PN

On 29 January, Swedish peace campaigner Martin Smedjeback was sentenced to 14 days in prison for an action he carried out on 29 July 2011 with Annika Spalde. The pair entered air force base F21 in Luleå in northern Sweden and painted the air strip pink.

Things are getting rather strange in Nepal, now in the seventh year of a very convoluted peace process.

The constituent assembly, elected in 2008, is now way past its legal expiry date (extended several times) and political parties have been thrashing around for months trying to agree on what to do.

The latest wheeze, suggested by the ruling Maoists, is for the current coalition to stand down, and the…

Palestinian activists erected three more tent villages on Palestinian land in February. (See PN 2554 for a report on Bab al-Shams, the first of these new Palestinian settlements.)

On 2 February, the Israeli defence forces violently evicted 200 Palestinians from just outside the village of Burin, near Nablus. They had put up two large white tents and eight metal huts.

On 8 February, a tent was set up on…

On 15 February, Washington DC police arrested 48 protesters in front of the White House, including Robert Kennedy Jr, former US president John F Kennedy’s nephew, and actor Daryl Hannah, at a demonstration against the massive XL pipeline project, which threatens to carry oil from Canadian tar sands to the Gulf of Mexico. Demonstrators had used zip-ties to attach themselves to the White House fence.

US president Barack Obama has…

On 3 February, long-term peace activists Sylvia Boyes and Mary Millington were arrested attempting to enter the Faslane nuclear submarine base one week after David Cameron pledged to increase defence spending including investment in nuclear weapons. The pair were charged with criminal damage for cutting the fence and spray-painting.

Sylvia said: ‘The building work and development for the Trident replacement at Aldermaston AWE…

Combe Haven Defenders, the Hastings anti-roads group trying to stop the building of the Bexhill-Hastings Link Road (see PN 2554), have moved their focus from the actual site of the road-building (in East Sussex) to a demand for transparency from the department for transport (in London).

The DfT were forced by a freedom of information request to release their (unenthusiastic) recommendations on the Link Road, but the document was redacted, with sections blacked…

Our main interest was whether there was a knowledge gap between the generations who lived through the last phase of significant military conflict in the north of Ireland (the 1970s and 1980s) and those who came afterwards.

The result was: yes and no.

The one respondent under 25 (an 18-year-old) had no knowledge of the conflict at all (but sufficient cynicism to get a respectable 14 points out of a possible maximum of 35).

Much to our surprise, the next lowest-scoring…

Peace News author Ian Sinclair (far left) wove his magic in Peterborough on 26 February, talking to a goodly crowd of 23 (at the first public meeting held by the peace group for two years) about his new book about the 15 February 2003 anti-war demo: The march that shook Blair. Afterwards, Ian was interviewed by Peterborough Community Radio. Peace News Press launched the book on 15 February in Friends House, London, hosted by Quaker Peace and Social Witness, with a panel…

I guess the thing that comes into my mind is, the first thing that comes into my mind, is activism plus going on road trips equals junk food. Activism and an adrenalin rush. The excitement of going on recces in the middle of the night, going past petrol stations and getting junk food to keep our sugar levels up.

It’s sort of like junk food is sometimes quite a helpful comfort food but it’s not part of a long-term sustainableness.

Woman activist

What do I think…

‘On this evidence, the big march was shock and awe from the bottom up; it came within a hair’s breadth of derailing the warmongers and still shapes our politics today.’ Joe Glenton, Afghan war veteran and author of Soldier Box(Verso)

According to polling, over 1¼ million people took part in Britain’s biggest-ever political protest: the 15 February 2003 anti-war march in London against the invasion of Iraq. There is a widespread feeling — among both activists and the…

On 1 January, several thousand kilos of food was delivered to the Chamne Babrak refugee camp in Kabul. £1,150 for the aid came from the PN Kabul winter appeal; Maya Evans raised over £2,000 on her speaking tour last year. 

Another two hundred families have joined the Chamne Barak camp, fleeing rocket attacks by the Pakistani army in Nangahar province on the border.

‘Your generosity has made a huge difference to some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in…

The December 2012 de Silva report on the assassination of Belfast human rights lawyer Pat Finucane in 1989 led prime minister David Cameron to concede that there had been ‘shocking levels of collusion’ by the security forces in the killing. Cameron said he was ‘deeply sorry’ to the Finucane family.

The brief flurry of attention in the British media made us at PN reflect on the general level of knowledge and ignorance of the conflict in British activist circles. So here is a poll…

There are credible reports of 81 Afghans ‘disappearing’ from police custody in Kandahar over the last year, according to a report by the UN assistance mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) in January.

Over half of those interviewed by UNAMA had experienced torture or ill-treatment, including children as young as 14.

UNAMA also found an increase in the use of electric shocks and stress positions as methods of torture over the last year. Other methods also continue to be used…

On 11 January, a member of Maya Evans’ legal team revealed in the Guardian that they had been able to discover secret evidence that was not revealed to her, under the ‘closed material procedures’ used in her case in 2010, when she challenged the complicity of British officials in the torture of a prisoner held in Afghanistan.

The concealed evidence indicated that ‘UK officials facilitated the torture of a UK-held prisoner at the hands of a foreign state – potentially criminal…

British-supplied Tornado aircraft are being used by the Saudi air force to attack southern Yemen. 

On 4 January, Yemeni tribal people protested in the town of Radaa, in south Yemen, against the latest attack in the air campaign being waged by US drones and Saudi jets.

Hundreds of mourners threatened to take the bodies of the three latest victims to the president’s house in the capital, Sana’a, but were blocked by the Yemeni military.