Civil Disobedience Against NATO

Press Release/Invitation 17 November 2010

Nonviolent Civil Disobedience Training in Lisbon

Place and hour: Praça do Rossio: Thursday 18 November : 16:00

Between 19 and 21 of November, NATO will meet to discuss it's future by approval of it's new strategic concept in Lisbon. Portuguese and European activists are preparing for non-violent actions against this summit.

The actions of civil disobedience are - as are the counter-summit and the demonstration - part of the manifold protests against the NATO summit. An important part of our preparations are action trainings, in which the participants prepare themselves for the planned non-violent actions. On Thursday November 18 we will show parts of such a civil disobedience training in public.

„The participants train de-escalation techniques, i.e. how they can deal with police without causing an escalation. This is important as our aim is not to fight the police but to resist and obstruct injust policies with our bodies”, explains Andreas Speck of War Resisters International and the international network ICC, the concept of the trainings.

Through these actions the activists want to stress that NATO brings no solution but is part of the problem. As explains Benoit Calvi of the Belgian Group Bombspotting: “Thanks to NATO European countries are fighting already for 9 years in a hopeless war in Afghanistan. And they continue to do so. Thanks to NATO there are still nuclear weapons in Europe 20 years after the end of the Cold War. And they stay here. And thanks to NATO Europe is investing in a useless missile defense project.”

On this occasion several spokespersons will take a stand on the following questions:

• Why has the NATO summit no legitimacy and why are actions of Civil Disobedience justified?
• What are the goals we want to reach with non-violent actions of civil disobedience both symbolically and practically?
• What is our understanding of Civil Disobedience?

Your press contacts:

• Toni -Contra a Guerra Age (portuguese) - +351 914 834 956
• Andreas Speck – War Resisters International - (english – german) - +351 968504757
• Benoit Calvi – Bombspotting – (french – english) - +351 968564342
• An Maeyens – Bombspotting - (dutch - english – spanish) - +32 489 577 851

War Resisters' International, Bombspotting, and PAGAN are members of the ICC No to War - No to NATO.