By the Stop JCB Bulldozer Genocide Campaign
Yesterday morning, Tuesday 9th September, campaigners, coming together under the banner of #ShutDSEIDown, blockaded the entrance to the three-day Defence and Security Equipment International ( DSEI) trade exhibition in East London during its opening. Despite facing violent policing as well as a small fascist presence targeting the protestors, the protestors succeeded in effectively disrupting this obscene showcasing of the purveyors of war and genocide, which included no less than 51 Israeli companies.
British bulldozer manufacturer JCB, owned by Reform-supporting billionaire Lord Anthony Bamford, is one of the companies exhibiting its equipment at DSEI. Members of the Stop JCB Bulldozer Genocide campaign joined the protests. Campaigners held a banner with the slogan “JCB: Stop Bulldozer Genocide in Palestine, India and Kashmir” and joined other protestors in vocally reminding the arms buyers and sellers attending that “Your profits are covered in Palestinian blood” and “You are killing children too.”
In January 2025, the Stop JCB campaign published a report detailing JCB’s role in ethnic cleansing and genocide in Palestine, India and Kashmir.
In Palestine, JCB operates through its sole dealer, the Israeli company Comasco, which holds contracts with Israel’s Ministry of Defence for the same model of JCB machines used in the demolitions and construction of settlements.
From as early as 2006, the Israeli military has been photographed demolishing Palestinian homes in the West Bank with JCB bulldozers.
Currently, JCB is also complicit in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, having been listed in UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese’s July report among numerous companies directly aiding and profiting from the genocide. Armoured, unbranded JCB High Mobility Engineer Excavator (HMEE) machines, known as Ami in Hebrew, have long been used by the Israeli army and are now being used in Gaza.
In India, Narendra Modi’s Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government has consistently used JCB bulldozers to demolish Muslim homes, shops and places of worship across various Indian states in an ongoing project disturbingly named ‘bulldozer justice’.
In fact, JCB is so closely intertwined with this project that it has come to symbolise attacks on Muslims. JCB bulldozers have been used to carry out both punitive and arbitrary demolitions. In the punitive demolitions, the homes of people accused of crimes, which include protesting against the BJP, are destroyed.
In recent months, a targeted campaign of evictions, including demolitions by JCB bulldozers, has been underway across the country.
In the northeastern state of Assam, 1,080 families were displaced on 12th July, and 19-year-old Sakuar Ali was killed in police firing in the Goalpara district on 17th July. According to Human Rights Watch, the BJP government is fuelling discrimination by arbitrarily expelling Bengali Muslims from the country, including Indian citizens.
Border Guard Bangladesh reported that India expelled more than 1,500 Muslims to Bangladesh between 7th May and 15th June. In July, around 3,400 Bengali Muslim homes were demolished in five eviction drives across Assam. In Siasat Nagar, Gujarat, 8,000 Muslim homes were demolished in May; and in the Wazirpur area of Delhi, JCB bulldozer demolitions in June destroyed the homes, built several decades ago, of Dalit, oppressed caste and Muslim working class families, originally migrants from Bihar, with no rehabilitation.
In Kashmir, which is one of the most militarised zones on earth, JCB machines have consistently been used in house demolitions during large-scale evictions, despite many residents providing proof of ownership.
This is just one aspect of a broader regime of human rights violations of the Kashmiri people by the Indian state, particularly since 2019, when the limited autonomy of the state of Jammu and Kashmir was revoked by the Indian government. In order to facilitate the entry of Indians and Indian capital, land and property are being acquired, dispossessing local owners without any due process.
The campaign JCB: Stop Bulldozer Genocide is a coalition of organisations with two main demands. The first is that JCB must end its relationship with the Israeli Ministry of Defence and cease all activities in occupied Palestine.
The second is that JCB must commit to ensuring that its products are not used for human rights violations in India and Kashmir through robust monitoring and prevention systems. This includes making compulsory the use of its existing LiveLink technology to trace and locate JCB machines.
JCB equipment – including the HMEE machines – has routinely been exhibited at the annual DSEI exhibition.
A member of the campaign stated: “DSEI is a hub for many of the most genocidal and warmongering companies in the world. JCB is no exception. They are proudly exhibiting the same machinery that is directly used to demolish homes, businesses and places of worship in Palestine, India and Kashmir, fuelling programmes of ethnic cleansing and genocide. JCB’s presence at DSEI is a reminder to the world that they are not just a construction company, but a producer of military equipment openly used to further war and violence. JCB defence products have been displayed at DSEI for years – we will not let this continue in peace so long as they remain complicit in genocide. JCB have blood on their hands.”
Images c/o author
Labour Hub 