Prisoners for Peace

"Plowshares is a powerful tradition that speaks just as loudly as we can in the discipline of nonviolence. It breaks the invisibility that protects these weapons from public awareness. It acts as a kind of cosmic theatre at the edge of nuclear disaster. By beating our nuclear swords into plowshares, we enact the imagery of Isaiah 2:4 and speak in a breath the whole manifesto of life without annihilation. It speaks in such volume in part because we go where we would never dare to go.

The following is an email message soliciting international support two Spanish insumisos. We reproduce it here as an illustration of the role that technology (and a very small commitment of time) can play in support to military resisters and prisoners. Postscript: on 21 November 2000, José and Alberto began their imprisonment in Alcalá de Henares, Madrid (see PfP list for address).

3rd (and final) EDITION: updated 2000.11.15

Armenia

Samvel Manukyan (in 07/97, out 05/00)
g Kosh, ITK, Nachalniku, Armenia
Objector, Jehovah's Witness, reported to have been severely beaten.

Karen Voskanian (in 09/98 - expected out 04/01)
g Gyumri, SIZO, Nachalniku, Armenia
Objector, Jehovah's Witness

Gagik Ohanian
Artur Stepanian
Armen Asoian
Grigor Daian
Artur Martirosian
Ruslan Ohanganian
Gurgen Sevoian
All are imprisoned as a result of their conscientious objection to military service.

If instead of being hanged by the neck
you're thrown inside
for not giving up hope
in the world, in your country, in people,
if you do ten or fifteen years
apart from the time you have left,
you won't say
'Better I had swung from the end of a rope like a flag'-
you'll put your foot down and live.
I might not be a pleasure exactly,
but it's your solemn duty
to live one more day
to spite the enemy.
Part of you many live alone inside
like a stone at the bottom of a well.
But the other part
must be so caught up
in the flurry or the world
that you shiver there inside

By Torsten Froese

Matt Meyer provides a review of the movement to free the Puerto Rican political prisoners and an exclusive conversation with former prisoner Alejandrina Torres

1. December 1999: Prisoners for Peace Day

By Andreas Speck

1..CONCODOC (Conscription and Conscientious Objection Documentation Project.)

A. "Refusing to bear arms"

For forty years War Resisters' International has publicised the names and stories of prisoners of conscience.

Wilson bin Nurtiyas is a member of the Legislation Committee of the People's Democratic Party (PRD) of Indonesia and coordinator of the Indonesian Solidarity with the Struggle of the Maubere [East Timorese] People. In September 1996, he was arrested following a demonstration in Jakarta. He was eventually sentenced to five years in prison, but was released in July of this year as part of a partial amnesty for political prisoners.

PN: You refused to leave prison. Why?

MAGGIE HELWIG