MEN CALL ON MEN TO JOIN 
THE 6TH GLOBAL WOMEN'S STRIKE

Dear sisters and brothers, 

We hope you received the Global Women’s Strike Call for 2005.  Payday, a multiracial network of men which is part of the Strike, co-ordinates men’s support and participation internationally.

The Strike wrote: 

Payday has not only supported women’s Strike actions, but has also organised with women and men refusing the military and its lethal and repressive work, from the US and the UK to Israel and Eritrea.  The ‘poverty draft’ – those driven to join the US army by economic necessity, mainly people of colour and immigrants – enables the US to make ‘endless war’.  Thus those refusing the military are a vital part of the movement to end not only war but poverty.

We are finding that men increasingly see our own needs expressed in the demands of the Strike. In the past, men in almost 20 countries – Britain, Guyana, Uganda, and the US amongst others – have supported actions organised by women by donating their time, money, resources and skills. We hope you will also consider this level of participation again this time around.

For this year’s Strike, Payday is launching its video Refusing to Kill about women and men refusing to be torturers, rapists and murderers for the military. It will be premiered at public events in Philadelphia (5 March) and London (12 March). Contact us for a copy for yourself or to organise a showing for your Strike event.

Another initiative for 2005 is an international campaign to support Jeremy Hinzman, a US soldier who with his family is seeking asylum in Canada because he refuses to serve in Iraq. The Canadian immigration authorities are expected to make a decision about allowing tghem to stay in late February or March, so it is urgent to contact the Canadian government, or outside of Canada their embassy, as soon as possible, urging them to accept his application. You can use the attached model letter or write your own -- please send us a copy.

We invite you to join the Strike in your part of the world and/or to pass on this message to men who work with you. Please visit www.globalwomenstrike.net for details of further activities and suggestions on what you can do, and www.refusingtokill.net for updates on the movement of military personnel against killing. We are always looking to publicise and work with refusenik campaigns, so please send us any news you get about the informal refusenik networks which are springing up in many countries but of course are rarely reported in the media.

Whatever you decide to do, please let us know so that we can share your contribution with all the women and men involved in the Strike.

We look forward to hearing from you very soon.

Yours for investing in caring not killing,

Edward Dahwanee           Eric Gjertsen           Ben Martin
Payday (Philippines)        Payday (US)           Payday (UK)                        

To:
Paul Martin, Prime Minister
Joe Volpe, Minister of Immigration
C/o Canadian Embassies (US, UK, elsewhere)

Re. Jeremy Hinzman, US conscientious objector seeking asylum in Canada 

Jeremy Hinzman, a soldier in the US Army, fled to Canada with his wife and child a year ago rather than serve in the US-led war in Iraq, after being rejected as conscientious objector.  Mr. Hinzman is now seeking refugee status because he faces certain persecution from the US military – including long imprisonment – if he were to return.  

We urge you to stand with tens of thousands of people in Canada and internationally in support of Mr. Hinzman and his family.  His actions are justified under international law as established in the Nuremberg Tribunals, which holds that it is the duty of a soldier, and indeed of all of us, to refuse to carry out illegal orders.  Canada must not facilitate the persecution of military refusers such as Mr. Hinzman by returning them to the United States.  

Mr. Hinzman rightly expects that he would be forced to participate in war crimes in Iraq. When serving in Afghanistan he realized that the people his fellow soldiers detained were being held indefinitely in inhuman conditions, and that torture was accepted all the way down the chain of command from the President.  The recent court-martial of three British soldiers who assaulted prisoners and the charge against seven others for murdering an Iraqi civilian indicate just how widespread is the abuse of human rights by the military.  The US government is now openly discussing employing death squads in Iraq, similar to those it employed covertly in the 1980s to murder tens of thousands in Central America.

Mr. Hinzman is not the only US soldier refusing the war.  Jeffry House, Mr. Hinzman’s lawyer, is contacted every day by at least two soldiers anxious to refuse to be part of the US killing machine.  The US Army Reserve chief has said that 16,400 reserve soldiers are 'non-participants.'  According to the Pentagon, 5,500 soldiers had deserted as of December 2004.  Currently, 22 soldiers from a single army unit are refusing to re-deploy to Iraq because, in the words of their sergeant, “I did not join the army to kill women, children, and old men.”  George Solomou, the first British soldier to call for mass refusal, has echoed the feeling of thousands of reservists in the UK.

Millions of people around the world, including in the US, opposed the war and occupation which have cost at least 100,000 lives. As a result, many governments have pulled out of the US-led coalition, including Spain, Honduras, Nicaragua, The Philippines, Thailand, New Zealand, and the Dominican Republic in the past year alone. Ukraine, Poland, Hungary and Latvia have announced that they will pull out completely or in part.

During his hearing Mr. Hinzman felt that his plea would be “handled openly and fairly by the Refugee Board and by Canada.”  With good reason: neither the people nor the government of Canada have supported the US war in Iraq.  The Prime Minister said: “In terms of immigration, we are a country of immigrants and we will take immigrants from around the world. I’m not going to discriminate.” (Ottawa Citizen, 16 Dec 2004 )  We welcome such statements, not only in relation to Mr. Hinzman and the other US military refusers, but to all those seeking asylum in Canada.

In granting asylum and recognizing Mr. Hinzman’s right to refuse to take part in war crimes, the Canadian government would agree with the great majority of its citizens and people everywhere, who are demanding a world where investment in caring, not killing, is the priority.

Sincerely,

For more information see: http://www.refusingtokill.net/USGulfWar2/jerryhinzman.htm