Protesters picket Textron in Wilmington over cluster-bomb production

By Robert Mills, LowellSun

WILMINGTON — A group of about 30 people protested outside Textron Weapon and Sensor Systems in Wilmington on Wednesday, calling for an end to the company’s production of cluster bombs, and especially for an end of their sale to Saudi Arabia.

Massachusetts Peace Action and a congregation of Quakers from Cambridge led the protest, with organizers claiming that up to 10 percent of cluster munitions remain unexploded after use, posing a grave danger to civilians, children and animals in war zones.

Human Rights Watch accused Saudi Arabia of using the weapons against civilians in Yemen in 2015, a claim the Saudi government disputes.

Cluster bombs are weapons that disperse a large number of small bombs over a target. The Sensor Fuzed Weapons produced by Textron are comprised of a “dispenser” that contains 10 submunitions, with each of the 10 submunitions containing four warheads, according to a fact sheet supplied by a company spokeswoman.

“It’s a particularly gruesome weapon,” said John Bach, one of the protest organizers and a Quaker chaplain who worships at a meeting house in Cambridge.

Bach said unexploded ordnance from cluster weapons are particularly dangerous for children, who can pick them up out of curiosity.

“Kids and animals are still getting their limbs blown off,” Bach said.

Massoudeh Edmond, of Arlington, said she believes it’s “absolutely criminal” that such weapons are sold to Saudi Arabia.

“We all know Saudi Arabia is bombing civilians, so I don’t know why we’re selling them anything,” Edmond said.

Textron, the sole remaining producer of cluster bombs in the United States, says protesters are confusing their Sensor Fuzed Weapons with older versions of cluster bombs that were far less safe.

A company spokeswoman provided a copy of an op-ed published in the Providence Journal earlier this year, in which CEO Scott Donnelly addressed protests over the weapons in Providence.

Donnelly said that while older versions of cluster bombs used ordnance that remained unexploded as much as 40 percent of the time, Textron’s Sensor Fuzed Weapons are far safer and more precise.

Donnelly wrote that the new cluster bombs contain sensors to identify targets, and that any munitions that don’t hit a target either self-destruct or disarm themselves upon hitting the ground.

A Textron fact-sheet says the Sensor Fuzed Weapons are required by the Department of Defense to result in less than 1 percent unexploded ordnance.

“We also understand and share the desire to protect civilians in all conflict areas,” Donnelly wrote.

Bach accuses Textron of lying about the rate at which the bomblets remain unexploded, and about their safety, saying that while few of the weapons remain dangerous in laboratory conditions, there are no laboratory conditions in war.

“In the fog of war, there are not lab conditions and they do not always self-destruct,” he said. “There’s a reason the entire world other than the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Israel have banned the use of cluster weapons.”

Another Quaker, Warren Atkinson, of Medford, described the cluster bombs as “the gift that keeps on giving.”

“Long after we leave Afghanistan, children will still be losing their arms and legs,” Atkinson said. “And we’re supposedly helping them.”

Bach said that in addition to Wednesday’s protest, the Quakers have been holding a worship service in front of the facility on the third Sunday of every month for over six years now.

While many of the protesters came from south of Wilmington, at least one Lowell resident was on hand.

“I’m just here as a human being with a basic moral message that we need to ban cluster weapons, and we really need to think about the impact our weapons have on civilians across the world, especially in a place like Yemen where the Saudis are using our weapons constantly,” said Garret Kirkland, of Lowell.

Cole Harrison, executive director of Massachusetts Peace Action, said the group is pushing Senators Elizabeth Warren and Edward Markey to support to an amendment to the Senate’s defense appropriations bill that would ban the sale of cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia.

On a broader scale, the group is also pushing for the U.S. to join more than 100 other countries who have joined the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which bans the production, use, stockpiling and transfer of any cluster munitions.

 

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