Danish shipping companies provide dictators with weapons

Merchants of death: Danish ships sailing every six arms transport for wars and conflict zones

Danish ships transports plenty of weapons to the world's dictators, regimes, rebel movements and conflict zones. A new report from the Swedish peace research institute SIPRI reveals now that Denmark has the sixth largest number of companies involved in the so-called destabilizing weapons transports.

Threat to Human Rights
Races are not illegal, but could threaten regional stability, security situation in recipient countries or residents' human rights. The report for the first time calculated the destabilizing arms shipments, which are detected on larger ships between 1991-2011.

Good business
Danish ship owners are so happy to sail with grenades, rifles and other military equipment that we are ahead of countries like China, Ukraine, Lebanon, Syria and all the African states. And it is deeply problematic, says one of the report's authors, Hugh Griffiths to Ekstrabladet.
- The weapons can be used to bomb civilians or kill demonstrators. Races are paradoxical, because it works against greatly Denmark's work with development and peace building in the world.

24 killed
26th November 2011 came one of the most recent examples of public awareness. Here, revealed Amnesty International, the Danish ship Marianne Danica was carrying tear gas and rubber bullets to the regime in Egypt only two days after 24 protesters were killed and thousands wounded in clashes with security forces.
Although Denmark has a large merchant fleet, it can not explain firms' involvement in destabilizing arms shipments. Transports between NATO countries and stable countries do not count in the statistics.

Smaller companies
- It is typically smaller companies specializing in this one type of transport. For comparison, one can also see that, for example Norway and Sweden are not on the list, says Hugh Griffiths.