Campaigners block roads and risk arrest disrupting Welsh Government defence event
Stephen Price
Welsh peace activists, anti-war groups, environmental campaigners and local residents have descended on The ICC Wales this morning to show their opposition to the 2026 Defence Security Resilience Cymru summit.
According to the campaigners, eight protesters risk arrest by blocking roads around the building with their bodies to make it clear that they don’t want an arms fair here in Newport.
Plaid Cymru has already drawn criticism for jointly organising the event with a subsidiary of General Dynamics, one of the world’s largest arms companies and a supplier of weapons to the Israeli military.
This appears in contrast to their stances on the weapons industry in opposition. In 2025 the now First Minister Rhun ap Iowerth stated that it was “shocking and shameful” that Welsh Labour had provided £500,000 in grant funding to a company supplying weapons to Israel1.
Plaid Cymru had also repeatedly stated its opposition to similar defence events in the UK2 and called for sanctions on the Israeli government, including arms embargoes3.
Despite their stances in opposition, the Plaid Cymru government did not cancel the event in the face of growing opposition, leading to fury amongst many campaigners that previously supported Plaid’s anti-war stances, leaving it up to the public to take matters into their own hands.
One of the campaigners risking arrest today is Christina Jenkins, a 33 year old carer from Newport, who said: “The UK and Welsh governments are complicit in genocide. The weapons we produce kill civilians around the world, whilst our oil and gas extraction destroys our future and is already killing people across the world now.
“We won’t stand for these genocidal industries when we’re meant to be a nation of sanctuary.
“The biggest threat to national security in the UK is the climate crisis, not our lack of weapons. The Senedd should listen to them and grow Welsh jobs in industries that don’t profit off of killing innocents.
“We need more careers in renewable energy, public transport, affordable housing and rebuilding public services. Any money spent on funding war means less for these desperately needed industries.”
Leigh Evans, a retired emergency nurse paramedic from Swansea who might also be arrested today for blocking a road, said: “We are disgusted that the Senedd would use taxpayers’ money to fund a weapons fair. Over half of people killed in modern warfare are innocent civilians and arms companies at this event are actively supplying genocides and apartheid states around the world.
The weapons makers at this market place of murder profit from killing innocent people at taxpayers expense. To be Cymry is to resist oppression and therefore war, so it us up to us, the Cymry, the true nation and true believers in Heddwch/peace, to make this non-violent stance against the industrial murder complex.”
Another protester risking arrest at the ICC today said: “I was born in Casnewydd and have lived most of my life here. I’ve watched not only my country, Cymru, be turned into a testing/training ground for genocidal military and weaponry, but now my hometown is being hijacked to allow warmongerers to make profit on weapons that will most definitely take countless lives of children and parents.
“I can’t stand by and let England’s colonialism continue to have such a chokehold from Casnewydd, to Sudan, to Palestine, Yemen, Congo, Myanmar, Kashmir, Iran, Lebanon, and everywhere else. Liberation now.”
The Welsh Government is listed as a co-host at the event alongside Business in Focus, ADS Group and General Dynamics Land Systems. Campaigners have branded it the “Welsh Government Arms Fair”.
Enterprise Minister Adam Price was previously advertised as a keynote speaker but later said he would not attend. It is understood Welsh Government civil servants remain involved in the event.
A Welsh Government spokesperson said previously: “We will continue to engage with the aerospace, defence, security and national resilience sectors to support the thousands of high-tech, well-paid jobs in Wales, while promoting respect for human rights and international law.
“An ethical defence framework is being developed, informed by discussions with Scottish Government and Northern Ireland Executive counterparts, and will guide future engagement with the sector.”
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Clear message that Cymru will not tolerate companies that send weapons of murder to the evil genocidal zionist regime, their idf goons and marauding settlers.
Amir – good always triumphs evil.
In 2000s the UKs press regulator allowed Channel 4s Jon Snow launch a tirade of abuse against Sabena World Airlines by calling the airline that has flown to Sub-Saharan Africa from Brussels for and on behalf of the UN Such A Bad Experience Never Again.
Sabena flys on supporting the poorest communities in the world as Lufthansa branded Brussels Airlines and pathetic C4 has hardly any viewers.
The obsession with using the word genocide which has taken off in the last few years is depressing. Deaths in combat are one thing, civilian deaths in a war are another. All terrible and should not occur but do and war is recognised as a legitimate act as a consequence of being attacked by the UN. Genocide is a completely different and much more serious thing and the term is so important in context that it should only be applied specifically not bandied about for effect by activists trying to achieve a point.
What is happening in Gaza is not war. It is the systematic eradication of the Palestinian people. It is ethnic cleansing. You seem more bothered about the (entirely justified) use of the word genocide than any of that, which is frankly worrying.
No. It is war.
Slaughtering civilians and destroying schools, hospitals and homes is not war, it’s genocide. What is happening in Gaza is ethnic cleansing, the fact that there are people like you who are OK with that is frankly depressing.
No it isn’t war,Hamas are not even in the West Bank yet that doesn’t stop the evil Zionist Militias from Murdering Palestinians in the West Bank and also burning out their communities.
If a Militia turned up at your House Sarah and forced you out at gunpoint and burnt your property you would be very happy with that would you!
Wars are fought between armies – this is bombers attacking civilians…
Hmmm, so the deaths of 80000 semitic Palestinians, 20000 of them children and 1000 of zion civilians doesnt depress you. But, using the word genocide depresses you? Really? A word used by the same UN you reference in your comment to describe the murder of semitic Palestinians in Ghazza. And is still ongoing in Ghazza and the marauding settlers backed up by the idf goons are throwing semitic Palestinians out of their homes in West Bank as well. And that doesn’t depress you? Do you think all this can continue without another backlash like the October 7th terrorist incident? And… Read more »
75% of the dead are Hamas, who started the war on 7/10. The rest are regrettable civilian casualties. The Germans and Japanese civilian populations faced the same in wars started by their leaders. Israel is just defending itself and will continue to do so until a beaten Hamas disarms.
“75% of the dead are Hamas”
Do you have a source for this claim, preferably one that’s not IDF-related?
According to the Israeli Government and absolutely no one else. What we have been witnessing with our own eyes every day for almost three years is the systematic murder of tens of thousands of civilians, including thousands of children, in Gaza, along with the slow motion annexation of more and more land on the West Bank, involving the murder of over a thousand of its inhabitants, by Israeli settlers aided and abetted by Israeli soldiers, with the tacit (and in some cases overt) approval of the Israeli Government. The purpose of this slaughter is ethnic cleansing and the appropriate name… Read more »
Pointless responding to these 2 zionists. They never respond after they spout their denials.
There was genocide and it is still ongoing in Palestinian territory with the zionists stating they want the entire land for themselves.
There is nothing holy within this holy land. Just murder and a cursed earth.
Absolutely Amir it’s incomprehensible that people can justify the actions of the IDF and the Zionist Militias. Their Forebears fled the Pogroms of the Third Reich and yet they are trying to replicate what was done to them in Europe.
It’s not just me saying this but holocaust survivors and many Jewish people worldwide have called out what has been happening to the Palestinian people.
Furthermore don’t worry about being down voted by Likud Party Bots.
On the contrary, it’s important to call out these genocide apologists, precisely to show others the baseless nature of their claims. If they are allowed to repeat their lies unchallenged then others will believe them.
Are you saying that babies are supporters of Hamas
In this instance they are just unfortunate casualties of war. A war started by Hamas on 7/10
Ignoring the 75 years of history before that?
The occupation started in 1948 when the British gave a land to Jewish settlers to form a nation on others lands
Since then, they have grabbed more and more
Well said.
The equivalent of the Deaths in Gaza would be the same as the entire population of Birmingham being wiped if the IDF were doing something similar to the UK.
If you are disputing the world Genocide then you need to give your head a wobble
Which would also be justifiable if the people of Birmingham had attacked young Welsh people at the Green Man Festival and Wales’s army had retaliated. No different.
75 years of Israel attacking Palestine, and the one occasion they try and turn the tables Zionists claim that as the ‘start’
Even if that were true, nothing justifies the collective punishment of a whole population
Good luck to the protesters. Plaid tying itself to Union military machine.