Urgent Call from Turkey's Human Rights Organisations to the International Community

With the interruption of the peace talks, the government of Turkey started, in mid-August, to implement a security policy that unlawfully restricts fundamental rights and freedoms in those cities and towns largely populated by Kurds.

Since August 2015, long-term and consecutive curfews have been declared in the provinces of, and the towns attached to Şırnak, Mardin, Diyarbakır, Hakkari and Muş, and are still underway in certain cities and towns. During these prohibitions, national and international media, human rights or professional organizations as well as representatives of the parliament who wanted to identify violations of rights have been denied access to these cities and towns. According to the findings in reports drawn up by the very small number of civil society organizations which could make their way into the region in the face of huge obstacles, it has been determined that the civilian population has become the target of both snipers and heavy weaponry, which has been used in an arbitrary fashion.

Callout for Broken Rifle 105: Climate change and antimilitarism

For the first time, WRI's magazine The Broken Rifle will focus on climate change and antimilitarism, looking at the links between environmental and peace movements, the connections between our analyses of control, exploitation and power, and the links between seemingly 'single issue' social movements. Please write with your ideas and suggestions to info@wri-irg.org, preferably by the end of January. We would need the final articles by 15 March, and are looking for short pieces of 800-1200 words.

Reflections from Stopping the War Business

At the end of the Stopping the War Business international seminar, three participants shared their reflections from the meeting. Here they are below.

Tuuli Vuori

Tuuli taking action against the ADEX arms fairIt's good to be in South Korea. I'm from a country which still maintains conscription and I've used half of my life working with issues related to conscientious objection. That is one reason why it feels so special to be in Seoul, as I've heard so much about the campaings that our South Korean friends have been doing here.

Anyway, war profiteering is not the strongest area of my knowledge so I've learned a lot during this seminar. Thanks for the really interesting keynote speakers as well as workshops!

In this seminar we discussed about the consecuenses of war profiteering for the individual people. We also discussed about the vast and dark structures of the war profiteering. Sometimes these structures make me feel very small.

Stopping the War Business: report

Summary

The Stopping the War Business seminar was held in Seoul, Republic of Korea, on 16 and 17 October, 2015. It was co­hosted by World Without War and War Resisters' International. The seminar provided space for learning about effective tactics used to challenge war profiteers around the world, and forged relationships between campaigners that will inform and enable new campaigns from here onwards. Activists from 21 different countries took part, with 70 participants in total (30 internationals, and 40 Koreans).

Quote from the evaluation: 'I came back with a big bag of knowledge and experiences from different regions that I would very much like to spread the information in my country'

After the seminar, a nonviolence training and then action against the ADEX arms fair took place. The seminar and the actions were deliberately linked, in order to support local activists in their struggle against a local example of war profiteering, and to put the learnings and relationships built up during the seminar into action.

Conscientious Objection: A Practical Companion for Movements - now available online!

Conscientious Objection: A Practical Companion for Movements is now available online here.

You can also buy a paperback version.

This book is intended as a practical companion for conscientious objection movements and all those whose work forms part of the continuum of war resistance. 

It has been written by activists who are campaigning against all kinds of injustice, all over the world.  Learning from the lived experience of these activists, the aim is to help movements work together, surmount the external challenges they face, and enhance the concept of conscientious objection, using it in new and innovative ways - such as against war profiteering, or the militarisation of youth.  The book also has a specific focus on gender, and the often invisible role of gender, both in the war machine, and in the movements which oppose it. 

To read this book is to be encouraged, not just to notice gender and the other power structures upholding militarism, but to actively work to undermine them - and in doing so, to start dismantling militarism itself.

A CO reflects on receiving cards on Prisoners for Peace day

International Prisoners for Peace Day has been celebrated on December 1st for years. The purpose of the day is to provoke conversation and commemorate peace prisoners with different expressions of support and solidarity.

This year we commemorated especially conscientious objectors in South Korea. In South Korea t no alternatives to military service exist, nor a right to conscientious objection. Therefore about 700 peace prisoners are serving time - just for their views. The sentence for objection in South Korea is very long; 18 months in prison.