1000 activists close down NATO

1000 participants and 500 arrests at international action day NATO GAME OVER

About 1000 people from 17 European countries went to the NATO headquarters in Brussels on 22 March and took part in the international nonviolent action NATO GAME OVER. Five years after the start of the Iraq war and 10 days before the Bucharest NATO summit, peace activists from all over Europe showed that preventing war starts in Europe.

The Belgian WRI section Vredesactie had been working on the action for almost a year. The action was not only a powerful public action against the increasing European and NATO cooperation of the military, it was also a milestone for the European cooperation of nonviolent direct action groups against militarism and military infrastructure.

Over Easter – the two days following the action – the groups discussed the military developments, past, present, and potential future military interventions, and the role of nonviolent direct action in preventing and/or stopping those developments.

It is clear that wars are increasingly fought based on the international cooperation of military forces – in terms of logistics and infrastructure, but also including multinational military units (such as some of the European “battle groups”). The military infrastructure of the US, NATO, or the European Union does not stop at borders – and so shouldn’t the nonviolent resistance.

An important task for nonviolent direct action groups will be the mapping of the military infrastructure – a task that was begun with the website McMilitary.org. A better knowledge of this infrastructure and better international cooperation are the basics that will – hopefully – make a more powerful nonviolent resistance possible.

To get involved, contact international@bombspotting.org, or War Resisters’ International at info@wri-irg.org.