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Jim Haber

Outside the courthouse in Knoxville, Tenn., where three anti-nuclear activists were severely sentenced on February 18, Michelle Boertje-Obed, the wife of one of the three Transform Now Plowshares members, encouraged everyone to see Judge Amul Thapar’s ruling in a positive light. Despite her husband Greg having just received over 5 years in prison for infiltrating the Y-12 nuclear weapons facility on July 28, 2012 and damaging federal property — along with Michael Walli and 84-year-old Catholic nun Megan Rice – Michelle pointed out that the judge could have easily given them much longer sentences, as recommended by the prosecution.

 This is a repost, with thanks to Global Voices

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As Tajikistan's military faces a struggle to get enough volunteer conscripts, recruitment officers often rely on illegal practices in drafting military-age men into the army. One of the most common among such practices is “oblava” which involves “military press gangs making sweeps of city streets, bazaars and bus stations, rounding up young men who meet the desired criteria [to serve their compulsory two-year-long service]“.

December saw 45 Kurdish men and women in Turkey declaring their conscientious objection 'in order to remember the 34 young men killed in the Roboski massacre two years ago', through the Roboski Conscientious Objection and Amed (Diyarbakir) Conscientious Objection Initiatives. The death of 34 young men occurred at the Turkish-Iraqi border, when two Turkish F16 jets fired at a group of villagers, claiming to act on information that PKK (Kurdish Workers' Party) militants were crossing the border. Faruk Encü, making a statement in the name of the Roboski Conscientious Objection Initiative, said “Here we are calling once again on those village-guards that have been made into a part of this militarist process, to those who are sending those close to them and their children to do military service, and to those people who are part of this war-making machine to make a few cents. Reject taking up arms for a sexist structure that has his turned this region into a graveyard of peoples, and if you have already taken up arms immediately correct this wrong.

Film made on 8 February 2014 during the ‘Reporting a Crime’ event at Reading Police Station. Part of the Action AWE campaign.

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Salvador talking about nonviolence


Salvador, long-time activist with the conscientious objection group “Quinto Mandamiento” in Barrancabermeja, needs emergency medical support.

On 19th and 20th December, European leaders met in Brussels. During the summit, the fortification of the European arms industry was explicitly on the agenda. While it preaches austerity across the board, the EU is poised to increase military expenditure. The goal: to safeguard the 'global competitiveness' of the European arms industry.

In early January, #StopTheShipment – a campaign launched by human rights organisation Bahrain Watch, and supported by many other human rights and anti-arms trade groups to stop the shipment of tear gas used lethally against opposition protesters - announced that the South Korean 'Defence Acquisition Program Administration' had denied two requests to export tear gas to Bahrain due to the “unstable politics in the

This is write-up of the trip made by Hannah Brock (Right to Refuse to Kill programme worker) and Igor Seke (of the Right to Refuse to Kill committee), from 28th October – 8th November 2013. We were joined by Rachel Brett, of the Quaker United Nations Office [QUNO] (and member of the Right to Refuse to Kill committee), from 30th October – 3rd November.

Small Actions, Big Movements: the Continuum of Nonviolence

We are extremely excited about WRI's next International Conference - the first in Africa - to be held in Cape Town, South Africa,

from 4th July - 8th July 2014. The conference is co-hosted by The Ceasefire Campaign.

The Broken Rifle, No 98, December 2013

A quick and cursory view of the history of War Resisters International (WRI) – an organization responsible for many wonderful small actions but rarely credited for its inspiration of big and effective movements – had hardly any connection to Africa at all. But that initial impression would be incorrect. Though often behind-the-scenes and without fanfare or spotlight, key members of WRI have played significant roles in significant aspects of the continents anti-colonial and anti-war moments over the past 90-plus years since WRI’s 1921 founding. The July 2014 international conference in Cape Town, South Africa is simply the most public – and perhaps the most ambitious – of these endeavors.