why they have addressed the city councils of Barcelona and Sabadell to cancel the fair and will present complaints to the local and Catalan grievance ombudsmen.
“Taxpayers’ money should be spent on other things instead of funding the military industry, which is involved in conflicts around the world, as is the case in Palestine. According to experts, Israel could not sustain the genocide for more than 72 hours if the European and United States military industry did not feed their arsenals,” warns Marc Jamal, of the Palestinian Community of Catalonia. “They are necessary accomplices in genocide and, moreover, public support for companies that manufacture weapons, and their trade for acts that violate international law, violates legality,” he adds. On March 13, the Congress of Deputies approved a non-law proposal calling for an arms embargo on Israel, the same as the UN resolution of April 5.
Allegations of collaboration with the Israeli army
In this sense, the campaign denounces the association of some of the companies participating in the fair with Israel. Pere Brunet, of the Center Delàs d’Estudis per la Pau, denounces that “we are contributing to criminal systems, such as drones, which incorporate artificial intelligence mechanisms that Israel uses against the Palestinian people, such as Gospel, Lavender and Where is Daddy, which are absolutely dehumanized, of clear genocidal racism: this fair should not be held.”
The campaign warns that Airbus supplies the Israeli army with drones and planes, the Spanish company Alpha Unmanned Systems confirms on its website that Israel is one of the nine countries where its drones operate, and that the drones manufactured by the Chinese DJI are used by the Israeli army for surveillance, intelligence gathering and the suppression of demonstrations. They were proven, for example, to have been used by the Israeli army to fire tear gas at the 2018 right-of-return demonstrations in Gaza, where more than 214 Palestinian women were killed. They also report that there are indications that drones made by the company General Atomics have been seen flying over Gaza since October 2023, or that the company Safran has an agreement with the Israeli company Rafael for the integrated Fire Weaver system , which is used by the Israeli army, and supplies the fingerprint scanners to the same Israeli army which it uses in the occupied Palestinian territory. As for Sony, they point out that their cameras are being used in the Old City of Jerusalem as part of the Israeli army’s mass surveillance of the Palestinian population.
2024-05-22 13:35:57
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