Heckling Heckler & Koch

Anti-arms trade campaigners gathered at Nottingham's Easter Park Industrial Estate on 8 September to protest against Heckler & Koch's small arms factory, determined to close it down. Heckler & Koch, a multinational company based in Germany, is one of the world's largest exporters of rifles, machine guns and handguns.

H&K; weapons, exported in contravention of German law, were used by Georgian special forces in South Ossetia. H&K; machine guns are used by US private military company Blackwater, whose mercenaries killed 17 Iraqi civilians in al-Nusoor Square in Baghdad in September 2007. H&K; also supply the British police.

The campaign against H&K; in Nottingham has been running since June 2007. Police have attempted to repress the campaign by searching protesters under the Terrorism Act, bussing in officers from the London Forward Intelligence Team (FIT) and calling up the local press and telling them not to write about the campaign. Another demonstration is planned for October.

For more info, see http://nottsantimilitarism.wordpress.com/heckler-koch.