Nonviolence

Hilal Demir

It started with a park. The government wanted to destroy the only green public park that exists in the centre of Istanbul city. What for? To build a military barracks, they said. Then they said it would be a shopping centre. They gave other reasons, too.

On 24th April, Taiwanese peace activist Emily Wang was held by Korean immigration and later was deported for opposing the construction of the naval base on Jeju Island. Since 2010, Emily has been working with people from the village of Gangjeong on Jeju Island just off the South Korean coast. The people of Gangjeong are at risk of being evicted in order to make way for a naval base, which was planned without proper consultation with the people in the community.

The 16th of May the peace activist Martin Smedjeback will start to serve his two week sentence at the penitentiary Sörbyn, outside of Umeå in the north of Sweden. He was convicted for illegal trespass into the air force base F21 in Luleå in the northern part of Sweden. Inside he and Annika Spalde painted the air strip pink. The action was a part of the international peace camp War starts here organized by the antimilitaristic network Ofog.

From 20 - 22 of February the Conference on Nonviolence took place in Bilbao, Basque Country. The day conferences were organised by WRI affiliate KEM-MOC. They looked at the role of nonviolence and civil disobedience in times of crisis. They were a huge success, with more than 850 people attending their sessions and with more than 160 minutes of radio coverage. You can read and see videos about the conference from the following link: http://www.ezbiolentzia.org/ (in Spanish and Basque).

Alex Rayfield In a recent article (Rayfield and Morello 2012) a colleague, Rennie Morello and I wrestled with our outsider/insider identities as we facilitated nonviolent training and education with and for West Papuan activists longing for freedom. We wrote: In some sense we might have once identified ourselves as outsiders to the movement offering support “in solidarity”. But over time the movement has stirred-up trouble for us and our insider-outsider identities. We work in solidarity with Papuan activists in their struggle for self-determination, but we are not Papuan. In this way we are cultural outsiders. More importantly, while we attempt to share the risks and costs of working for peace and justice in West Papua, we will never pay the same price as Papuan activists. In this way, we are political outsiders. Connected to this is our commitment to non-interference – Papuan activists themselves must determine the strategic direction and tactical choices of the movement. In this way we are movement outsiders.

Jungmin Choi

We, the members of World without War, held a Movement Building Workshop in March of last year in collaboration with Andreas Speck from War Resisters’ International. The workshop used the Movement Action Plan (MAP) model to examine our campaigning, particularly in relation to government's abandonment of the previous administration's plan to address the issue of alternative service. Our campaign has been at a standstill since the inauguration of the current government.

Laura Shipler Chico

When violence erupted after Kenya’s last elections in 2007, Kenyan Quakers were quick to respond – first with humanitarian aid, then moving house-to-house listening to people’s experiences and worries. Eventually they began to help people process their trauma and knit their communities back together. But as they did this, people told them, “You are here telling us not to be violent. But if we hadn’t been violent you wouldn’t be here to begin with.” Some who heard that message promised to come back with a strategy to speak out strongly and loudly against social injustice but without resorting to violent methods.

Majken Jul Sørensen

In 2010, a convoy of six ships called the Freedom Flotilla set out to challenge the blockade of Gaza, posing a considerable dilemma for the Israeli authorities. On board the ships were around 700 unarmed civilians from around the world, including some well known personalities, like the Swedish crime novelist Henning Mankell and parliamentarians from a number of countries. In addition to the passengers and representatives from the media, the ships also carried 10,000 tons of humanitarian aid, such as building materials and medical equipment like X-ray machines and ultrasound scanners.i The long journey meant that the pressure built while the ships approached Gaza, making this a drama for the world to watch.

Promotional video for the nonviolence conference organised by KEM-MOC in Bilbao

http://www.ezbiolentzia.org/

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2gip8IXYSU&list=PL4krn1Ce68WD-XteLpFxFA… width:400 height:300]

Article written for Friedensforum

In 2016 the UK government will finalise the decision to build a new nuclear weapons system to replace the present Trident system (http://actionawe.org/the-trident-system/). The nuclear submarines that carry Trident are getting old, so the government has pledged to finalise contracts to replace them in 2016 in order to build a new generation of nuclear weapons at an estimated cost of £76–100 billion. This is more than the current planned public spending cuts of £81 billion. If the contracts go ahead, the warheads would be designed and manufactured at AWE (Atomic Weapons Establishment) Aldermaston and Burghfield, in Berkshire, about 50 miles west of London ( http://actionawe.org/awe-burghfield-maps-gates/ ).

PRESS RELEASE

January 30, 2013
Peace network Ofog, Sweden

Swedish peace campaigner Martin Smedjeback today received a prison sentence of 14 days from a provincial court in the Scandinavian country. On July 29, 2011, together with Annika Spalde, he went inside the air force base F21 in Luleå in the northern part of Sweden. Inside they painted the air strip pink. Spalde who had already before received and served a sentence of 14 days in prison for an earlier action the same week, did not get any further sentence.

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3g5j4CrzBw width:400 height:300]

Gangjeong Style

Sitting at the gate of the illegal construction site by day

A classy girl who can enjoy the freedom of a cup of coffee

A girl whose heart gets fired up when the police arrive

A girl with that kind of unexpected side

I’m a defender

A defender whose sense of justice is as strong as yours

A defender who blocks that illegal construction before the coffee cools

A defender whose heart explodes when the police arrive

That kind of defender