“We Can’t Be at Peace With Ourselves If We’re Complicit in Saudi’s War”
- Bethan Bowett
Weapons of mass destruction shipped from Europe are decisive to Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen. But in Italy, the dockers who are supposed to load the warships are taking strike action — showing how workers can block the machinery of destruction.
The docks of Genoa, Italy. (Kate Hopkins / Flickr)
In May 2019 dockworkers in Genoa, Italy refused to load the cargo of the Saudi warship Bahri Yanbu. In a strike echoed by similar actions in Marseilles and Le Havre, workers at the northwest Italian port insisted that they would not be complicit in Saudi war crimes in Yemen.
Yet the petro-monarchy’s “ships of death” continue to ferry weapons of mass destruction from the West to the Gulf. On February 6 the Bahri Yanbu secretly docked in Sheerness, Kent, amid protests by the Campaign Against Arms Trade. Campaigners instructed lawyers to challenge the legality of the ship’s presence in British waters. But the Bahri Yanbu then passed via Cherbourg for Bilbao, where local activists saw explosives being loaded onto the vessel.
The ship is now due to arrive in Genoa on February 17 — and dockworkers are again planning to strike. Workers from Genoa’s Autonomous Collective of Dockworkers (Collettivo Autonomo Lavoratori Portuali) told local broadcaster Fivedabliu about the reasons why they are taking action.
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