WRI Statement

The Executive Committee of the War Resisters’ International endorses and shares the following statement by RAMALC regarding the situation in Venezuela: "The Latin American and Caribbean Anti-Militarist Network (RAMALC), in light of the current situation in Venezuela, condemns the bombing of Venezuelan territory by the United States, which has also affected the civilian population"

In this ‘war against life,’ hunger has become yet another instrument of genocide, a structural violence that silently kills by removing the possibility of satisfying basic needs. Famine is wiping out a generation of babies, girls, and boys, destroying an entire people with physical and psychological injuries that will be difficult to reconcile with a dignified life.

For some, militarism is a spectacle until, of course, it isn’t. As the last fibre optic cable into Gaza was cut, and the Freedom Flotilla’s (symbolic) cargo was (symbolically) blocked, and Trump’s military parade through Washington, and countless other small and large militarised acts and words, Netanyahu’s regime has again escalated to real bombs falling on real people – this time on Iran - and the waves of bombs and missiles seem to come faster than any statement we can write.
The demand made of our movements at times like this isn’t to pick sides with militarised actors, but to dare to keep building a different world – where peace and justice thrive. 

Several organisations worldwide stand in solidarity with those who refuse to kill and engage in wars and are for this reason persecuted, criminalised and jailed. The undersigned organizations -active also at the European level- address a specific appeal to the European institutions and Member States to protect and fully implement the right to conscientious objection to military service.

On 16 February 2023, in the resolution ‘One year of Russia’s invasion and war of aggression against Ukraine’, the EU Parliament demanded that Member States provide protection for conscientious objectors and deserters fleeing Belarus, Russia, and occupied Ukraine. However, this is not guaranteed in most Member States.

As a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel comes into force, we can only begin to imagine the relief of all those who were being bombed yesterday, but are not being bombed today.

On December 3, President Yoon Suk Yeol abruptly declared martial law. Park An-su, appointed as the martial law commander, announced decrees from the Martial Law Command. These decrees severely undermine constitutional rights such as freedom of the press, freedom of publication, and freedom of assembly and association. Both the President’s declaration of martial law and the martial law commander’s decrees are actions that gravely threaten democracy.

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.