International CO Day: May 15th
Editorial
>From 17-21 September, more than 10Â000 people from all over Europe
(and beyond) took part in the 5th European Social Forum in Malmà in
Sweden. More than 15Â000 participated in a colourful demonstration
through the city of Malmà on 20 September, calling for âpower to the
peopleâ.
Although this ESF might have been smaller than its predecessors, it
certainly was more diverse, and less dominated by the Marxist and
Stalinist left. For the first time, a European Peace Action forum was
part of the ESF, organised by the Swedish antimilitarist group ofog.
This made antimilitarism and peace much more visible at the ESF.
And this was important. Many workshops looked at the militarisation
of the European Union and its relationship with NATO, with the
special focus on the upcoming NATO summit. The Assembly of Social
Movement also highlighted this focus in its closing document:
â2/against NATO and war: we call a large demonstration in April the
4th in Strasbourg/Kehl, centre of celebration of the 60th anniversary
of NATO, to say âstop NATOâ and dissolving this terrifying tool of
war. In the same day we call demonstrations in all countries in
Europe. We propose the WSF in Belem to declare the 4th of April a day
of international mobilisation against Nato.â
The European Peace Action Forum was an important part of this ESF,
especially for peace activists and antimilitarists. With its
participation in EPA, War Resisters' International's European base
could build on the steps made during the NATO Game over action in
Brussels on Easter, to strengthen European networking and cooperation
among groups focused on nonviolent direct action and military
infrastructure. The groups that participated in EPA will also take
part in the nonviolent direct actions planned during the NATO summit
next spring.
In short, WRI's participation in this years' ESF and EPA was a great
success, and an important step to rejuvenate WRI's European network.
Andreas Speck & Javier Garate
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War Resisters' International at the 5th European Social Forum and
1st European Peace Action Forum in MalmÃ, Sweden.
The 5th European Social Forum in MalmÃ
More than two years have passed by since the last European Social
Forum in Athens in May 2006. From the southern edge of Europe, the
European Social Forum has now moved to the north: Malmà in Sweden has
been a very welcoming city for the 5th European Social Forum, and
although the forum was spread out over several venues in MalmÃ, all
of them were within walking distance.
Another big difference to Athens was that dogmatic Marxist, Leninist,
Maoist, or Stalinist groups were much less dominant in MalmÃ, and the
forum made the impression that it was much more diverse and open than
previous ones (since London in 2004). The Nordic organising committee
has also been very open to the request by the European Peace Action
forum (EPA) to allow all EPA events to take place in the same space.
Thus, there was a peace space at the European Social Forum, which was
a great place to meet people and network.
It has been impossible to attend all peace related workshops and
seminars and this ESF, which is a good sign. Not only as part of the
European Peace Action forum, also as part of the ESF there were a lot
of events dealing with the upcoming 60th birthday NATO summit, the
wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the militarisation of the European
union, and a range of other peace related issues.
It is important that the Assembly of Social Movements took up the
NATO summit as an important event in 2009, and is calling for âa
large demonstration in April the 4th in Strasbourg/Kehl, centre of
celebration of the 60th anniversary of NATO, to say âstop NATOâ and
dissolving this terrifying tool of war.â And the same time, the
Assembly is calling for demonstrations all over Europe, and calls on
the next World Social Forum, which will take place in Brazil in
January 2009, to declare 4 April 2009 a âday of international
mobilisation against Natoâ.
Nonviolence or Nonexistence
War Resisters' International has mainly been involved with the
European Peace Action forum, but jointly with Turning the Tide and
the Swedish Fellowship of Reconciliation, WRI also organised a
seminar at the âmainâ ESF, titled âNonviolence or Nonexistenceâ.
Although we were assigned a bad time slot â Sunday morning after the
party, and in parallel to the Assembly of Social Movements, about 60
people showed up for the seminar, which was facilitated by WRI
Council member Stellan Vinthagen, and featured Stephen Zunes,
professor of politics and international studies at the University of
San Francisco, Andreas Speck, War Resisters' International, Laura
Ciaghi, Christian Peacemaker Teams, a representative of the
International Solidarity Movement from Sweden as speakers.
The discussion focused on the need and strategy for nonviolent
movements, drawing from the experience in different contexts, from
the colour revolutions in Eastern Europe, the intifada in Palestine
to nonviolent movements in Western Europe.
NATO and the European Union
NATO and the militarisation of the European Union were two very
important issues, both at the European Social Forum and within the
European Peace Action forum. Within the framework of the EPA, one
session looked at different aspects of NATO and EU militarisation,
from the use of NATO's âPartnership for Peaceâ and the Eastern
expansion of NATO over the Lisbon treaty and its military aspects to
NATO's and the EU's military infrastructure.
WRI also participated in a session on NATO focused on the 60th
birthday summit next year.
European Peace Action Forum (EPA)
EPA was made possible because Ofog (http://ofog.org) â antimilitarist
group doing disarmament direct action from Sweden â initiate this
effort and provided as local host. As initiators, Ofog invited other
organisations to join the coordination process. WRI got involved from
an early stage in the preparations for EPA.
The plan was to have a forum inside the general ESF, focusing on
peace, antimlitarism and nonviolence from a radical and nonviolent
action perspective. The programme for EPA was also part of the
general ESF process, but bringing together these issues in one
combine programme.
The EPA programme was divided in 5 main themes:Â
- Globalisation of militarism
- Nuclear weapons
- The growing influence of NATO and the militarisation of the
European
Union
- Nonviolence - actions, campaigns and movements
- The militarisation of space
The coordinators of EPA managed to have all of our activities in the
same venue and had a cafà 'Fredis' which provided the perfect place
for informal chats. At Fredis we also had presentations of films and
live music performances which made the evenings more enjoyable.Â
Workshop - Campaigns against war profiteers
The workshop on campaigns against war profiteers was part of the
Globalisation of militarism theme, the other workshop in that theme
was on military infrastructure.
This workshop was coordinated by WRI, bringing together different
European campaigns.Â
The first presentation came from Centre D'Estudis Per
a la Pau from Catalonia, Spain. They
began with a presentation on the arms trade in Spain - production,
exports and military budget - followed by a presentation about their
campaign 'BBVA without arms'.
BBVA is a
bank with investments in the arms trade.
Inez Louwagie from Vredesactie
presented the
campaign 'My Money Clear
Conscience' speaking about the successes of this campaign in
pressuring Belgian institutions to disinvest
from what they call 'controversial arms'. She finished her
presentation telling the story of how as part of the campaign they
created a fake bank 'Ace
Bank' in the centre of Brussels, which said that they invested in
controversial businesses, so that way they could secure good
investments. People were shocked from what they heard, and in the end
they made a press conference saying that it was a fake bank,
an opportunity that they used to show that what they showed as illegal
in their fake bank was the same that many 'legal' banks are doing on
a daily basis.
Cajsa Nykvist and Anna Sanne GÃransson from Ofog told us about the
disarmament work of Ofog, focusing on their Disarm Camp 2008, which is a
camp that takes place in
Karlskoga, home of the two big companies - BAE Systems Bofors and
Saab Bofors Dynamics (together known as âBoforsâ). Weapons produced
in Karlskoga are used in wars all around the world and Sweden is
today the 9th biggest seller of weapons in the world.
Finally we had a presentation from Rolf Lindahl from the Swedish
Peace and Arbitration Society (SPAS) presenting the work of SPAS
against Swedish arms exports. Rolf also presented the European
Network Against Arms Trade network
which is an important place for sharing information and working
together against arms trade in the region.
Workshop - Nonviolence training
As part of the EPA, War Resisters' International organised a session
of
trainings in nonviolence, focusing on different parts of a nonviolent
movement â from preparing for a single action, over the development
of
a campaign up to looking at a movement at a whole.
The session began with an introduction by WRI Council member Stellan
Vinthagen. Following this, it was split into three parallel sessions:
preparing for action, facilitated by Inez Louwagie and Martin
Smedjebak,
tools for campaign development, facilitated by Stellan Vinthagen and
Javier Garate, and Movement Action Plan, facilitated by Marcus
Armstrong and Andreas Speck.
In total about 60 persons participated in the nonviolence training
sessions, and generally it showed that it is possible at an event
such
as the ESF to not just listen and discuss, but also to get more
practical and do training.
Action against Aimpoint
Friday, 19th of September was the day of action at EPA. The plan was
to do an action together as EPA, people were welcome to join small
groups or to join the general action organised by EPA. The day
before saw trainings for preparation for action and also a lot of
work preparing banners for the action.
The company, Aimpoint - or the more suitable "Shamepoint" -
manufactures red dots sight used by armies around the world,
including the US army in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
Most of the people who took part in the action travelled together
from the EPA venue to the offices of Aimpoint where the bus driver
was so kind to let us all in without having to pay for the bus
ticket - what a good way to encourage disarmament actions!- Our bus
was followed along all the route by the Swedish police, it felt like
having an official escort for our action. A special feature and new
to international participants was the presence of Dialogue Police and
Dialogue
Demonstrator who are responsible for communicating what is happening
with the other side.
Once we arrived at Aimpoint, a small group, formed of members from
Switzerland Without an Army, Vredesactie and Ofog climbed the fence
and got inside the facilities of Aimpoint. The group was holding a
banner that read âwar starts in Europe let's stop it from here!
Aimpoint killsâ. While the group was inside Aimpoint's premises, a
group of around 100 demonstrators made noise to expose the company as
a war profiteer, a group from the clown army kept us all in a
positive friendly action attitude. After some minutes the group that
made it inside was arrested and taken in police vans to the police
station. As part of the action we had a 1 minute long scream, for all
to take out our frustrations and non-acceptance of what the company
is involved in. Following the scream around 50 of the demonstrators
did a die in representing the victims from the wars Aimpoint
equipment is used in. One member of the clown army was detained when
she climbed the fence, but later was released and not taken to the
police station.
The action finished with a big sheer, which was a good end to a
positive and friendly action against a Swedish war profiteer. Again
we all jumped on a bus, this time even with the help of the police to
make sure that the bus will stop for us.
The group of arrestees were release a few hours later.
EPA's closing session
The closing session was more for looking at the future than as a
evaluation of EPA. We divided in three groups: coordination of
actions, information sharing and another EPA?
Coordination of actions
This group looked at different actions that are taking place in the
coming year, looking at what the groups around EPA would be
interested in doing. One clear position is that there is interest to
continue working and doing actions together. The group came up with a
list of actions planned for the coming year.
2008
October
November
2009
March
- 20 â 23 : Coordinated actions as part of the build up to NATO
summit
April
- 4: Summit 60 years of NATO
October
We focused on two main upcoming actions:
* Decentralised day of action âWar Starts from Europeâ - proposal
that came out after the NATO Game Over event last March in Brussels.
To get groups to do action against military infrastructure locally.
Number of groups involved with EPA said that are planning actions,
but also there is uncertainty about how many groups are actually
planning an action. It was said that we need that the EPA website has
a space for groups to post their actions plans and need to get people
to promote the action to other networks, like the No Bases and Keep
Space for Peace. We will continue using the NATO Game Over list serve
to coordinate these actions. People interested in joining it should
contact the WRI office at info@wri-irg.org
* NATO 60 years summit - There are a number of activities prepared
for the NATO summit and groups involved with EPA are also part of the
preparations for them. The first weekend of October there will be
meetings in Stuttgart and Hamburg as preparation for the actions
against NATO. In January there is planned a meeting for the more
action oriented activities against the summit. There will be action
camps during the summit and it was decided to have a EPA 'barrio' at
the
action camp, where we can organise coordinated actions as EPA at the
summit and have our own space for sharing between the groups involved
with EPA.
Information sharing
The www.europeanpeaceaction.org
site will continue to be a site used
for EPA, with report from actions and for preparation for upcoming
events. The site should be integrated to the WRIÂ
and the McMilitary site .
The EPA newsletter will continue to be produced but needs an
editorial group for it. There will be an EPA list serve, but needs
clarification what will be the difference with the NATO Game Over
list.
Another EPA?
We want to continue meeting as EPA, the suggestion was to attach EPA
meetings to other events. It was not said how regular this meetings
should be. For next year it was suggested to meet as EPA at the
events around the NATO summit.
The need to involve more groups from Central and Eastern Europe was
raised, by having a EPA meeting there could help in this process.
The next ESF will be in Turkey in 2010, but it was not discussed if
we want to have a EPA presence there.
--
War Resisters' International
5 Caledonian Road - London N1 9DX - Britain
tel +44-20-7278 4040 - fax +44-20-7278 0444
email info@wri-irg.org http://wri-irg.org
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