Tag: Caoimhe Butterly

Concern grows over flotilla missing and prisoners

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

UK, 2pm, Tuesday 1st June

International Solidarity Movement volunteers today expressed grave concern over the fate of wounded, imprisoned and missing flotilla activists.

The group said, with an information blackout from Israel preventing news of their plight reaching the media, speculation is mounting about the Internationals’ safety.

Theresa MacDermott (Scotland) Ewa Jasiewicz (Britain/Poland) and Caoimhe Butterly (Ireland) along with hundreds of other civilian passengers have not been heard from since before the Israeli attack on Monday morning.[1]

Israel has today refused Free Gaza lawyers permission to make contact with the human Rights defenders.

Sharyn Lock (England), founding member of The FreeGaza Movement and author of Gaza: Beneath the Bombs, said today:

“Through my experience volunteering with ambulances in Palestine, I know Israel regularly lets civilians die without allowing medical aid reach them.”[2]

She went on to say:

“It is deplorable that family and friends are being refused contact or information and we can only speculate as to their whereabouts and injuries.”

“We call on the EU member States to fulfil their obligation to protect the safety of human rights defenders.[3] We demand that Israel allows access to the injured and imprisoned immediately.” added Vittorio Arrigoni (Italy) who was himself injured by Israeli gunboats in 2008.

ISMers and former flotilla passengers Eva Bartlett (Canada) and Alberto Arce (Spain) are also waiting to hear from their missing colleagues.

“All of us are nonviolent activists who have personally come under fire from Israeli forces, and several of us have been wounded or detained. It is common for Israeli forces to open fire with live rounds on unarmed civilians, both Palestinian and Internationals.” said Eva, from Gaza.[4]

Human rights defenders in Gaza are attacked on a daily basis. Amongst them are Bianca Zammit (Malta), who was shot while accompanying farming families in Gaza on April 25th, 2010[5] and Adie Mormech (England),who was kidnapped and imprisoned after the FreeGaza boat The Spirit of Humanity was forcibly boarded by Israel on June 30, 2009.

All the ISMers mentioned in this release are available now for comment.

Contact

Sharyn Lock (Free Gaza Movement, England) +44 7881651 259
ISM London, +44 7913 067 189
Vittorio Arrigoni (Italy, based in Gaza) +972 5977 50820
Eva Bartlett (Canada, based in Gaza) +972 5987 10648
Adie Mormech (England, based in Gaza) +972 5977 17696
Bianca Zammit (Malta, based in Gaza) +972 5975 89688
Alberto Arce (Spain) +0034 6556 50048

Notes

Ewa Jaciezicz is a freelance journalist. She and Caoimhe Butterly have trained as First Responder Medics. Theresa MacDermott is a postal worker.
Alongside flotilla passengers Caoimhe and Ewa, Eva Bartlett, Sharyn Lock, Alberto Arce, and Vittorio Arrigoni worked daily with Palestinian medics during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, with Eva and Alberto filming the shooting by an Israeli sniper of medic Hassan as he tried to retrieve a body. The footage taken by Alberto and Mohammed Rujailah became their award-winning film “To Shoot an Elephant” Alongside flotilla passenger Theresa MacDermott in 2008, Vittorio Arrigoni, Eva Bartlett, and Sharyn Lock came under regular fire as they accompanied unarmed Gaza fishermen, who are often shot at not only within three miles of the Gaza shore, but actually on the beach.
EU Guidelines on Human Rights Defenders:
http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cmsUpload/GuidelinesDefenders.pdf

With related resources here:
http://www.ishr.ch/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=189&Itemid=267
http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/defenders/docs/Frontlinehandbook.pdf
Bianca Zammit received a gunshot to the thigh when Israeli soldiers fired on farming families, Gaza, 2010. Vittorio Arrigoni required ten stitches after Israeli gunboats attacked the fishing boats he was accompanying, Gaza sea 2008. Caoimhe Butterly recieved a gunshot to the thigh while rescuing Palestinian children, West Bank 2002. Sharyn Lock was shot in the stomach from an Israeli armoured personel carrier while walking backwards with her hands in the air, one of ten internationals injured, West Bank 2002.
Bianca says:

Israeli soldiers fire live ammunition at unarmed civilians, farmers and activists without any inhibition. On the day they shot me soldiers were shooting aggressively at the demonstrators. It was clear they had a policy of at least “shooting to injure”. I was filming and documenting when the bullet struck my leg. For me this was a clear message that Israeli soldiers do not hesitate to shoot at internationals but also that they feel threatened by our work.

IPSC: Freedom Flotilla of Aid expected to reach Gaza within 48 hours despite threats from Israeli Navy

Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

27th May 2010

The Freedom Flotilla to Gaza, which includes 11 Irish people, expects to arrive at its destination within 48 hours despite Israel’s vow to block the mission from delivering much-needed aid to the beleaguered coastal strip. A forum of seven senior Israeli ministers who met on Wednesday 26th May have decided that the Israeli Navy will enforce a twenty mile exclusion zone around Gaza and will arrest all 800 crew and passengers taking part in the Freedom Flotilla should they pursue their mission to break the ongoing siege of Gaza.

The Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) wishes to express its solidarity with the ‘Freedom Flotilla’, consisting of nine ships, that is currently attempting to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza. Among the ships heading towards Gaza is the 1,200 tonne Irish cargo ship, the MV Rachel Corrie, which is owned by the Free Gaza Movement. The ship is carrying a cargo of cement and other vital reconstruction materials for the people of Gaza.

Israel has vowed to block the Freedom Flotilla from docking in Gaza. After a hearing from defence officials Israel’s ministerial forum decided on Wednesday not to let the ships dock, but to offer to unload the cargo, inspect it and send it to Gaza via the United Nations. The ministers decided that the ships would be directed to Ashdod by force if necessary. The activists would be arrested and expelled from the country.

Speaking on behalf of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Dr. Fintan Lane (IPSC Media Officer and a ‘Freedom Flotilla’ participant) said: “The siege of Gaza has created a humanitarian and political crisis that cannot be ignored. We are determined to break Israel’s blockade and will not be intimidated. The people of Gaza have a right to access to the outside world and the right to determine their own future.”

Dr. Lane continued: “The siege of Gaza is a collective punishment against the Palestinian people because they dared to resist Israeli apartheid rule. The suffering that Israel is causing is an outrage and the international community must stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people. Direct action is entirely appropriate and we intend to make it clear that we stand with the Palestinian resistance to oppression and apartheid. We are not neutral in this struggle for human rights and self-determination.”

Aengus O’Snodaigh TD who is also a participant said, “We will not allow our flotilla to be divided. We will stay with our cargo ships – they are the core of the flotilla carrying essential construction materials denied entry into Gaza – cement and steel. This action is not a symbolic gesture but a concrete intervention to allow the people of Gaza to rebuild their lives with dignity.”

In addition to the involvement of the MV Rachel Corrie, a number of Irish politicians and human rights activists will be participating in the flotilla as crew and as passengers. The Irish participants in the flotilla are Denis Halliday (Dublin), Caoimhe Butterly (Dublin/Cork), Chris Andrews TD (Dublin), Fintan Lane (Cork/Dublin), Mairead Maguire (Belfast), Aengus Ó Snodaigh TD (Dublin), Senator Mark Daly (Kerry) and Fiachra Ó Luain (Donegal). The Irish crew members on the MV Rachel Corrie are Derek Graham (Mayo), Jenny Graham (Mayo) and Shane Dillon (Dublin). For further biographical information on the Irish participants, please go to the end of this press release. The participants include members of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign and the Free Gaza Movement.

For further information, contact:
Dr. Fintan Lane (IPSC Media Officer & passenger) – 087 1258325
Niamh Moloughney (Free Gaza Ireland) – 085 7747257 / 091 472279
Crete Free Gaza Movement – 0030 698 377 6683
Cyprus Free Gaza Movement – 00 357 99 18 72 78 or 00 357 96 48 98 05
Freda Hughes (IPSC Spolesperson) – 086 1260359.

Biographical Information on the Irish Participants

Denis Halliday was born in Dublin in 1941 and educated at Trinity College Dublin. He is a former Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations. Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed him to the post of United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq as of 1 September 1997, at the Assistant Secretary-General level, and he served as such until the end of September 1998. He resigned from the post in Iraq and from the United Nations as a whole effective 31 October 1998 after serving the organisation since mid 1964 – some 34 years. He has been a strong opponent of the US/UK-led war in Iraq.
Mairead Maguire, Nobel peace prize laureate, was co-founder of the Community of Peace People for a peaceful resolution of the Northern Ireland conflict. She has been to Palestine several times defending the human rights. In April 2007, she was wounded by the Israeli army while non-violently protesting with Palestinians against the apartheid wall in the village of Bil’in. This will be her third trip to Gaza on board one of the Free Gaza boats.
Chris Andrews TD (born 25 May 1964) is an Irish Fianna Fáil politician. He is currently a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin South East constituency. He was first elected to the Dáil at the 2007 general election.
Aengus Ó Snodaigh TD is a native Irish speaker who was born in Dublin in 1964. Aengus is married to Aisling and has three children. He was first elected in 2002 to the Dáil (Irish parliament) and re-elected in 2007. He is Sinn Féin’s spokesperson on social and family affairs, housing, justice and international affairs. He travelled by boat in November 2008 to Gaza which was (and still is) under siege by Israel.
Senator Mark Daly is a Fianna Fáil member of Senead Eireann from County Kerry. He was elected as one of the youngest members of the 23rd Senate in the 2007 election and has been active in community affairs and local politics since college. He was born in Kerry in 1973 and holds a Diploma in Property Valuation from Dublin Institute of Technology and a B.Sc. in Management from Greenwich University, London.
Dr. Fintan Lane is a writer and historian. He is a member of the National Committee of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Originally from Cork, he now lives in Chapelizod in Dublin. He graduated with a PhD in history from University College, Cork and is the author/editor of seven books on modern Irish history; he has also contributed many articles and reviews to academic history journals. He was the Editor of Saothar, the scholarly journal of Irish labour history, for several years.
Caoimhe Butterly (born 1978) is a Dublin-born Irish human rights activist, who has worked with AIDS victims in Zimbabwe, the homeless in New York, and with Zapatistas in Mexico as well as more recently in the Middle East and Haiti. In 2002, during an Israeli attack in Jenin, she was shot by an Israeli soldier. She spent 16 days inside the compound where Yasser Arafat was besieged in Ramallah. She was described by Time magazine as one of their Europeans of the Year in 2003. Butterly is a pacifist who is a member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), an organisation that seeks non-violent alternatives to armed intifada by mobilising international civil society. She is a coordinator with the Free Gaza Movement.
Derek Graham is from Ballina in County Mayo. He has been a qualified electrician for 20 years. He was a member of the reserve defence forces in Ireland for 21 years and was the first member of the reserves to make the Army sailing team. He has been sailing all of his life and is a crew member on the MV Rachel Corrie. He has participated in many previous Free Gaza boat trips to Gaza and has been on four of the five voyages that landed in Gaza. He is married to Jenny, who is also on the MV Rachel Corrie.
Jenny Graham is from County Mayo and is a member of the Free Gaza Movement. She has participated in previous boat trips to Gaza and is a member of the crew of the MV Rachel Corrie. She is married to Derek Graham.
Shane Dillon is a Dublin-based Irish seafarer who has served as Chief Officer on Irish and British merchant ships. He has sailed on numerous leisure craft on transatlantic trips and in European waters. He is part of the crew of the MV Rachel Corrie.
Fiachra Ó Luain is from County Donegal. He is an Irish peace activist and was an independent candidate in the North-West constituency in the 2009 European elections. He was compelled to become a candidate upon watching the massacres of Israel’s ‘Operation Cast Lead’. He is a member of the Free Gaza Movement.

Lebanese urged to help break Gaza siege

Josie Ensor | The Daily Star

24 July 2009

A Lebanese human rights worker with the Free Gaza Movement made a plea on Thursday for Lebanon to show solidarity over the issue of the Palestinian right of return and play a more active role in breaking the siege. Natalie Abou Shakra, who returned Wednesday from the Gaza Strip after an eight-month humanitarian mission, said it was Lebanon’s duty to help ease the situation in the Palestinian territories.

The plea comes a week after President Michel Sleiman told Russian Mideast envoy Alexander Saltanov that any attempt to achieve peace in the Middle East must include the Palestinian right of return.

Shakra, the only Lebanese activist currently on the ground, said the resettlement of Palestinians from countries offering refuge is one of the most important issues that Lebanon should support.

“A Lebanese initiative is also needed to break the siege,” Shakra told The Daily Star. “The last one was not a total failure and I think it should be followed up – and more creative and daring ways should be thought of.”

Shakra defied Israeli orders for Lebanese citizens not to enter Gaza and was able to get in with the Free Gaza movement’s SS Dignity boat on the December 20 last year. She has since been working with Free Gaza Movement (FGM) and International Solidarity Movement to bring medical and food assistance into the Gaza Strip.

Shakra drew on the relationship between Lebanon’s struggles and Gaza’s own, saying that there was a lot of commonality yet support was lacking.

She added that, as an Arab country with a history of struggle with Israeli occupation, Lebanon had a duty to help besieged Gazans – 80 percent of whom are currently dependent on food assistance.

“As activists, we need to deal with people who support civil resistance, culturally. It is easier to deal with people, like the Lebanese, who we don’t have to explain the ABCs to, as they already have that political discourse in them,” Shakra added.

She said that living through Israeli occupation during her childhood in the south of Lebanon gave her an appreciation of the plight of Palestinians. “Living there we had to endure a lot and as a result we hold a lot in common with the Palestinian people – we have a common enemy.”

On Tuesday, fellow Gaza aid worker FGM’s chief Gaza coordinator Caoimhe Butterly, gave a talk in Beirut to create greater awareness of the current situation in the Gaza Strip.

Butterly has organized several boats to be sent to Gaza carrying medical and food aid and urged on Tuesday that Lebanon join the efforts. “We want more activists from the Arab world on the boats, we don’t want it to be West-centric. We want the Lebanese to come on these boats,” Butterly, an Irish national, said during the talk in Hamra’s T’Marbouta.

Butterly said in Tuesday’s talk that the situation in Gaza today is hermetic: “There are an estimated 4,000 aid items banned from entering Gaza at present; from cancer treatment medicines, to anesthetic, to footballs. And Israel won’t give out a list because it could be used by humanitarian groups.

“We had to try to negotiate pasta onto the list for three weeks – they said while rice was an essential, pasta was not. Shampoo is allowed in, but shampoo with conditioner is banned.” Butterly said that such decision on the list were deliberately calculated by the Israeli authorities: “That is the most terrifying thing – the seige is deliberately created to bring an entire people to their knees.”

The Free Gaza Movement has successfully made five aid deliveries by boat to the Gaza Strip since August of last year, defying a blockade that was imposed by Israel due to Hamas rocket attacks.

However, Butterly says that Israeli forces have intercepted many more. “The last four boats have been stopped, including the one from Lebanon earlier this year. We believe that there was a decision to block these voyages.

“We want to bring in cement and steel; building materials but they’re being blocked, which cripples any ability to reconstruct the 12,000 homes that have been destroyed,” Butterly added.

In December of last year, she was on a Free Gaza Movement boat that was intercepted by Israeli ships as it headed to Gaza with medical supplies.

Sleiman ordered that the boat be rescued and it was welcomed at the port city of Tyre. “We received wonderful hospitality from the Lebanese and it was a great sign of support, but it shouldn’t stop there – the country needs to be much more active in its support for the cause,” Butterly said.

The organization is now planning to send convoys and passenger boats into Gazan waters to create greater international pressure. “We anticipate Israeli security trying to board the boats, but we will withstand as long as we can – we will try for five days.”

Butterly said that the idea was to have these initiatives happening on a more regular basis so that the situation in Gaza is not forgotten.

Farmers fired upon by Israeli forces in Al Faraheen, Gaza

ISM Gaza | Farming Under Fire

8 April 2009

This morning, the farmers from Al-Faraheen in the Gaza Strip persisted with their efforts to harvest the year’s crop of lentils. Volunteers with the International Solidarity Movement, and a camera crew from Press TV accompanied the farmers as they set out to work in a field about 300m from the border.

Before the farmers reached the field, an Israeli jeep stopped next to the border fence several hundred metres away. A number of shots were fired in the direction of the farmers before the jeep drove away.

After an hour as the farmers were about to finish their work, another jeep stopped at the border. Soldiers got out and took up firing positions. An ISM volunteer then spoke to them with a megaphone – informing the soldiers that they were all civilians, and requesting that the soldiers did not open fire.

The soldiers then fired several shots at the farming group. The proximity of some of these shots to the farmers was marked by an audible hiss and crack as they ripped through the air past their heads. At this point the farmers decided to leave.

Caoimhe Butterly from the ISM and the Free Gaza Movement said “Today’s action was further evidence of the systematic attacks that border farming communities face. Yet despite this, to sustain their families, farmers must put their lives at risk every day in order to cultivate their land. These acts of popular resistance demand our support. There needs to be continual support in the form of sustained campaigning and action on the issue.”

The Israeli military is attempting to enforce a no-go zone on the Palestinian side of the border. As part of this ongoing project, and in addition to shooting at the communities that live and work in the area, the Israeli military has destroyed large swathes of olive groves, orchards, and other arable land, and hundreds of homes.

Israeli forces shoot at farmers in Al Faraheen

ISM Gaza | Farming Under Fire