In November, Kate Sherringer and Hwyel and Christine Davies of West Wales Friends of Palestine walked 100 miles through the West Bank of Palestine from Rummanah, near Jenin, to Jordan.
The walk was organised through the human rights organisation, the Amos Trust.
Kate explained: ‘I’ve never done a lot of walking, but it seemed like a good challenge to set myself in my 70s. I’ve been interested in issues around Israel and Palestine for a while, and this is my fourth visit there…
Tell us about your trip.’ ‘Tell us about your holiday.’ Just some of the responses to my visit to Palestine in October 2019.
For a start, I never imagined that I was going on a holiday when I signed up to go with a Peaceful Presence group to help with the olive harvest.
I knew that it would be hard work and that I might witness things that would distress me. Since I came home, I’ve found it difficult to talk about the visit. Knowing intellectually about the situation didn’t…
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s full extradition hearing is scheduled for 24 February at Woolwich crown court in South London.
The investigative journalist was arrested at the Ecuadorean embassy last April, having spent seven years there after claiming asylum to avoid possible extradition to the US via Sweden.
Sexual assault charges Julian was facing in Sweden have since been dropped, but he has been kept in Belmarsh high security prison because of an extradition request…
British officials might stand trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity because of the British government’s refusal to return the illegally-occupied Chagos Islands to Mauritius.
That was the threat made on 27 December by the prime minister of Mauritius, Pravind Jugnauth, after an advisory opinion by the world court last February and the expiry of a six-month deadline set by the UN general assembly.
The Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean include…
Young people who speak emotionally about climate change might be extremists who need to be reported to the authorities. That was the message of a regional police ‘counter-terror’ guide labelling nonviolent campaigning groups as ‘extremist’. A second (national-level) police document which warned of groups like CND and Greenpeace is being challenged by CND, Trident Ploughshares and others.
The first guide, Safeguarding young people and adults from ideological extremism, was…
The end of the world is closer than it’s ever been, according to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. On 23 January, the Bulletin moved the hands of its Doomsday Clock 20 seconds forward.
The clock, which symbolises how close humanity is to destruction, is now only 100 seconds to midnight.
Rachel Bronson, president and CEO of the Bulletin, said: ‘We now face a true emergency – an absolutely unacceptable state of world affairs that has eliminated any margin for…
In January, European activists were arrested as they attempted to break the illegal Israeli siege of Gaza by cutting the fence separating Gaza from Israel.
The campaigners were from ‘Gaza 2020 Breaking the Siege’, a new international movement whose aim is to challenge Israel’s ‘inhumane’ blockade of two million Gazans.
Previous attempts to break the siege have been by sea, including the Gaza Freedom Flotilla of May 2010, in which nine unarmed Turkish solidarity activists were…
Movement for the Abolition of War’s eye-catching banner ‘War causes climate change – Climate change causes war’ caused an international stir in December when it travelled to Madrid to take its message to the UN climate conference COP25.
The banner was seen and photographed by thousands of delegates and visitors entering the conference centre – and by many more on the 500,000-strong Friday evening climate march through Madrid (led by Greta Thunberg).
MAW has long believed that…
A week after the killing of Qassem Suleimani and his nine companions on 3 January, Simon Jenkins was the first person in the mainstream British print media to refer to a US ‘empire’ in relation to the Middle East.
After referring to ‘ceaseless wars of western aggression’ in recent decades, Jenkins wrote: ‘As empires crumble, stuff happens’. He expressed the hope that the US might be about to withdraw from Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. (‘Trump’s rant against Iran is the howl of a dying…
This year, Peace House – the building on Caledonian Road which is home to Peace News, Housmans Bookshop, War Resisters International, Network for Peace, Campaign Against Climate Change, and many others – is celebrating its 60th anniversary.
To mark the occasion, we are organising a conference on 28 March.
‘Our Power Is Real: A Festival of Grassroots Social Change’ is a one-day event bringing together a wide range of community and grassroots campaign groups.
In…
On 3 January, a US drone strike destroyed two vehicles driving through Baghdad airport, killing 10 men, including Iranian general Qassem Suleimani and a senior Iraqi military official, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.
US commentator Noam Chomsky described the Suleimani assassination to the Hindustan Times as ‘at least international terrorism, arguably worse.’
As well being aggression against the territory of Iraq, the assassination was the latest in a long line of acts of…
Like everyone else, UK activists have been scrambling to adapt to the ‘new normal’ of ‘lockdown’ and social distancing. In early June we surveyed over twenty different activist organisations, networks and media projects to see what they’d been up to, as well as their plans for the future.
Here’s what we found out …
Campaigns, NGOs & activist networksCalais Migrant Solidarity
calaismigrantsolidarity.wordpress.…
20 September saw school children strike for climate again across Wales, supported by many adults. At the Centre for Alternative Technology, students, visitors, staff and volunteers showed their support for the Climate Strike, sounding alarms to signal that ‘time’s up’ for action on climate change, and reading out words from young climate strikers from around the world.
In…
At a meeting on 26 October, Bexhill and Hastings United Nations Association (UNA) explored the UN’s meaning of peace by working through the Preamble to the Charter of the United Nations.
Bruce Kent (Movement for the Abolition of War) discussed how ‘We the peoples’ can actually ‘save succeeding generations from the scourge of war’.
Chris Coverdale (Make War History) suggested ways to end Britain’s perpetual involvement in war, including persuading taxpayers to obey the…
On 21 October, the first day of the trial of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7, Peace News held a vigil outside the new US embassy in south London. We stood in solidarity with the seven US Catholic peace activists who broke into a US Trident base in Georgia, USA. The seven were found guilty three days later on all counts: trespass, ‘depredation’ and destruction of government property, and conspiracy. See here for a court report.
There was a trickle of dishonest and…
For once, the sun shone on Remembrance Sunday as poppy wreaths were laid across Wales.
This year, , officially laying a white poppy wreath alongside their traditional red one.
Aberystwyth saw an additional five white wreaths from local groups plus a purple wreath for animal war casualties.
After the official parade, Côr Gobaith sang songs of peace at the Aberystwyth Peace Tree, including Sue Gilmurray’s ‘The Ones Who Said No’, which ends with the words: ‘Cry…
On 26 September, the secretary of state for international trade, Liz Truss, told parliament that the government breached a court of appeal ruling by granting further licences for military equipment to the Saudi-led coalition for use in Yemen.
This followed revelations the previous week that the government had breached the ruling on at least two occasions.
We are always being told how rigorous and robust arms export controls supposedly are, but this shows that nothing…
Large-scale unarmed anti-government protests in Iraq have been met with lethal force from the security forces, leaving over 330 people dead since the beginning of October.
While the main focus of popular anger has been corruption, unemployment, poverty and the lack of public services, there have also been a number of protests at symbols of Iranian interference, including Iranian consulates.
On 26 October, to take another example, protesters set fire to dozens of offices…
Several hundred XR activists may now be able to sue the Metropolitan police for wrongful arrest. On 6 November, the high court said that an earlier police ban on protests by Extinction Rebellion (XR) was itself ‘unlawful’.
Separately, a report by Netpol, the Network for Police Monitoring, says that there were over 500 cases of police abusing their powers during the XR October ‘rebellion’ in London, including discrimination against disabled protesters, and a police officer breaking…
