No-Nonsense Guide to the Arms Trade, New Edition by Nicholas Gilby

Author:Nicholas Gilby [Gilby, Nicholas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Arms Control, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781771130653
Google: zRoBBQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Between the Lines
Published: 2009-08-15T11:39:59+00:00

Aerospace exhibitions typically cover both military and civilian aircraft, as it is good PR for the arms companies to incorporate ‘public days’ and aerobatic shows into the event. As CAAT has noted, specialist shows include naval fairs such as Gulf Maritime in the United Arab Emirates, EuroNaval in Paris and ExpoNaval in Chile. Other niche areas include ‘internal security’ (for example Milipol Paris), special forces (for example SOFEX in Jordan), helicopters (for example Helitech at Duxford, near Cambridge in Britain). There have also been small specialist shows relating to pilotless aerial vehicles.

Flagship fair

DSEi – Defence Systems Equipment International – since 1999 has been Britain’s flagship arms fair, replacing the lumbering Royal Navy and British Army Equipment Exhibition with a sparkling new, Slick-running private show. Since 2001 DSEi has taken place at the ExCel exhibition center in London’s Docklands, and is booked to return in 2011.

It has been mired in controversy from the beginning. In 1999, there were two separate breaches of brand new British legislation banning the manufacture and sale of anti-personnel landmines.

After privatization in 1997, DSEi was owned by Spearhead, a private company that was then part of the US corporation PGI. The day before DSEi 2003, Spearhead was acquired by global publishing giant Reed Elsevier. DSEi has enjoyed British Government backing, with senior ministers regularly attending and demonstrations of equipment made by the British armed forces. Human-rights-abusing states are invited as a matter of routine: 2007’s included China, Libya, Colombia and Saudi Arabia.

Campaigners have scored a notable victory by forcing Reed Elsevier to give up its involvement with DSEi, a blow to those trying to portray arms fairs as a legitimate business area. The campaign, launched in 2005, included an open letter in The Lancet signed by senior doctors and healthcare experts. This prompted The Lancet’s editorial board to call on Reed Elsevier ‘to divest itself of all business interests that threaten human, and especially civilian, health and well-being’. The British Medical Journal took up the call too.

In March 2006, 13 internationally renowned writers, including AS Byatt, Ian McEwan and JM Coetzee, called upon Reed Elsevier, organizers of the London Book Fair, to end their involvement in the global arms trade. Nearly 2,000 academics signed a petition in August 2006, followed in March 2007 by an open letter to the Times Higher Education Supplement, where 138 academics from 17 countries demanded Reed Elsevier cease all involvement in arms fairs.

In June 2007 Reed Elsevier announced it would sell its international arms fair business. The Chief Executive of Reed Elsevier, Sir Crispin Davis, said: ‘It has become increasingly clear that growing numbers of important customers and authors have very real concerns about our involvement in the defense exhibitions business. We have listened closely to these concerns and this has led us to conclude that the defense shows are no longer compatible with Reed Elsevier’s position as a leading publisher of scientific, medical, legal and business content.’

Reed Elsevier did not renew its contract to organize Taiwan’s TADTE arms fair, sold IDEX,

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