No Life Sentence for Soldiers who Refuse to be Occupiers
Payday | 06.05.2006 13:24 | Anti-militarism | Repression
The UK government, clearly worried that the number of soldiers absconding from the British Army has trebled since the invasion of Iraq, is acting to stop this movement in its tracks.
The Armed Forces Bill 2006, a major redrafting of military law, is now going through Parliament. Section 8 says that soldiers who intend to avoid serving in a “military occupation of a foreign country or territory” can be imprisoned for life.
In contrast, the offence of “disgraceful conduct of a cruel or indecent kind“, for example, against Iraqi civilians, carries a maximum sentence of two years.
At the same time the UK Defence Secretary, John Reid, is calling for a re-write of the Geneva Convention to legalise pre-emptive military action - the traditional English imperial policy revamped to go hand in hand with Bush’s “endless war”.
This attack is evidence of the existence of the growing but hidden anti-war movement of men and women within the military who refuse to fight in present and future wars or occupations, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran . . . The severity of Section 8 would undermine soldiers’ human right and in fact moral obligation to refuse orders to serve in illegal occupations that arise from illegal wars.
Soldiers are subject to a form of bonded or indentured labour, contractually unable to resign before completing five years of service. If 16-18-year-olds (the main target of recruiters) don’t quit the army within six months after joining, they are obliged to serve until they are 22, including as part of military occupation.
Even before Section 8, UK refuseniks are already under attack. Two weeks ago Lieutenant Malcolm Kendall-Smith, a RAF doctor, was sentenced to eight months in prison for refusing to go to Iraq. At his court martial the judge denied Kendall-Smith’s right and responsibility, under the Nuremberg Principles, to refuse to be complicit with criminal acts.
The Armed Forces Bill has been in the UK Parliament since November. It has scarcely raised a whisper in the media and is being met by a deafening silence even from those politicians who opposed the Iraq war.
Payday has circulated an Action Alert with a model letter addressed to British ambassadors around the world. In the last few days our online petition (www.refusingtokill.net) to scrap Section 8 has gathered signatures from at least 19 countries - from Argentina to the US – highlighting the outrage this measure provokes once people know about it.
Osman Murat Ülke, a conscientious objector from Turkey who won his right in the European Court not to be repeatedly jailed for his refusal, said of Section 8: “A soldier is still a human being and not a mechanical extension of the military apparatus. No contract, no oath and no law can change this.”
Rose Gentle whose son Gordon was killed in Iraq, and who now campaigns with Military Families Against the War, said: “It’s heartbreaking for a parent when a son stands up for his rights and is locked away for life It’s not just him, it’s his whole family that’s sentenced.”
Mothers like Rose Gentle in the UK and Cindy Sheehan in the US have campaigned against the killing and maiming of their own loved ones and also of the people in Iraq and elsewhere, civilian and military, and have demanded that troops be brought back home from a war nobody wants.
It is the responsibility of the international anti-war movement to support refuseniks around the world and to take up this campaign against Section 8.
As Ben Griffin, a soldier of the special unit SAS who refused to go back to Iraq, said: “I didn’t join the British Army to conduct American foreign policy.”
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Giorgio Riva, is a member of Payday, an international network of men working with the Global Women’s Strike, demanding that society invests in caring, not killing. (www.refusingtokill.net)
In contrast, the offence of “disgraceful conduct of a cruel or indecent kind“, for example, against Iraqi civilians, carries a maximum sentence of two years.
At the same time the UK Defence Secretary, John Reid, is calling for a re-write of the Geneva Convention to legalise pre-emptive military action - the traditional English imperial policy revamped to go hand in hand with Bush’s “endless war”.
This attack is evidence of the existence of the growing but hidden anti-war movement of men and women within the military who refuse to fight in present and future wars or occupations, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran . . . The severity of Section 8 would undermine soldiers’ human right and in fact moral obligation to refuse orders to serve in illegal occupations that arise from illegal wars.
Soldiers are subject to a form of bonded or indentured labour, contractually unable to resign before completing five years of service. If 16-18-year-olds (the main target of recruiters) don’t quit the army within six months after joining, they are obliged to serve until they are 22, including as part of military occupation.
Even before Section 8, UK refuseniks are already under attack. Two weeks ago Lieutenant Malcolm Kendall-Smith, a RAF doctor, was sentenced to eight months in prison for refusing to go to Iraq. At his court martial the judge denied Kendall-Smith’s right and responsibility, under the Nuremberg Principles, to refuse to be complicit with criminal acts.
The Armed Forces Bill has been in the UK Parliament since November. It has scarcely raised a whisper in the media and is being met by a deafening silence even from those politicians who opposed the Iraq war.
Payday has circulated an Action Alert with a model letter addressed to British ambassadors around the world. In the last few days our online petition (www.refusingtokill.net) to scrap Section 8 has gathered signatures from at least 19 countries - from Argentina to the US – highlighting the outrage this measure provokes once people know about it.
Osman Murat Ülke, a conscientious objector from Turkey who won his right in the European Court not to be repeatedly jailed for his refusal, said of Section 8: “A soldier is still a human being and not a mechanical extension of the military apparatus. No contract, no oath and no law can change this.”
Rose Gentle whose son Gordon was killed in Iraq, and who now campaigns with Military Families Against the War, said: “It’s heartbreaking for a parent when a son stands up for his rights and is locked away for life It’s not just him, it’s his whole family that’s sentenced.”
Mothers like Rose Gentle in the UK and Cindy Sheehan in the US have campaigned against the killing and maiming of their own loved ones and also of the people in Iraq and elsewhere, civilian and military, and have demanded that troops be brought back home from a war nobody wants.
It is the responsibility of the international anti-war movement to support refuseniks around the world and to take up this campaign against Section 8.
As Ben Griffin, a soldier of the special unit SAS who refused to go back to Iraq, said: “I didn’t join the British Army to conduct American foreign policy.”
------------
Giorgio Riva, is a member of Payday, an international network of men working with the Global Women’s Strike, demanding that society invests in caring, not killing. (www.refusingtokill.net)
Payday
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http://www.refusingtokill.net
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sign the petition to john reid
06.05.2006 15:04
rikki
Homepage:
http://www.petitiononline.com/UKArmedF/petition.html
Blair's new laws are just one proof of his ever increasing power
06.05.2006 17:13
Blair uses his power to accumulate more power (a phenomenon that again, most of you ignore or fail to notice), to pass ever more extreme laws at an ever increasing rate, to ensure that remaining democratic mechanisms have ever declining ability to displace him, and to wage Wars of Aggression (which includes creating the political climate where future wars of such type become ever more likely.
Wars require cannon fodder. Cannon fodder requires laws that turn humans in murder machines, regardless of their opinions. Which brings us to the Armed Forces Bill.
CAN BLAIR MAKE HIS PURPOSE ANY CLEARER? Now he has arranged his cabinet into an ideal machine for enabling the War against Iran (please god, tell me none of you out their are moronic enough to fall for Straw 'demoted', Beckett as 'second choice' for Minister for Murdering Muslims, and Reid as a 'nicer' person than Clarke), Blair needs a much more rigourous approach to the laws controlling the UK military.
The War with Iran will lead to EUROPE (not the USA) occupying the Middle East. This is obvious from any understanding of geopolitics, but at this moment in time, almost no-one anticipates this. US military ruthlessness (read population extermination) will make the European occupation a relatively straightforward act, but Europe will need to raise a massive army, and this will be done in the age old way. (In case you are wondering why the US won't be the occupiers, the answer lies in what the US army will be doing, at Blair's behest in the near future. The greatest destructive power the Earth has ever seen will be fighting real wars, ultimately culminating in the World destroying war with China. Don't understand why Blair would intend such a wicked thing? Well none of us knows why Rose West did what she did, but that lack of understanding didn't bring her activities to a halt. Blair is evil way beyond the worst individual criminals in our prisons. He craves that you try the impossible, and seek to 'understand' him, because doing that is the very opposite of stopping him.)
The army of Europe will not be a volunteer one, by-and-large. Thus the societies of Europe have to be conditioned to make mass conscription possible. Part of this is attitude via propaganda (see the recent mourning here and elsewhere when a hundred of 'our boys' died in Iraq). Just as important are the horrifying new laws that ensure that individuals understand that their state will exterminate them if they attempt any resistance to being turned into a racist murdering military animal.
France recently tried to introduce its 'all young people are worthless' emplyment law as part of the softening up process, but the French have more spirit in their little finger than you'd find in the whole of the British Isles, and the law fell (won't save them though). Blair just continues building the police state, and laying down vicious laws like the AFB2006.
Blair has just replaced 'nice guy' (yeah, right) Clarke, with 'proud-to-be-a-total-bastard' Reid. The same Reid that has spent most of his recent time telling the World that Human Rights Laws are irrelevant in this time of ours. If you are thinking that YOU have a right not to be forced into one of Blair's armies of occupation, Reid is thinking that HE has the power to kick that little idea right out of you.
The price the German people paid for not stopping Hitler was so terrible, that even today the German people cannot bear attempting to know the full extent of it. The price we will pay for not stopping Blair will make the German fate seem like one day in Disneyland.
HOWEVER, KNOW THIS... the German people NEVER stopped Hitler because each day, bad as things had been, they argued to themselves that the worst warnings about their future were the exaggeration of pessimistic idiots, and that Hitler would soon be gone, allowing things to return to normal. This was despite the fact that the 'pessimistic idiots' argued from a position of pure fact, and historical analysis.
When YOU think Blair weak or vunerable, it is because Blair's OWN propaganda campaigns in the Mass Media he controls have told you this. Don't want to believe me? Then have the guts to examine each and every time you have been convinced by the media that Blair was about to fall over the last 5+ years and look at what the actual outcome was. Adopt a scientific approach using LOGIC (the same Human skill that is responsible for EVERY Human invention that surrounds you at this very moment). Now project Blair's ever rising power into the near future, and try to find any logical calculation that shows this will be anything other than a total disaster for the Human Race.
By the way, expect Blair's New Reich Thugs to attack my post once again here (or more likely these days behind the scenes). They will say that I have 'thought' and I am encouraging others to 'think' and that this is against the rules of this site. Only the bosses get to 'think', they will say, and the rest of us exist to swallow their 'facts' (of course, somehow, I don't think they'll quite put it like that). Do NOT let others do the thinking for you (which is the sole reason for the existence of the Mass Media). Crave true and free debate, crave true and complete knowledge, and crave a world in which these things allow evil like Blair to be thwarted before they have chance to do real harm.
twilight