Campaigners pray for an end to sale of Arms (From Penarth Times)

Campaigners pray for an end to sale of Arms

ACCORDING to Oxfam, some two million children have been killed in wars in the last ten years.

On Maundy Thursday, the Penarth Christian Network of the Campaign Against the Arms Trade arranged a service of prayer outside the BAE Systems weapons factory at Monkswood, near Pontypool.

Their purpose was to witness to a commitment to non-violence in a world that spends more than $800 billion a year on military forces.

Five members of Penarth and Dinas Powys churches - Sheila Collins, Jeremy Dix, Joseph Rabaiotti, Keith Howells and Phil Kingston - joined others from Cardiff and Newport for the service, which was held outside the main gate to the factory as people were coming into work.

It contained testimonies by child soldiers from Sierra Leone, one of whom, aged 13, said that he had killed 30 adults and children.

Mr Kingston said that the group's primary concerns were the sale of weapons to countries that are already in a tense relationship with their neighbours, or which use arms to suppress their own populations.

He added that for poor countries to spend money on weapons when their own populations are in desperate need of food, clean water and basic health and education services, makes no sense.

"Few people are aware that our country is the world's second-largest supplier of weapons," he said.

"When we know that in modern warfare, more than 90 per cent of casualties are civilians, we should all be deeply concerned about this trade.

"And many of us are implicated in it because most occupational pensions are based partly upon investments in these firms."