SUPERQUINN, the grocery chain of choice for Ireland’s well-heeled consumers, has asked Amnesty International to investigate if it has become unwittingly ensnared in an African arms importation ring.

The supermarket chain is concerned that planes used to fly perch from Lake Victoria to Ireland are also being used to transport arms from former Soviet states.

A recent documentary about globalisation, filmed in Tanzania, discovered that planes transporting arms to fuel the conflict zone surrounding Lake Victoria, including the Congo and Rwanda, were then flying fish from Tanzania to European markets.

The fish is imported to Ireland by Oceanpath, a wholesaler that supplies the perch exclusively to Superquinn. The fish fillets are currently being offered for sale at a 25% discount in the supermarket.

Superquinn confirmed that it is aware that the fish in its stores might be arriving in planes used to ship guns to warzones. “We are approaching the relevant authorities to get information on it,” the company said.

“While we’re waiting, we are putting a purchase block on the fish. We’re aware of the issues around the transportation of the fish and looking into it, and while we don’t have enough information on it that’s the position we’re adopting.”

The company refused to disclose which authorities it has approached, but said Oceancatch is examining the origin and transportation of the fish.

A director of Oceancatch confirmed that it is checking the firms used to transport the fish.

Amnesty International confirmed it had been contacted by Superquinn and asked to look into the claims.

The documentary, Darwin’s Nightmare, is due to be broadcast by the BBC next year. It has won 16 awards at international film festivals, including the European Film Awards 2004 best documentary prize.

Hubert Sauper, the Austrian director, said his film shows the difficulties companies face in maintaining ethical trading standards in a globalised world.

Originally known as Nile perch, the fish were introduced into Lake Victoria in the 1960s in an attempt to improve fishing yield. A voracious predator regarded as a pest in other fisheries, the perch proved devastating to the local ecosystem and wiped out many endemic species.

The fish multiplied so fast that its white fillets were soon being exported all around the world, including to Ireland.

Conflicts near Lake Victoria, including the civil war in the Congo which has continued for more than a decade, and the Rwandan genocide in 1994 which claimed more than 1m lives, have added another horrific dimension to the region’s economy.

Sauper’s website says: “Hulking ex-Soviet cargo planes come daily to collect the latest catch in exchange for their southbound cargo — Kalashnikovs and ammunitions for the uncounted wars in the dark centre of the continent.

“This booming multinational industry of fish and weapons has created an ungodly globalised alliance on the shores of the world’s biggest tropical lake: an army of local fishermen, World Bank agents, homeless children, African ministers, EU-commissioners, Tanzanian prostitutes and Russian pilots.”

Sauper says he tried to compare the success of the predatory fish in the lake’s waters to the success of capitalism worldwide.

“In Darwin’s Nightmare I tried to transform the bizarre success story of a fish, and the ephemeral boom around this ‘fittest’ animal, into an ironic, frightening allegory for what is called the New World Order,” he said.

“I could make the same kind of movie in Sierra Leone, only the fish would be diamonds. In Honduras they would be bananas, and in Libya, Nigeria or Angola, crude oil.”

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