A growing movement of refuseniks Payday

A growing movement of refuseniks
www.refusingtokill.net

Payday - the network of men that works with the Global Women's Strike - invites men to demand with the women "Invest in Caring not Killing". Military budgets must be used for life, not for death. Payday's website documents the views and actions of soldiers and military families, anti-war veterans, draft-dodgers, civilian non-co- operators and others who are struggling to make this a reality.

Most men (and increasingly women) are compelled by law and/or by poverty to join the military. They are sent to fight wars or popular uprisings where the primary victims are women, children and elders - the poorest and most vulnerable everywhere. But many are refusing to be turned into killers, and many more campaign internationally against having their children, partners, sisters and brothers hijacked from their communities by the military.

In Bolivia, over 70 people were shot dead by soldiers during recent uprisings sparked off by government plans to sell natural gas cheaply to the US. But many soldiers refused to kill their sisters and brothers. Some who refused paid with their lives. The Parents of Conscripts Association, mainly mothers, campaign to get their sons released from military service. They protested that soldiers who refused to shoot the demonstrators were forced to sleep on the floor without clothing or food for several days, and that others had disappeared. On 17 October 2003, the bodies of 8 young men believed to be conscripts were found buried in a "common grave" in El Alto. Wives of policemen also went on hunger strike to demand that their husbands be allowed home. The uprisings forced President Sánchez de Lozada to flee the country - in a US helicopter.

In Israel hundreds of soldiers and students risk jail rather than humiliate, brutalise and murder Palestinian women, children and men. The millions opposing the occupation of Iraq include many soldiers. In the UK, a third of reservists refused to report when called up. A growing number of US military have also refused to serve, among them Stephen Funk, a gay US Marine of Filipino/Native American origin. He got a six-month sentence (not the year sought by prosecutors - a victory of the international support campaign) for declaring himself a conscientious objector and openly calling for others to do the same. He is appealing the sentence.

"I spoke out so that others in the military would realise that they also have a choice and a duty to resist immoral and illegitimate orders . . ." Stephen Funk

"The people who pay the price are in Jenin and Fallujah, in Ramallah and Baghdad, in Tikrit and in Hebron. They are the Iraqi and Palestinian children . . . But they are also the Israeli and American soldiers, treated as cannon fodder by generals in air-conditioned offices. Stephen, people our age should not be thrown behind bars for not wanting to kill and die." Letter to Stephen Funk from Matan Kaminer, Israeli conscientious objector

"Already for years I know that I am not going to join the army. I know it with as much certainty as I know that I will never kick a homeless person lying on the sidewalk, never rape a woman, and when I will have a child - never abandon it".
Shimiri Zameret, Israeli conscientious objector

"I approached the authorities informing them that I was unable and unwilling to continue . . . I was institutionalised in a psychiatric ward in Cape Town for 'observation'. During the seven weeks in that ward I saw something of the effects of abuse, violence and trauma in the South African military." Michael Titlestad speaking of the military during apartheid.

Hugo Chávez, President of Venezuela, promotes a caring use of the military, with Plan Bolivar: "Years ago I used to go to Barranco Yopal and I would take cans and sticks to the Indigenous people, because they made huts with them to get through the winter, and left in summer. They were nomads: hunter gatherers, like 500 years ago. "I saw Indigenous women giving birth there, crouching on the mountainside, and they would throw away the placenta and clean the child and carry on walking. Most of the children were dying of malaria, TB, all kinds of illness. They were humiliated . . . The Indigenous women . . . would often get raped. "What have I seen there now? Soldiers with an agricultural technician and their ability to get things going: vehicles, working teams, organisation, performance, speed, but together with the Indigenous people, their leaders in front . . . "Soldiers bringing materials, helping with some engineering staff but above all with manpower, and the Indigenous people designing and working to build their own school and houses."

It is not only in the armed forces where people are taking direct action to stop the killing machine. Some refuseniks are civilians. Train drivers have refused to transport military equipment, translators have refused to translate military documents, school students of all ages have gone on strike, teachers have helped mobilise schools against the war, bus drivers have allowed young people to ride free to anti-war protests . . . The Refusing to Kill website is putting together the pieces of this emerging grassroots movement. Visit us and send your news, spread the information about the movement to refuse to kill and the Strike to invest in caring instead.

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