DEMO AT HEATHROW AIRPORT
To view the pictures from this demo please click here

On Saturday several Gateway to Hell activists set off to Heathrow Airport: one of the Gateways through which animals are brought to be taken into labs and tortured. We entered the airport and made our way around, leafleting and putting leaflets in all the shops and around the airport. Having saturated the place with literature, we felt it was time to make our presence known in a slightly more overt manner.

So out came the megaphone and we began our demo. We got out a banner explaining why we were there and began to shout on the megaphone about Heathrow airport's involvement and compliance with animal abuse and torture.

Well arrivals stopped completely, people just stood and stared. People were coming over from other parts of the airport to see what our demo was about. We were there for over five minutes, people were having second and third turns on the megaphone we were there so long. Eventually a BAA woman with far too much make up and a rather unflattering skirt on came over and hovered at the edge of the crowd that had formed around us. We decided it was time to leave and as we walked out the door BAA Coward called timidly to us 'You have to leave'. Bit late considering we were already leaving.

As we were leaving the building several police officers pushed us out of the way heading in to the terminal looking for us. We slipped past them unnoticed which was a bit worrying really, you'd have thought the megaphone and banner we were carrying would have been a bit of a give-away but there you go. We got stopped however on our way to the tube station by vast amounts of coppers. Have they got nothing better to do with their time?

After all being stopped and searched we were put in the police van and driven off Heathrow Airport's property and told not to come back for 24 hours. No problem at all. We committed no offence. We entered an area which although private property we are allowed to go as as there is a presumed right of access there, and as soon as we were asked to leave, in fact before we were asked to leave, we left.

So no offence was committed and the police couldn't do anything except search us under the terrorism laws as we were at an airport which is considered a high risk place as the country is on high security alert. Airport demos: easy, legal, effective.

When you consider how terrified the primates must feel, these wonderful creatures confined to a tiny pen, confined to a barren cage, at the hands of those demented sicko freaks who work at HLS, Sequani etc.

That the beautiful monkeys from big, proud magnificent primates to little fluffy macaques must be sick with fear. So frustrated and mad with grief for the family they were torn from, stuck in a tiny cage and then on top of all that they have been dragged from their homes through horrendous conditions, then they are taken and imprisoned in a tiny cage, never to see sunlight and knowing only pain from the hands of sick freaks who are really a danger to society and should be locked up.

BAA, Air Mauritius, Mauritian government hear this: you are fighting a losing battle, and you are not even fighting it very well. We will keep coming back and there is nothing you can do about it, you have tried police intimidation, stupidly trying to be smart and mess with us and stop World Day, you have tried imprisoning activists, bringing out silly little injunctions. Don't you get the message yet?

Whatever you do you will not stop us, we will be there all the time. Everywhere you go we will be there to remind you of the blood on your hands. For the animals who began their journey of death and pain today and for those whose time has not come yet but have that shadow sitting over them, keep up the fight, Close the Gateways to Hell.