{"id":430727,"date":"2025-09-17T08:19:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T08:19:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/430727\/"},"modified":"2025-09-17T08:19:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T08:19:11","slug":"letter-our-protest-at-dsei-in-london-on-september-9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/430727\/","title":{"rendered":"Letter: Our protest at DSEI in London on September 9"},"content":{"rendered":"

GERALD Conyngham and I were outside London\u2019s Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) at ExCel Centre, London, with Exeter Quakers tabards, our banner reading \u201cSTOP ENABLING GENOCIDE and our 35 year old grief.<\/p>\n

Our four-year-old son Harry died of leukaemia on 9.9.90 after being given all possible treatment in Bristol Children\u2019s Hospital.<\/p>\n

In Gaza thousands of children have been killed, or have died from lack of medical care and malnutrition.<\/p>\n

The UK government had banned the Israeli government from attending this year, but allowed the following Israeli firms to exhibit: Elbit Systems, the supplier of the Hermes killer drones which Israel has deployed on civilian Palestinian populations, Rafael, IAI, and Uvision.<\/p>\n

\"Laura<\/p>\n

Laura and Gerald Conyngham outside London\u2019s Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI). (L and G Conyngham)<\/p>\n

Different Quakers protest in different ways.<\/p>\n

I chose to hold up my banner, silently eyeballing those in line, while in my heart holding our son and other grieving parents in the Light.<\/p>\n

Most of the \u201ctrade visitors\u201d \/ \u201cmerchants of death\u201d tried not to look at the protestors. It can\u2019t have been comfortable for them.<\/p>\n

There was chanting, drumming and scuffling as some protestors tried to block the way in.<\/p>\n

The police rushed to ensure that they did get in. This is big business.<\/p>\n

I find it shocking that London hosts DSEI every two years and that between 45,000 and 60,000 suited business people, mostly men, attend, to deal in surveillance, weapons and war. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"GERALD Conyngham and I were outside London\u2019s Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) at ExCel Centre, London, with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":430728,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,393,4884,257,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-430727","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-london","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115218662828617970","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=430727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/430728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=430727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=430727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=430727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}