The Broken Rifle

A central concept for the Triennial in Brazil will be "the chain of violence", a chain connecting everyday experience with the structures which ultimately lead to war and destruction.

Pax Christi Germany are hoping to have a member of the National Committee of SERPAJ-Brazil visiting in April. Groups interested in meeting this visitor should contact:

The initiative for a South/South gathering of nonviolence trainers came out of a 1991 International Trainers meeting held in Handel (Netherlands) under the joint auspices of WRI, the International Fellowship of Reconciliation, and the International Network of Engaged Buddhists.

Serpaj-Latin America has started a campaign to have an officer of the Ecuadoran army, Captain Fausto Morales Villota, thrown out of the armed forces and tried for the 1985 assassination of Professor Consuelo Benavidez. Captain Villota's implication in the murder was revealed by other members of the army.

International CO Day, 15 May, in many countries will focus on the theme "possibilities for nonviolent solutions for the conflict in Turkish Kurdistan". But Turkish Prime Minister Tansu Çiller has declared her intention of achieving a military solution by then, and as a result the situation is hotting up for Turkish war resisters.

On 4-6 March, 19 people from 10 European countries met to discuss the situation of draft resisters and deserters seeking asylum. This has become a major issue in Europe with the large numbers of refugees from the war in former-Yugoslavia, especially as several governments insist that Croatia and Serbia are not part of the war zone.

In October 1993 the European Parliament adopted a landmark "Resolution on Deserters from the Armed Forces of States in Former Yugoslavia." In one of its points, the document, which was proposed by four political groups —the Socialists, the Christian-Democrats, the Liberals, and the Greens— "calls on [EC] Member States to provide deserters and draft evaders form the former Yugoslavia with a legal status, instead of allo

When NATO announced its ultimatum threatening air strikes if Bosnian-Serb heavy weaponry was not removed from the hills around Sarajevo by February 21, WRI published an international statement urging peace groups to refuse the narrow choice between bombing or not bombing and to campaign instead for a change in attitude from their governments, for a different kind of commitment in the long term.

The Balkans Peace Team is a project coordinated by the Bund für Soziale Verteidigung, War Resisters' International, the International Fellowship of Reconciliation, Peace Brigades International, and a coalition of French nonviolent groups. Its principle is that the citizens of each country have to develop their own way to peace and democracy.

Confronted with the unlawful eviction of thousands of occupants -predominantly women and children- from apartments formerly owned by the Federal Yugoslav Army (JNA) in Croatia, several Croatian Women's groups have joined forces in protesting against the violations. We reprint here part of a press release by the Zagreb Women's Human Rights Group, which outlines the issue:

At the WRI 4th International Women's Conference, held in Thailand in 1992, the participants called for strengthening links between women around the world by taking up the tradition of organising common women's actions in different countries.

In 1925 and 1930, two Anti-Conscription manifestos gathered the prestigious signatures of Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi, Bertrand Russell, and Sigmund Freud, among many others. In 1993, an international working group of the International Conscientious Objectors' Meeting in Turkey incorporated sections of the two statements in a new Manifesto Against Conscription and the Military System.

Opposition to Militarisation: International Prospects — 1-4 April

Joseph Abileah of Haifa, Israel, passed away on 29 January 1994. One of the first conscientious objectors in Israel, Joseph Abileah served on the Council of the WRI from 1957 to 1969.

Better yet: a woman! Hello, my name is Dominique Saillard. I was the lucky one in the interviews. I started working at the London office mid-February, three days a week for WRI and one day a week for Peace News.