"Seeking alternatives to Militarism"

Vucje, August 24-28, 2000

Seminar Report

In Vucje, near Niksic (Montenegro), the seminar -and regional CO conference as well- "Seeking for alternatives to militarism" took place from August 24 to 28, 2000. This meeting was organized with the supportive help of Connection e.V., a German group, and Objeción Fiscal, a Spanish group. Women in Black Belgrade and the Niksic SOS Telephone for women and children victims of violence organized the meeting. 38 peace activists attended. Most of them came from Serbia (Kraljevo, Kragujevac, Nis, Raska, Belgrado, Pancevo, Ruma) and Montenegro (Niksic, Cetinje, Podgorica, Kotor y Ulcinj), but there were also people from Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croacia, Germany and Spain.

On August 24, 2000, participants met in Niksic and travelled to Vucje. The afternoon was devoted meeting each other - people from Serbia already knew each other because of their activities in the CO network, but most of them met for the first time activists from Montenegro.

FIRST MEETING OF THIS KIND IN MONTENEGRO

On August 25 work started. After a warm welcome, LINO VELJAK, a University teacher in Zagreb, and a peace activist, addressed the audience:

"This is the first international CO meeting celebrated in Montenegro. At the same time, it is one of the first meetings of this type celebrated in the territory of ex Yugoslavia. The meeting has its own history. After 1991, many of us born in the territory of ex Yugoslavia have rejected the so-called national interests, therefore rejecting the war, crime, terror, violence which strengthen the political elites. We hope this is drawing to an end. I'd like to mention that in Serbia, where all this evil started, in October 1991, a women's group was born. Since that time, it has always been protesting, first against war in Croacia, then against war and aggression in Bosnia-Herzegovina, later against violence, terror and war in Kosovo. Also, at that time, two political parties were born in Montenegro which opposed war and violence from the very beginning, and which are realated to today's democratic changes in Montenegro".

SLAVKA KRIVOKAPIC, member of SOS Telephone and from Centre Rome (for gypsy population): "From the beginning we fought for human rights as women, because we women, with our "invisible" work, have always helped people. It is also a way to defend our own country. When we support COs and the right to become a CO we do not intend to equal men but men to equal us".

IGOR SEKE, Ruma CO: "CO is the right every man has not to take part in war, nor in its preparations. We demand to have the legal right to become COs so that we are not persecuted, illtreated or discriminated because of our antimilitarist and pacifist attitude".

RANKO KRIVOKAPIC, vicepresident of the Socialdemocrat Party of Montenegro and president of the Council for Human Rights of the Parliament in Montenegro: "When I see you sitting on the floor I remember when we started our struggle, in each city, in the cellars. We were considered a "gang" of deserters, traitors. We refused to use violence against Dubrovnik. Personally, I deserted my military unit (I was doing my military service) two days before the attack. Since then I belong to a political group which doesn't deal with politics in the usual terms, as it began as a movement. When you reduce politics to the basic questions, it becomes a fight against war, violence and crime, and stops being the typical politics: It becomes a supreme moral question. We are the first generation in Montenegro which considers that it is courageous to say NO to arms. For the first time in the history of Montenegro it's been courageous to refuse to use weapons. We have shown that there are other types of courageous acts when you fight against war - the nonviolent resolution of conflicts. In today's situation I hope people are sensible enough to avoid war and enable Montenegro to achieve its freedom with no use of violence, with nothing of what we have seen throughout our ex nation. I hope our NGOs learn from us how to do real actions. Women in Black have shown us many times how you can do that under unbearable circumstances and I hope our NGOs learn from them, too."

DUSAN JANJIC, coordinator of the Forum for Ethnic Relations in Belgrade: "Perhaps we are facing the last moments to undertake antiwar actions. Evil is lurking. However there are people in Montenegro who want this evil to stop. The action model posed by Women in Black - flexible activities with no rigid structures - represents an puzzling enigma for the dictator. An extended organization with a lot of places of action, with a lot of individual actions, not necessarily coordinated, because they share a same idea, that is the model to overthrow a dictator."

At the beginning of the seminar the coordinators Sergio Bollain Pérez, social educator and antimilarist activist, from Madrid, and Marco Aparicio, Law teacher at the Barcelona University and antimilitarist activist, introduced the work which was going to be done:

Sergio: "The main target is learning about each other and considering afterwards what each of us can do".

Marco: "Our methodology is participative, this is, we need your active participation so we can know each other better and so we can know ourselves better."

After the opening, participants played some group dynamic games: first for participants to know each other and identigy their interests and values (12 different games). The aim of the games, as the two coordinators explained, wa to be aware of one's own attitudes, values, reactions, and also to link imaginary situations with the reality around us. As a result of the game "Imagine your ideal planet" a rich discussion took place, dealing with the following issues:

GLOBALIZATION:

Igor started the discussion, highlighting the fact that Serbia is today isolated from the rest of the world and that the country has got two possibilities: stay isolated o open completely, running the risk of "macdonald-izing". "A man or a group of people shouldn't be allowed to concentrate so much power in their hands". Koko asked then: "Does that mean that we should give a step back culturally and economically and perhaps recover the communist model we had before?" Lino added that the issue of globalization is very important but that if we consider it the most important issue in these countries we run the risk of helping indirectly those who wish to leave things as they are today. It is good that we are aware that the changes we seek do not imply an ideal world but the beginning of a long and persistent struggle for democratization and for subjecting the capital to democratic control. This is the only way in which we can avoid that the whole world becomes a new global dictatorship in the future. Stasa underlined that "the globalization argument in the context of a fascist dictatorship can be a coverup of that dictatorship - local imperialism would be overlooked and the blame would be put on others. This would be extremely dangerous because it is very convenient for the dictatorship." Gile considered that globalization is a contradictory issue because on top of all its negative consequences it has positive consequences too, for instance, bringing people together (as in the case of the European Union). Pop said he was aware of the danger involved in the creation of the external enemy which "justifies" dictators, but that the discussion about globalization cannot be left for later on.

ACCOUNTABILITY:

Lidia posed the question of accountability, stating: "Our local dictator (Milosevic) is not the only one to be held accountable for the situation. We have created him, we have given him the power he has because he didn't drop from the sky, he wouldn't have been able to do anything without our support. I repeat, the problem is that we have put him where he is." Referring to an aspect of accountability Sicko asked: "To what extend the love for the homeland justifies everything that is done during wartime in the name of that very homeland?" Linked to the issue of accountability is the question raised by Igor: "Expressing one's resignation and apathy or else one's anger... is it something which depends on each individual?" Jelena added a warning: "It is dangerous to focus the discussion in the issue of the aggresiveness and resent felt by Serbs towards other Serbs, instead of in encouraging solidarity empowering people to struggle for a change."

Later Sergio spoke about how he had overcome the outrage he felt before. He went to university and met a group of students. Together they changed their outrage into organized action. That was when he realized there were alternatives to outrage.

STRATEGIES- "THE WORSE THINGS ARE, THE BEST":

The conversation on the issue of strategies focused in the analysis of this well-known strategy. In Spain, as Marco explained: "this strategy occurred when growing repression "supressed" resignation and triggered anger. However, if fear or the media are unable to turn this anger in outrage, this is bad." Slavka stated that the opposite of this strategy was "people's wisdom", which she described like this: "While it isn't worse for me, things can stay as they are." She said that when this idea prevails, things continue to be bad because people accept the situation. Sergio gave some examples of the negative consequences of this strategy: "In Spain, the Socialist Party (PSOE) was in power and the right wing parties in the opposition had no charismatic leader. ETA tried to kill a right wing politician but failed - after the attack this man achieved charisma and the right wing parties are now ruling "

NO RECIPES- Spanish cases

This is a very long section in the serbocroat version. The reason: we wish to promote CO and "educate" people dealing with the experiences and knowledge of the different antimilitarist movements. However, as we consider the people in this network getting this document already know about this, we will only mention here the issues raised by Sergio and Marco: the political and social context in which CO was born in Spain; its beginnings, the legal, social and cultural aspects; total resistance (insumision), its social and cultural impact: the road to a professional army; the antimilitarist movement once the compulsory military service is abolished. In terms of whether the antimilitarist movement will stop having a reason to exist when there is no compulsory military service, Sergio stated: "We do achieve a target if the military service stops being compulsory. Many think that then we will "die of success", that we won't have any more reasons to be there.

However, the members of this movement, we know that there is a lot of work to do still: we will denounce other injustices (the issues North-South, centralism-autonomies), extend the network of nonviolent resolution of all conflicts, particularly those at a global level. The squatting movement is also strong: we "occupy" public spaces to serve our needs and aims."

IMAGINATION TO POWER!

Here are several very creative actions which the coordinators told us about. It has been very difficult to chose because they mentioned a lot of creative actions:

• "We change the name of streets which had the name of a member of the military. In its place, we write the names of the peace activists, of the nonviolent groups.
• We paint military buildings in bright colours and tanks in white.
• We go to the public meetings where soldiers are told where they should go and serve and we undress.
• When they attend the ritual of loyalty to the flag we go there and undress and hand out flowers
• The last action we did was during the military parade in Barcelona, on May 27. We also marched - instead of rifles, we carried brooms. The army had to change their route", said Marco.
• One of the most "daring" actions took place in Rome: a banner with a text against the building of an hydroelectric dam in the Basque Country was hung from the dome of theVatican.

CONTRADICTIONS WITHIN ANTIMILITARISM

Nora from Kosovo asked if it was possible to establish an analogy between the refusal of Basque youths to do the military service and the massive Albanian Kosovar youths' refusal to take part in the Yugoslav army. We have to mention that most of those youths that didn't want to take part in the Yugoslav army enrolled in the UCK (Liberation Army of Kosovo).

Marco answered: "In our movement of insumisos we have dealt with this issue, although we have no established position. The insumision group in the Basque Country is closely linked to the rest of the groups in the state of Spain and it confronts all military structures. However, that doesn't mean that there aren't any individuals who have become insumisos just to confront the Spanish army. Many Basques oppose the army but they aren't antimilitarists.

We can see this because they do a civilian service. Those who seek independence in Catalunya are in a similar situation, but they are a minority, I mean, for instance, we haven't allowed them to use our action against the military parade. The creation of antimilitarist networks has allowed us to learn more about the real situation in the Basque Country."

Goran's question was: "Are there any COs among the workers in weapon factories or in factories producing poisonous chemical substances?"

Sergio answered: "CO hasn't limited itself to the military service - it has also extended to other fields. In terms of weapon factories, there is an antimilitarist group in Madrid working on the issue of conversion: turn the military industry into civilian industry. When we are asked the demagogical question: what will happen with those who lose their jobs? (the police once warned us that the workers in a factory of chemical products would beat us because they would lose their jobs if we achieved our target), we answer with the idea of the conversion of the military industry into civilian industry.

Peace Education is very important, too. Within peace education we have Tax Resistance (to military expenditure). This is one of the most solid activities the antimilitarist movement has been working in. The movement of Tax Resistance is about claiming the right to decide where you want to "invest" the percentage of your taxes which would be alloted to military expenditure. We use this money in antimilitarist proyects mainly. Tax Resistance (OF, in Spanish) is not a legal activity, it's civil disobedience.

GERMAN AND LOCAL EXPERIENCES

Andreas did a very interesting contribution talking about civil disobedience in Germany. There has been massive protest on the issue of nuclear waste. He explained in detail an action by 9,000 people who the police could only manage to control after 9 hours. (...)

Stasa spoke about Women in Black and their actions linking feminism and antimilitarism, the support these women for peace offer the men who don't want to join the army, the desertors - men who they consider their allies in the antimilitarist struggle.

THE CONTRADICTIONS WITHIN PACIFISM

The following question was raised in the game "The barometer": If a war began, would you accept to join the army or would you refuse? Those who didn't know would stand in the middle, those saying yes would move to one side and those saying no to the other. We realized the answer to this question depends on time and space . Here are some of the answers which show the contradictions in pacifism, which relate to the different contexts in which we live. We are talking specifically about the differences between the situation in Serbia and in Montenegro.

VESO (Cetinje, Montenegro): "There is an extreme case: if the Yugoslav army attacked Montenegro, then we would have reasons to fight against the Yugoslav army."

GORAN (Pancevo, Serbia): "I think all armies are fascist and if I were called up I would not move, I would not become a soldier."

IGOR (Ruma, Serbia): "According to the international law this is still Yugoslavia. If there was a referendum and Montenegro voted for independence, I think that we would have to allow a 30-days period of time for the Yugoslav army to leave. It would be provocative to state on that very day that the Yugoslav army were an aggressor. We would have to allow some time for it to leave and then, if it didn't, do that analysis. Then, if the people decided to resist with weapons, I'm not sure if I'd not move, and stay there just watching."

PINDO (Niksic, Montenegro): "Let's consider the situation in Bosnia: the city was besieged, the men who were antimilitarists felt forced to take up arms, to avoid their daughters were raped or murdered."

LJUPKA (Kotor, Montenegro): "All towns in Montenegro are besieged and I consider that an attack. When cannons are pointing to my town, I think that is an attack. The Yugoslav army isn't standing in the frontiers with other states but around towns in Montenegro. Some people in Montenegro think that is protective, but I think that is an aggression."

VANJA (Niksic): "What you do or not do depends on what your political believes are."

MIRA (Niksic): "The situation in Montenegro is very complex, the country is divided, but in both sides there are people who are against the war. I do not believe that everybody in the DPS (government party) is for independence in Montenegro against all odds, nor that everybody in the SNP (opposition party, pro Milosevic) would rather stay in Yugoslavia against all odds."

All these different views have not harmed the meeting but enriched it!

One of the results of the seminar is that people agreed to establish solid cooperation between groups in Montenegro and Serbia and that the first step for this be the action called "Rejecting War". This action was undertaken on September 21-23, 2000, in several towns of Montenegro and Serbia. We have already sent you the report. We have also sent you the report about the antiwar protest held on the last day of the seminar (Aug. 27, 2000) in the main square in Niksic.