Conceived on International Women’s Day and announced on Mother’s Day; Palestinian Children Memorial in Swindon

On International Women’s Day a group of women from the Swindon community decided to organise a clothes memorial for the over 11,500 Palestinian children killed by Israel since October 7^th when 36 Israeli children were killed.…

Theresa, a spokeswoman from the group said “All children are innocent. No mother should have to witness the death of their child. Children in Gaza are now starving to death and their parents can do nothing to stop this slow and painful death. It must be horrific to watch your child wasting away.”

“We are women of different religions and none, from different races and backgrounds, coming together to extend our solidarity and love to the mothers of Gaza. We are mothers, grandmothers, sisters and aunts, all heartbroken by the loss of life in the Gaza Israel conflict.”

“We realise that it is almost impossible to imagine the scale of child deaths, so our memorial will enable people to see what that looks like and hopefully encourage them to join us in calling for a ceasefire.”

On Saturday 27^th April from 10am-4pm the group plan to lay as near to 11,000 sets of children’s clothing around the office of Justin Tomlinson MP, who voted against calling for a ceasefire. They want to make it clear that 76% of UK residents want a ceasefire in Gaza. “We’ve seen demonstrations outside Robert Buckland MP’s office. He didn’t vote at all on the motion calling for a ceasefire. We want to pressurise our political representatives to represent many their residents by calling for a ceasefire.”

“We will leave the memorial in place until the next day to give people the opportunity to see it or add to it. The clothes will all go to charity and not be wasted.”

Over the next seven weeks the group will be collecting clothes and will announce collection points to drop them off. They are looking for venues who are happy to receive clothes and for volunteers to pick up clothes, deliver them to the event on the day and help lay out the clothes.

The spokeswoman said “The clothes will be laid in a line from Justin’s office along the path in front of ASDA and M&S going in the other direction. This is a peaceful and emotive memorial for the lost children which cannot be spun as a ‘hate march’ or organised by ‘Islamist extremists. We hope that this will also attract people who don’t want or can’t march but who empathise with the families and friends of these children. We will need lots of people to achieve this, including the tidy up on Sunday 28^th April. Perhaps families going shopping will stop by on the day with some clothes and reflect on this terrible loss of life. Everyone is welcome. We will announce collection points soon. We’d like to thank Swindon Palestine Solidarity for letting us use their social media platforms to share this women led community event.”

For further information on how to get involved please check out our Facebook event on Swindon Palestine Solidarity page https://fb.me/e/gxWlVcdki or look out for local press updates.