Czechs petition supports planned treaty to regulate arms trade

Prague, March 18 (CTK) - More than 1700 Czechs have signed a petition in support of the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) that a U.N. conference has discussed in New York these days and that is to regulate international trade in conventional arms.

The Czech Republic ranks among the world's 30 biggest arms exporters.

Representatives of the Czech branch of the Amnesty International (AI), who handed the petition to the U.S. embassy in Prague Monday, said the Czech Republic backs the treaty but the Czech arms trade still suffers from shortcomings.

About 300 AI activists painted some 1500 yellow crosses at various places in Prague Monday as symbols of 1500 people who die every day in consequence of armed violence.

"While the world has defined clear rules for the international trade in bananas or dinosaur bones, no all-world rules for the trade in weapons exist," Jana Vargovcikova, AI's expert in the arms trade problem, told CTK Monday.

The AI said the Czech arms export's weakest point is the evaluation of the implied risks and of the transparency of transfers. This is handled by a single section at the Foreign Ministry, which issues recommendations as to what country is safe as an arms export destination.

"However, in the past, the Czech Republic sold weapons also to unstable countries where they may be misused against human rights," Vargovcikova said.

"Last year, for example, [Prague] nodded to exporting [arms] to Yemen, to which an anti-aircraft cannon was sold," she said.

Now it has turned out that the situation in Yemen is not stable, local government units have attacked demonstrators, and the weapons can thus be used against civilians, Vargovcikova pointed out.

Other problematic areas to which weapons have gone from the Czech Republic include Saudi Arabia, Thailand and Kazakhstan.

The AI says the weapons exported from the Czech Republic are no modern technologies but mainly old military materiel originating in the former Soviet Union, which dealers cheaply bought in the east and sold for higher prices further to Africa and Arab countries.

Czechs can still add their signatures to the petition on the AI's website or by buying a postcard for Barack Obama, president of the USA which is the world's biggest arms exporter.

Up to a million people died as a result of armed conflicts in 1989-2010, the AI says,

Only 35 percent of countries disclose their data on international transfers of weapons.

According to statistics, the overall turnover of the international trade in conventional weapons was 72 billion dollars in 2010.

Weapons worth some 4.5 billion crowns are annually exported from the Czech Republic, Vargovcikova said.