PN Staff

Witness for Peace

The basic method of Witness for Peace has been for US citizens to go to a zone of conflict and report back to their home community what they have seen - in particular, forms of aggression or human rights violations supported by the US government. This played a useful role in putting the brakes on direct US military intervention in Nicaragua in the 1980s. Witness for Peace is now organising several delegations a year to Colombia, visiting a range of peace and human rights…

The term “Peace Community” perhaps evokes an image of utopian pacifist experiments. In Colombia, however, the peace communities have been formed by displaced people and face continued pressure from every armed side. Renouncing the use of arms and collaboration with any armed force, they try to establish demilitarised spaces, neutral to the armed conflict.

Members of each peace community make five commitments:

In October, the Kansai Antiwar Joint Action Group, a Japanese peace movement network, passed a “Resolution Against Aggressive War on Iraq by the Bush Government of US and Against Participation in the War by the Koizumi Government of Japan” and took to the streets of Osaka to show their opposition to proposed military action against Iraq.

They are specifically opposing the deployment of Japanese naval fleets in the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea, which they believe would be used to…

In late October the seventh ministerial meeting about the Free Trade Area of the Americas took place in Quito, Ecuador. People from all over Latin America descended on the capital, with particularly strong represantation from women's groups, one of which commented “ access to social security, education, and economic resources is very limited, and it is not recognised that poverty affects women more than anyone else [...] we think that integrating into the international market would create a…

As we went to press the European Social Forum (ESF), held in Florence, had just got under-way, with more than 30,000 people signing up to attend.

And as with Genoa last year, we were also receiving the usual reports of activists being turned away from the border and pulled off coaches by immigration officials. Several had received week-long bans preventing them for entering Italy for the duration of the…

Although the US may have been racheting up international tensions over North Korea in recent months, this has not stopped representatives from both North and South Korea getting together to chat about economics. In early November representatives from both countries met in Pyongyang for four days of talks.

In October North Korea made a “nuclear confession”: that it has been enriching uranium to support a nuclear weapons program. But the government in the south maintains that…

AWOL magazine is the product of a “workshop of artists, activists and revolutionaries”.

Started in 2000 and jointly funded by the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors and ROOTS/War Resisters League, AWOL aims to “provide a space for marginalised voices to dialogue to be heard, a place to resist and grow”. The emphasis is on providing an alternative to a dominant culture “saturated with pro-military propaganda”.

In practice the AWOL “project” is a combination…

In Serbia the REX/B92 cultural centre describes itself as “a laboratory for research of new fields of culture”.

The centre is a member of TEH (Trans Europe Halles), network of European independent cultural centres and the coalition of centres for creative development and use of new media (ECB - European independent cultural centres network).

REX projects include

In July, 36 activists were sentenced to terms of between 90 days and six months in prison for their symbolic trespassing at the US “school for assassins” the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Co-operation, (formerly the School of the Americas) in November 2001.

Some were also given fines on top, with one activist receiving a US$5,000 fine and a six-month prison sentence. Four of those sentenced elected to go to prison immediately, the rest were released on bail and will be…

In south-eastern Nigeria, hundreds of unarmed Ijaw women used boats to occupy four Chevron-Texaco pipeline stations.

Protests against oil companies operating in Nigeria have been taking place for a while. These recent and dramatic actions were taken in response to the grinding poverty in which local people live in this oil-rich region. Chevron-Texaco have operated in the region for more than 30 years, but the activists say there is little to show for all the wealth generated.…

As Peace News went to press more than 60,000 demonstrators were in Tel Aviv taking part in largest peace rally since the second intifada began 19 months ago, demanding that Israel withdraw from the Palestinian territories

The rally, organised by an umbrella group of peace groups, took place on the same day that around 150 members of the Arab-Jewish group Taayush…

Several young Israeli men are refusing to participate in military service and a number continue to be imprisoned for their principled stance. As we went to press at least three were serving short sentences in military prisons.

In an extract from a letter written in prison, CO David Haham explained his motivation for refusing to bear arms: “I am imprisoned over my refusal to take part in repression of the Palestinian people, because I feel it is out of the question to be a Jew, son of…

After a nonviolent action carried out by Israelis, Palestinians and internationals to dismantle an Israeli roadblock located outside two Palestinian villages, 16 people were arrested and a car containing two activists was riddled with automatic gunfire.

The car's occupants were mildly injured during the attack which it is alleged originated from the nearby Israeli settlement of Brukhim. The injured had been waiting in the car for the release of activists who had earlier been…

MP urges UN peace force for Arab-Israeli border

In a letter to the Manchester Guardian last week, outlining several methods whereby the United Nations might police the borders between Israel and its Arab neighbours, Henry Usborne, MP, has called for the use of a corps of 10,000 unarmed men. He advocated the use of an unarmed cosmopolitan corps of some ten thousand men under General Burns to be recruited on a voluntary basis by the UN Secretariat. This would be a UN peace force equipped only…

The west has hailed the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia's election of President Kostunica as the triumph of democracy - though whether Kostunica actually received over 50% of the votes will probably never be known. Nevertheless, the West is falling over itself to invite the new FRY into their gang: OSCE, UN - they'll bejoining NATO next!

For those within Serbia who spent the past decade opposing Milosevic, his wars and his policies it is a time for celebration, but also a time for…