WRI Statement

One year ago today, a new phase in the generations-long conflict in Palestine began. As pacifists and antimilitarists we reject the use of violence to further one’s aims or objectives. We want to again send our solidarity to all those in the region committed to nonviolently resisting war and its causes, and we mourn alongside all those who have lost loved ones. We call on peace activists, war resisters and conscientious objectors, wherever they are in the world, to pressure their governments and the relevant organs of their states to promote peace, not war and genocide, in the Middle East and worldwide.

In recent weeks we have seen a number of significant acts of violence that have directly impacted WRI affiliates. We want to draw attention to two of them – not to compare them (they are radically different in scale, context and level of brutality), but to highlight the way different manifestations of militarism around the world are interconnected, even when they are being experienced in very different contexts nearly 14,000km apart.

The European Bureau for Conscientious Objection, War Resisters’ International, the International Fellowship of Reconciliation IFOR, and Connection e.V.  condemn the 12-year prison sentence and a fine of 170,000 Euros imposed on EBCO board member Olga Karach in her recent trial in Belarus.

The undersigned organizations express their deep disappointment and grave concerns about the continuing harassment of peace activists and conscientious objectors, including the obviously arbitrary prosecution of Yurii Sheliazhenko, Executive Secretary of the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement and EBCO Board member, whose trial is set on 11 June 2024 in Kyiv.

EBCO, WRI, IFOR, and Connection e.V. strongly condemn the third (!) imprisonment of Turkish-Cypriot reservist conscientious objector Halil Karapaşaoğlu. We call on the authorities in the "TRNC" to urgently amend the Military Service Act so as to recognise the right of conscientious objection to military service, and to implement the Murat Kanatlı v Türkiye judgement of the European Court of Human Rights.

EBCO, WRI, IFOR, and Connection e.V. strongly condemn the raids, detentions and practices of forced recruitment carried out by the Russian authorities from 25th to 27th May in Moscow. Read our full statement here.

EBCO, WRI, IFOR, and Connection e.V. welcome the landmark judgement of 12th March by the European Court of Human Rights in the case Kanatlı v Türkiye (application no. 18382/15). Murat Kanatlı is an EBCO Board Member and Co-coordinator of the Initiative for Conscientious Objection in Cyprus. 

On 5th April, Thai conscientious objector and human rights activist Netiwit Chotiphatphaisal declared his conscientious objection in front of a military conscription centre in Samut Prakarn province, openly stating his beliefs instead of complying with a call-up. Connection e.V., War Resisters’ International, the Movement for Conscientious Objectors, Conscientious Objection Watch, New Profile and World Without War are calling for conscientious objection to be fully recognised in Thailand.

EBCO, WRI, IFOR, and Connection e.V. denounce the continuing prosecutions and imprisonments of conscientious objectors in the northern, Turkish-occupied, part of Cyprus (the self-styled “Turkish Republic of North Cyprus”). The right to conscientious objection to military service should be urgently recognised in line with the European and international law and human rights standards.

The WRI Executive Committee calls for the end of all violence – both the acts of war as well as the structural violence of occupation and oppression – and the release of all captives, political prisoners and hostages on both sides of the conflict in Israel/Palestine.

WRI executive statement on the escalation of violence in Israel-Palestine, October 2023

As full scale war again returns to Israel-Palestine, we turn to the WRI founding statement, that “War is a crime against humanity. I am therefore determined not to support any kind of war, and to strive for the removal of all causes of war.” 

EBCO, WRI, IFOR and Connection e.V. strongly condemn the fact that Yurii Sheliazhenko, a well-known conscientious objector, pacifist, human rights defender and lawyer, Executive Secretary of the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement, has been placed under partial house arrest by the Solomyanskyi District Court of Kyiv on 15 August 2023.