The Broken Rifle #111: Antimilitarism in Movement

The Broken Rifle

#111 Antimilitarism in Movement -1-

This edition of the Broken Rifle includes some articles of the amazing speakers we had during Antimilitarism in Movement, from the local to the global context:

Editorial

Natalia García Cortés

• An article written by La Tulpa Collective about militarism and militarization in Colombia,

• a piece written by Julian Ovalle as a member of RAMALC

On July 30th, 31st and August 1st, 2019 WRI held our International Conference “Antimilitarism in Movement: Narratives of resistance to War” in Bogotá, Colombia. Around 150 people from all over the world participate in this event where we could map how militarism affects our own territories, countries and communities; share our resistance strategies and planned different actions for the future.

outlining how militarisation impacts communities across Latin America,

• and an edited version of Nada Hussein's talk where she discusses the impact of Israeli militarisation around the world.

We then move to the talks given during the second day of the Conference:

This international conference was an opportunity to discuss, learn, reflect on how are we living in a world that is highly militarized; make connections, identify people, groups, companies that are investing in war; and understand how war is affecting people, entire communities and the environment, especially in the Global South.

Sometimes we are so engaged with our work against war in our own context that we can’t see how militarism is being challenged somewhere else. It can be lonely, but the truth is that militarism follows the same patterns and most probably there are people dealing with similar issues or doing the same work we are already doing. This Conference allowed us to see why international solidarity is so important, and the potential of working between countries to build stronger and long-term campaigns, to keep resisting war and all its causes.

• first, the nonviolent resistance to war of El Garzal peasant community in Colombia,

• second, an overview of the campaigns of resistance to militarisation and militarism within the Spanish state,

• third, stories of resistance along the US/Mexico border, • and fourth, an article that discusses how South Sudanese have resisted and continue to resist violence and militarism, promoting nonviolent alternatives to them.

Finally, we have a country profile of Western Sahara along with an overview of the actions NOVA (Non-violence group) have taken in the country, some personal reflections written by people who participated in the Conference, and a piece by activists in Colombia on their approach to organising empowering nonviolent acts of resistance.

A few days ago, I read a quote from Dorothy Day, that says “No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There is too much work to do”. I partially agree with her. It is true that there is too much work to do, but sometimes, reality can be overwhelming, daunting, difficult to digest. That is why we need to continue to communicate, to listen, to recognise our privileges, get uncomfortable when someone points them to us (and do something about them), and remember that we are not the only ones resisting to war, that we are stronger when we work together and most importantly that we need to take action. Now.

Contents

Page 3: Exporting militarism: how Israeli companies market repression in Latin America

Page 14: El Garzal, Colombia: A Colombian peasant community's 40 years of resistance

Page 5: Militarization in Colombia in the post-agreement era

Page 16: Dialogue is key to demilitarizing the police and society in South Sudan

Page 7: Armies, internal security and militarised borders: militarisation in Latin America and the Caribbean Page 10: Reflections from the Antimilitarism in Movement conference

Page 18: The body as a practise of freedom: Collective creation laboratory for nonviolent action Page 20: Country profile: Western Sahara

Page 12: Resistance in the US borderlands

The Broken Rifle

The Broken Rifle is a magazine published War Resisters' International. We normally publish three editions a year, in English, French, German and Spanish. Each edition is on a different theme, with articles written by members and friends of the WRI network. All of the material is published online for free. We also distribute the magazine in a print format via our affiliates, and to subscribers. If you would like to subscribe to receive The Broken Rifle via snail mail, please visit: www.wri-irg.org/en/the-broken-rifle, where you can also find back issues of the magazine.

War Resisters' International (WRI) works for a world without war. We are a global pacifist and antimilitarist network with over 90 affiliated groups in 40 countries. We remain committed to our 1921 founding declaration that 'War is a crime against humanity. I am therefore determined not to support any kind of war, and to strive for the removal of all causes of war'.

Cover image: a participant in a street action that took place as part of the Antimilitarism in Movement conference. Credit: LIMPAL

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Exporting militarism: how Israeli companies market repression in Latin America Nada Hussein On the first day of our Antimilitarism in Movement conference, Nada Hussein discussed the impact of Israeli militarisation around the world. Here is an edited version of her speech:

As a Palestinian refugee, as a woman, and as a human rights’ defender, I am here to share my experience with Israeli militarization.

This is not a personal experience – this is the experience of all my people, who share a fear that the whole world will become a replicated copy of the Israeli militarized doctrine. I am here to re-emphasize the importance of all the groups and movements that are subject to this doctrine to join our efforts, and to put an end to the arms race around the world.

Very quickly, I am going to share some examples of what life is like for Palestinians living under Israeli militarization and apartheid:

• Palestinian communities face collective

punishment, such as the closure of whole villages, roads, checkpoints, and house demolitions. The Israeli state destroys Palestinian houses for a number of reasons. In Jerusalem this approach is used to push people outside the borders of East Jerusalem and into the surrounding areas.

• Palestinians have a whole different understanding of time and distance as a result of the checkpoints. Journeys are extended to avoid checkpoints.

• Palestinians are subjected to night raids, when soldiers are ordered to shoot to kill or to create physical disabilities.

• Palestinians and Israelis live separate

lives, with different laws – a form of apartheid. For example, Palestinians are deprived from many academic and career opportunities.

• In June 2019, a Palestinian prisoner

died in an Israeli jail as a result of medical negligence. Palestinian female prisoners went on strike to protest their living conditions, especially the installation of security cameras.

Families of prisoners face insulting measures during visits and when attending trials, including strip searches, harassment, and being arbitrarily stopped from visiting their loved ones

• Our bodies are militarized, including

my own body. As a woman, Israel considers my ability to reproduce a threat, and therefore, all Palestinian women are targets. Israeli politicians have called for killing or raping women.

Considering all that, it scares us, as Palestinians, to see this replicated in other parts of the world. Militarization in the global south, especially in Latin America is not new, but in recent decades, Israeli weapons, training, and expertise have been key to this militarization.

Exporting repression Latin America has had a key role in the development of Israel’s military industry. In -3-

1973, Israel’s first major export of war planes was concluded with the dictatorship in El Salvador. In the following years, Israeli Arava planes reappeared in various countries, including the killing fields of the dictatorships. For example, they were used in the ‘death flights’ during the Dirty War in Guerrero, Mexico, when they used them to throw activists and community leaders into the sea.

Israeli military support for Latin American dictatorships has been enormous. the percentage of purchases of Israeli weapons during various dictatorships include:

• Argentina (1976-1983) 95% • El Salvador (1972-1979) 92% • Honduras (1972-1981) 81% Still today, the most repressive, most rightwing regimes and coup regimes in Latin America all rely on Israeli support; Honduras has received help since the beginning of the coup against President Zelaya, Bolsonaro’s government is looking for military and security cooperation with Israel, and Colombia’s president Uribe was one of the biggest buyers of Israeli weapons.

Many police forces and intelligence units in Latin America where trained by Israeli units like the Mossad (Israeli foreign intelligence force) and ‘private’ Israeli security companies. In Guatemala in 1982, the “Dos Erres” massacre was committed by soldiers trained by an Israeli company called ISDS, using weapons manufactured in Israel. ISDS Members of the BOPE (Brazilian Special Police Operations Unit) in Brazil. Photo: André Gustavo Stumpf/Flickr CC2.0

is still operating in many countries around the world, including Brazil and Mexico. In the favelas in Brazil, the militarised police unit BOPE (Special Police Operations Unit) cooperates with ISDS, and the methods of repression in the favelas and in Palestine are very similar. BOPE occupies the rooftops of homes to control and kill people, just as the Israeli military does in Palestinian cities.

What we call ‘flying check-points’ temporary, ad-hoc military control posts where people are stopped, harassed and sometimes killed - is another feature regularly used in both the favelas and in Palestine.

Colombia has its own history of Israeli trainings. Yair Klein, is a former lieutenant in the Israeli army and founder of Spearhead Ltd, a private mercenary company. Through Spearhead Ltd, Klein trained the infamous AUC (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia), a coalition of right-wing death squads. Klein has been convicted by a Colombian court but never extradited, and is living freely in Israel.

Cyber espionage is another top seller of Israel’s military industry. Pegasus is spy software used against human rights defenders, journalists and others by repressive regimes across the globe.

Facebook recently banned another Israeli company called Archimedes, who - similar to Cambridge Analytica – specialise in manipulating elections. Archimedes have been highly active in Brazil, among other countries.

It is important to understand that these tech companies are anything but independent from Israel’s military and political strategy. The revolving door between Israel's top spy unit – military intelligence Unit 8200 – and the country's hi-tech and cyber sector is confirmed by Yair Cohen, a former commander of Unit 8200 and today heads the intelligence cyber department of Elbit Systems, who said: "It's almost impossible to find a technology company in Israel without people from 8200". The process is quite simple: former Unit 8200 personnel are allowed to use the unit’s technology to build their own startups (sometimes making immense profits) and in turn can use them to influence politics, support their allies or gain access to information across the globe.

Many Israeli arms and technologies are sold as “field tested” or “proven effective in field”, meaning they were used and proven effective on my people in Gaza and the West Bank, and will be used against other groups and movements fighting for social justice.

More than weapons Israel doesn’t just market weapons – it also sells its military doctrine, a doctrine built on the belief that in addition to external

threats, people inside also are a threat and therefore must be controlled and monitored. After decades of training and policy dictations, this militarized mentality has caught on with Latin American regimes.

As a result, the lines between military forces and police forces have vanished in many countries.

Militarization is no longer only about different weapons or vehicles, but has become a matter of controlling all aspects of people’s lives through systems of surveillance and cyber security. Through initiating programs like “Smart Cities”, regimes are installing systems (mostly Israeli) to control and monitor people. Israeli drones are sold all over the continent and are proven to be used against social and peasants movements, in addition to other surveillance and security technologies.

Based on all that, it’s only fair to argue that forcing a military embargo on Israel isn’t just important for Palestinians, but it’s also very important to the nations in Latin America and all over the world.

Calling for an embargo In 2005, inspired by the South African antiapartheid movement, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions coalition formed.

BDS is a form of non- violent pressure on Israel, with three demands:

• Ending its occupation and colonization

of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall,

• Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality,

• Respecting, protecting and promoting

the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution 194.

In 2011 the BDS Palestinian national committee issued a call for a comprehensive military embargo on Israel, and started an international campaign. Israel’s military occupation and apartheid regime simply couldn’t continue to violate our rights day after day if governments around the world ended military and security relations with Israel. It would be economically and technologically unsustainable.

The military and security industrial complex is a core component of Israel’s economy and ensures the sustainability of its military aggression and occupation: according to Israel’s ex-defense minister Ehud Barak, 150,000 Israeli households - or about 10% of the population - depend economically on this sector. Israel has licensed 6,800 arms and security services providers, making this the largest industry in Israel. This still doesn’t count the hi-tech sector, largely depending on the commercialisation of intelligence and military research and -4-

applications. Only an effective military embargo can make peace and justice more profitable and interesting for Israel’s establishment than continued war and aggression.

While it’s clear that a full military embargo could only be achieved through a UN resolution, activists can:

• pressure banks and companies to divest,

• protest Israeli military presence in their countries,

• academics can submit motions and

petitions pressuring their institutions to stop joint military research with Israeli universities,

• campaign

corporations,

against

complicit

• lobby parliamentarians and political party representatives,

• lobby

local authorities governments to take action.

and

This campaign is having an impact with lots of evidence that joint efforts and continuous campaigning can affect the global structure of militarism:

• Many banks and financial institutions have divested from Elbit Systems,

• Elbit lost contracts in France and Denmark after public campaigns,

• G4S lost contracts worth millions of dollars with unions, banks, universities and other bodies,

• Dozens of city councils, including the cities of Dublin and Barcelona, have endorsed a military embargo of Israel,

• Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil cancelled a satellite program with Elbit Systems,

• The first US cities have pledged not to

allow their police to be trained by Israeli companies.

The scope of the military embargo campaign is widening, more activists and groups are joining, and we won’t stop until Israel complies with international law, and until all oppressed people around the world achieve their rights of freedom, justice, selfdetermination and sovereignty.

Militarization in Colombia in the post-agreement era La Tulpa Antimilitarist Collective “In Colombia the war comes after the postwar era”

Juan Manuel Roca There are various faces of militarization in Colombia. While mandatory military service has been, historically, one of the key antimilitarist struggles, there are a variety of other forms of militarisation also taking place. The police force, for example with the Mobile Anti-Riot Squadron, has been militarised; the new code of police guidelines criminalise protest; and the current approach to state politics has led to 10,000 extrajudicial executions of young civilians between the years of 2002-2010 by the Colombian Army. These killings were aggravated homicides of unarmed people, who had been framed as combatants. In 2019 we see that this continues to be reinforced by the Ministry of Defence.

With respect to mandatory military service, a new law passed in August 2017 economically incentivised young people to take part in military service. In a country with the third highest level of inequality according to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) military service has become a gateway to survival for the young people and their families. Thanks to the struggles of peace organisations in Colombia the right of conscientious objection was recognised, even in times of war, but the same difficulties continue in ensuring this is recognised. The Constitutional Court, in its

Unified Judgement 108 of 2016, created a commission including a psychologist, a doctor and a lawyer to evaluate each request for conscientious objection.

Mandatory military service is a form of martyrdom for young people as well as for our society as a whole, and remains a colonial inheritance of the construction of the modern states which continue to maintain classist, racist and patriarchal structures of domination over the population. Maintaining the military institution is, for some, a way of conserving power for the heterosexual, male, privileged few.

This succeeded in part because this “obligation” was only applied to the most impoverished ethnicities and to the rural and urban peripheries5. Of the young people recruited between 1995 and 2015, 80% of them were from the poorest income brackets6. There is also a between “peasant”, “regular” and “graduate” soldiers, implying that some lives are worth more than others; the peasant has to give 24 months of their lives, the regular 18 months, and the graduate twelve months.

In Colombia, if you don’t determine your status regarding military service - by completing military service, successfully apply for conscientious obection or receiving an exemption - you are classed as ‘remiso’ and you are wanted by the authorities. There are more than 650,000 remisos who do not have a military passbook, which in turn limits their right to work. Previously, an individuals right to higher education, the possibility of taking a driving test and even the right to leave the -5-

country were also determined by whether or not they had completed military service.

If the above was not enough, thanks to a debate on political control conducted in 2017 in the Republican Congress, we know that between 1995 to 2015, 35,237 young people didn’t complete military service, of whom 1,294 were killed and 7,552 were left with affected for life-changing physical or mental injuries.

Within the international context and the Colombian armed conflict, the recruitment of minors by non-state, illegal armies is often mentioned, and which we condemn and reproach greatly. What is rarely mentioned is that between 1993 and 2015 the National Army of Colombia illegally recruited 19,000 underage recruits. We see that the approach that has been taken regarding the recruitment of children and young people by the army is insufficient; the Colombian military is the biggest illegal recruiter in the country with one of the biggest humanitarian problems in the world.

Militarised policing The other distinct face of militarization separate to military service is how military logic has permeated institutions like the police. The Escuadrón Móvil Antidisturbios (Mobile Anti-Riot Squardon or ESMAD) is a section of the armed forces created in February 1999 during the Transitory Directive of 0205 as one of the requisites of the Colombia Plan, the principal program of Cooperation that exists between the United Photo: Members of Colombia's Escuadrón Móvil Antidisturbios. Credit: Policía Nacional de los colombianos, used under a CC2.0 license

States and Colombia. Since its creation, ESMAD has been caught up in different violations of human rights. The Centro de Investigación y Educación Popular (CINEP) has documented "448 attacks with a total of 3,950 victims, in which members of the police forces and the ESMAD were allegedly involved, of which 137 cases of injured persons are reported, 91 cases of arbitrary detentions, 107 cases in which individual and collective threats, 13 cases of extrajudicial executions and even 2 cases of sexual violence were reported”. From January to June 2016 there were 682 victims of this squad reported.

Another general aspect to highlight from ESMAD is that on 26 June 2018 on the commemoration of the International Day of Support to Victims of Torture, it was confirmed that ESMAD has been the subject of the most complaints of torture in Colombia. According to a report of March 2018 from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 14 people were assassinated during protests in 2017, including seven protesters who were victims of extrajudicial executions in Tumaco during demonstrations in the month of October.

In addition to the actions of ESMAD, there is a violence that comes deeply entrenched within the new police code which returns to a more oppressive approach to demonstrations. According to this regulation, it is necessary to ask for permission from the local authority to hold a demonstration if organisers plan a march against the governor it is very probable that permission will be denied or a large amount of armed force is sent in order to intimidate the participants.

In terms of the factors of militarism and militarization in the post-agreement era, a new military doctrine called the Damasco doctrine has been constructed. The Damasco doctrine sits at the centre of the agreements made with the FARC-EP and the ELN. For some sectors of the army it did not make sense to continue the classic counterinsurgent doctrine in a country that has entered in to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). At the same time, towards the end of his time in government ex-president Juan Manuel Santos, who was polemically named as the Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2016 and who was Minister of Defence in the Government of Alvaro Uribe Velez, signed an agreement NATO, agreeing to collaborate with the global war effort in favour of capitalism.

Following the signing of the peace as a result of the agreement with the FARC-EP which was sustained rather than by the rule of combatants, but by the communities, the social organisations and the human rights defenders; in 2017 a cease fire was achieved for the first time in 50 or 60 years of conflict, a partial silence of the guns and, as described by the Semana magazine, to “A

decrease in the amount of armed men in the country. In 2017, the military forces had 237,000 uniformed soldiers, 36,000 less than in 2008, which marks a reduction of 13% in a decade (…) As was predicted with the peace agreements, the battles have abruptly diminished. Between 2010 and 2017, they reduced by 87%, from 1,251 per year to 168”. Despite the decrease in foot soldiers, a huge sum of money is being invested in the modernisation of planes, frigates and other weapons made obsolete by new technology According to the Comptroller this increasing public expenditure on the military and means “Colombia maintains itself as the country with the fourth highest number of foot soldiers in Latin America, after Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela(…) with 49 soldiers for every 100,000 inhabitants”.

Since the failure of the yes campaign in the referendum on the agreement, when the Colombian people voted over whether to accept the agreement between the government and the FARC, is there evidence of the “regression in civilian security... in 2017 the rate of homicides was 22.4 per 100,000 inhabitants – the lowest figure since 1970 – it was calculated to be 24.8 in 2018.”

In addition, according to the Open Truth newspaper, the “exponential increase of deaths in combat and confrontations is also evident. In the first semester of 2019, the number of battles rose by 82% and deaths by 87%, according to FIP. confrontations between the Armed Forces and illegal armed groups increased by 82% in the first semester of this year compared to the same period in 2018. Thus, whilst from January to June of the previous year 34 battles occurred, in the first 6 months of 2019, 62 were counted”.

This generalised militarism in the country makes it so Colombians take this pedagogy of cruelty and apply it over who we consider to be less than ourselves: “64% of the citizens in Bogota approve of taking justice into their own hands” (…) “at least 300 people died in the country as a result of community lynchings. The origin of this phenomena is, according to a study by the Free University of Colombia, that 70% of citizens do not have confidence in the law.

Another factor that influences this phenomenon is that 99% of the judicial proceedings do not end in a sentence and that there are barely 11 judges for every 100,000 inhabitants, which does not meet the demand for the number of cases.”

Since the beginning of the Uribe government of Duque in 2018 until the first half of 2019, it has become clear that there is a weakening and sabotaging of transitional justice in Colombia via the postagreement framework. There is a new and a violent context, concerning the responsibility of the Colombian army in a new wave of extrajudicial executions. On -6-

the other hand, there are also issues related to the lack of security guarantees for commanders who have denounced the murder of civilians placed as combatants of non-state or other armed groups. According to statements reported in the magazine "Semana", General Eduardo Quiroz, head of the Counterintelligence Support Command, summoned 15 soldiers to his office for a surprise meeting and told them sharply: “Whoever brings me the source of the information the press has received will receive 100 million pesos or six months of leave.”

The Ministry of Defence and the army have kept silent in light of the revelations of the Semana magazine which also included corruption allegations against 4 generals of the current military leadership - Nicacio Martinez, Eduardo Quiroz, Anselmo Fajrado and Jorge Romero. In the case of Quiroz, he made demands of his subordinates in order to obtain money for private expenses, and Jorge Romero authorized secure dispatch pipelines. In the case of Fajardo, it is not the first time that he has accused of corruption; in 2014 a complaint was made against him because he took a helicopter as the then Attorney General of the Military Forces for a family vacation.

This is the context of militarization that exists in the country and in the face of which, as a collective, we believe that it is vital as antimilitarists to focus our efforts on: 1) the victims, as much as from the armed conflict, as from the socio-political violence, such as our colonial/patriarchal violence.

We must fight for that which is effective in guaranteeing no repetition of this. It is impossible that, in the midst of this historical juncture, we do not work for imperfect peace, one that allows us to dream still.

2) the feminisms; as part of a global context of counterattacking, the patriarchy is delegitimising the feminist fight as “gender ideology” or feminazism. As antimilitarists we must resist the root of all militarisation and militarism, this is the patriarchy, the system of domination that humiliates us, violates us and kills us. This does not imply stopping behind the historical fight of elimination of mandatory military service, of disarmament, of conscientious objection and tax resistance, but that we recognise that isolated we cannot put an end to all forms of domination.

Armies, internal security and militarised borders: militarisation in Latin America and the Caribbean RAMALC (Red Antimilitarista de America Latina y el Caribe) About Latin America Because of the confusion of the Englishspeaking world when it says “America”, and so that there is no doubt over what we will talk about in this article, the Latin American people dwells in the vast territory between the southern United States and the Chilean southern Patagonia, which amounts to almost half of the Americas.

Latin Americans are a mestizo ["mixed"] people that continues to mix, and represents to the world something that is unfinished and beautiful. Varied forms of Spanish and Portuguese fragment this unity.

A mestizo people that has experienced and recounted the story of the existential tearing apart caused by colonial genocide and which, despite the passing of the centuries and modern discourse about multiculturalism, is still dealing with the derision and dispossession experienced by the original inhabitants.

In line with the Latin American thinker Jesús Martín-Barbero, we can think of Latin America as a landscape fragmented by mountain ranges, jungles, plains, artificial canals, native languages, national borders, different kinds of Spanish, accents, phenotypes and cuisine. My starting point is to acknowledge the history of Latin

American culture as a continuous process, subject to the colonial legacy, and which is experiencing a modernity that is more heterogeneous than universal. The modernity of Latin America resides in the particularity of the plural, in a constant crisis of national identity(s) motivated and facilitated by mobility across borders and recently by the transnational issue. It is a fragmented territory where difference coexists closely and inevitably.

Acknowledging Latin America as a region means looking at a fragmented landscape.

Before outlining a general context of the militarisation of the region, it is important to point out that addressing the region as a whole means accepting the profound differences between each of the countries that constitute it. However, a common denominator among all the countries of the region is the stamp of violence, an extremely complex phenomenon that does not allow for simple or absolute explanations, but which undoubtedly has a close genealogical relationship with the colonial legacy that was imprinted on those peoples and territories as a result of the bloody homogenising enterprise that sought to make the "American world" disappear and reduced it to the preHispanic.

The history of Latin America is the experience of a deep and permanent social conflict that has been related to what Martín-Barbero calls “national identity crisis rhetoric” and which Rosanna Reguillo in turn relates, among other factors, to the “intense migratory flow in Latin America, which was motivated by the horror of dictatorships and the systematic destruction -7-

of peoples and dreams” (2005).

As a starting point I want to highlight the fact that the history of Latin America in the twentieth century describes a chronic and permanent situation of cultural conflict traceable to its colonial legacy, a sociopolitical dispute between governments and peoples that collide in the framework of democracies. Our democracies are always subject to inter-, multi-, and trans- national policies, that value the strategy of militarisation as a “legitimate” and effective strategy not just for conflict management, but also as a form of axiological foundation of culture: the ascendancy of violent, patriarchal values. However, Latin America is a land of resistance of indomitable people, men and women who embody resistance: indigenous peoples, peasants, Afrodescendants, empowered women, urban youth, professionals, boys and girls and academics.

This still was taken from the broadcast of one of the most popular news programmes on Colombian television. The phrase "COLOMBIANOS ACOMPAÑARON EL DESFILE (COLOMBIANS JOINED IN THE PARADE)" refers to the military parade that takes place on the 20th July in Colombia every year, to commemorate independence from the Spanish crown. This image helps us to highlight and perhaps to distinguish conceptually between militarisation and militarism: militarisation is expressed through the presence of soldiers and military devices in a military parade in urban Photo: The Honduran TIGRES police training with a US Special Forces group. Credit: USASOC News Service, used under a CC2.0 license

territory, which in this case are implicit in the image. Militarism is expressed in this image in the uniformed and armed person of a child, militarism is inferred through the cultural context that resulted in the decision of his parents to dress him up as a little soldier and expose him to the public.

Without the intention of making a rigorous conceptualisation, but with the intention of making a distinction, it is enough to say that while militarisation is the visible disposition of military devices (laws, soldiers, technology) militarism is the cultural basis that underlies and sustains it.

This article is concerned with presenting a context of militarisation in the Latin American region, of what is visible and quantifiable in some, not all, countries in the region.

United States Backyard More and more civil institutions and territories are being militarised in the region. Since the twentieth century, the United States has justified its intervention in Latin American countries by arguing that they face challenges of governance, corruption and high levels of violence that smooth the path towards illegal activities (drug trafficking), migration to the USA and instability throughout America. In the current context the security perspective is the axis that shapes government policies.

The global process of securitisation (the prioritisation of security policies in the face of threats over welfare policies) in Latin America is seen as a state response to the breakdown of state hegemony in the territorial and symbolic sphere, represented by the entry into the regional scene (and the strengthening) of “non-equivalent forces” such as terrorism, drug trafficking and organised crime. This commitment to securitisation is the contemporary scenario where it is the expansion of the United States military intervention in the region that drives the militarisation of organisations and territories.

The fact that the Latin American homicide rate represents 33% of the global rate is a painfully clear indicator of how social conflict escalates to brutal violence, but in turn constitutes a fact that has been useful in justifying the military intervention of the United States. Rebecca Bill Chávez, who was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Western Hemisphere Affairs of the United States Government and who publicises issues through her column in the New York Times, is a journalistic spokeswoman who reports that Latin America represents 8% of the world's population and 33% of the world's homicides take place in the region; that is, a rate of 21.5 homicides per 100,000 citizens, which is equivalent to three times the world average of 8. The homicide rate in Brazil reached a record in 2018 of 31 per 100,000 inhabitants; for its part Colombia has a rate

of 27 per 100,000 inhabitants. Although Argentina has a much lower homicide rate, less than seven per 100,000, 27% of Argentinians claim to have been victims of a crime in the last year. These kinds of incidents and the difficulties of governance in the countries of the region are what have justified the political and military intervention of the United States in the region.

Political and military intervention has been a constant in the second half of the twentieth century. From the "Alliance for Progress" - a programme of economic, political and social assistance by the US in Latin America in the 60s, to the "Plan Colombia" between 2001 and 2016, in which the United States invested $10bn in Colombia in military aid, to the “Mérida Initiative” (2008-2014), an international security treaty established by the United States in agreement with Mexico and the countries of Central America to combat drug trafficking and organised crime , these plans and other bilateral agreements with various governments have left a history of a formal presence with US military bases throughout the region. The official US military presence in the region is decreasing; currently the official presence of US military forces is concentrated in strategic points of the Pacific and Caribbean coasts, in El Salvador (Comalpa), Cuba (Guantanamo), Aruba, Curação and Puerto Rico, while a negotiation is taking place with the Bolsonaro Government on the establishment of military bases in Brazil.

However, according to Colombian researcher Sebastián Bitar (2017) there is currently evidence of a growing network of informal facilities that supports US operations in the region. The host countries allow, and in some cases seek, participation in a network of “quasi-bases”; installations that, without an official agreement with the national institutions in the host countries, permit the US military presence and operations. They exist in almost all the countries of the Pacific coast of America: Peru, Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama, Ecuador and Colombia.

Militarisation of the region The context of securitisation, as previously mentioned, in Latin America is a response to the perceived threat that the rhetoric of governments bases on the fight against crime and drug trafficking. In the case of the countries of Central America, US intervention and securitisationhas, according to a regional report produced by the Ombudsman's Office of Costa Rica, "opened the door to militarisation for the sake of citizen security.".

In general terms, Central American countries have seen an increase in military budgets without this having an impact on an improvement in the state of internal security: El Salvador increased its budget from $191 million in 2008 to $271 million in -8-

2016, while homicides increased from 2,594 cases in 2012 to 6,656 in 2015 to 5,280 in 2016. In Honduras, despite a growing military presence on the streets, murders were not significantly reduced; according to the Violence Observatory of the National Autonomous University of Honduras, the budget of the armed forces in that country went from $2.2 billion in 2008, to 342 million dollars in 2016; In spite of that, murders only dropped from 5,265 in 2009 and 6,239 in 2010, to 5,148 in 2015 and 5,150 in 2016.

Throughout 2018, the Government of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua carried out a military crackdown in urban centres with the aim of exercising territorial control through the repression of a population that protested in the streets because of the increase in the cost of living, acts of corruption in government and actions against freedom of expression. In its analysis of the Central American region, the report of the Ombudsman's Office of Costa Rica points out that the “revitalisation of the armed forces and their increasing participation in civil activities, coupled with the chronic weakness of the system of administration of justice and the detection of new and serious cases of corruption in several countries, pose risks for the democratic exercise of power”. The report pointed out that the increase in the size and capacity of armies "may affect the effective protection of human rights."

Continuing this path through Latin America to the south, however, may be the opportunity to point out emphatically that in Central America there is a war against the people that is invisible. The phenomenon of militarisation is widespread in Latin America. At present, a trend has been identified in the region in which governments are increasingly handing over police functions to the army. The Governments of Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and Colombia have resorted, to a greater or lesser extent, to their armed forces in search of internal security.

In Brazil, President Michel Temer signed a decree in February 2018 that put the army in charge of the security of Rio de Janeiro, stating "you know that organised crime has nearly taken over in the state of Rio Janeiro.

This is a metastasis that is spreading in our country and threatens our people." In the media this action has been recorded as an extraordinary measure that seeks to restore order in the second largest city in the country and, in general, in the state of Rio in the midst of an epidemic of violence. It is the first time, since the return to democratic rule, that a government in Brazil has ordered a military intervention in a State. With the advent of Bolsonaro militarisation is continuing. Although the total number of violent deaths in the State has increased, surveys indicate that a large majority of the inhabitants of Rio support

military intervention.

For his part, Mauricio Macri, as President of the Government in Argentina has made a regulatory change to the functions of the military: he has said that it is important that they “can co-operate with internal security, mainly providing logistical support in border areas and participating in activities of a strategic nature.” The regulatory change he proposes is due to an absence of a strong political consensus in Argentina since democracy returned after more than thirty years of dictatorship: he announced a reform to the Argentine Armed Forces aimed at the army addressing "current challenges" and referring to the threats of terrorism and drug trafficking, but this reform will also allow military intervention in internal security.

In the case of Colombia, the strengthening of the military establishment does not seem to be stopping despite the peace agreements drawn up with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The continuation of the conflict is in the midst of a breach in the agreements and in the midst of a resumption of arms by dissident sectors of the FARC guerrillas, a rearmament that is taking place in the context of a resurgence of selective paramilitary violence against community leaders and where there is not a glimpse of a negotiated solution with armed actors such as the National Liberation Army (ELN), People’s Liberation Army (EPL) and FARC members who have refused to move forward with the mobilisation process motivated by the lack of guarantees for their safety and compliance with the implementation of the agreements.

The Law of Internal Security was passed in Mexico in 2017. This has created the conditions for an increased dependency on the armed forces for internal security, at the same time as bringing about an integration of the armed forces into a National Guard.

Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission notes that "When the Army has been deployed on operations in a municipality homicides increase by 9%", this clearly shows that militarisation endangers the protection of human rights and can actually exacerbate citizen insecurity... In the book In the Fog of War (2015) Andreas Schedler notes that "the annual murder rate in the country has again exceeded the threshold for endemic violence as defined by the World Health Organization by more than double." In this context, the legislative branch has approved the Law of Internal Security that regulates the presence of the Army and Navy on the streets, as if they were police forces. Since the presentation and before the approval of the Law, more than 750,000 members of the Army and Navy have replaced the police in hundreds of municipalities throughout the country.

Based on this new regulatory framework, the National Guard has begun operations in 2019 on the southern border of the country

where it has been intensifying efforts to curb the flow of migration to the United States, and has specifically deployed more than 20,000 troops to work together with the National Institute of Migration, in line with a demand by Donald Trump.

The new neo-liberal right-wing government in Chile has strengthened the militarisation of its police, the Carabineros, essentially a military police force. The commitment, in this case is technological and judicial: new weapons and armoured transport, investment in programmes of virtual espionage and carte blanche repression of any kind of social protest throughout the country, particularly the Mapuche people and the environmental disputes caused by large-scale toxic pollution in the coastal areas of the country.

intelligence and generally in all areas of decision and administratio.

This militarisation eliminates the possibility of a civil, negotiated solution to the permanent state of crisis that the country has been experiencing for five years now. One of the regional consequences of this crisis is the significant increase in Venezuelan economic and political migration, which has been responded to by the region from a position of poverty and solidarity, although local right wing movements have taken the opportunity to popularise xenophobic, racist and discriminatory responses, both social and administrative.

Border militarisation

In Venezuela, obtaining a passport presents serious obstacles. The cost has increased by 124%, and applicants face delay and corruption in the processing system. These complications are increased by restrictions that other Andean countries are introducing: “A restriction by Peru for Venezuelan immigrants came into force hours after the Court of Justice in Ecuador suspended the same measure in the neighbouring country and gave the Ecuadorian Government a 45-day deadline to present a contingency plan if it wanted to continue applying the measure." In Colombia sectors of the extreme right are putting forward arguments about why an intervention should be made in Venezuela.

This, while they are making their debut as an extraordinary partner of NATO.

The cross-border transit areas of peoples in continuous migration through ancestral territories, which existed before the Nation States, remain militarised. In the Amazon, the largest planetary reserve of fresh water, in November 2017, the Initiative, Amazon Log 2017, took place. This was an exercise in military coordination in the tri-border region between Colombia, Peru and Brazil involving the participation of the armies of the countries of the area.

Furthermore, the historic and permanent strengthening of the military apparatus and the approach of preparing armies to be responsible for, or at least active in, internal security, and the ongoing militarisation of borders creates an apparent tension with the perspectives posed by the strengthening and financing of the police.

The deployment of troops by Brazil to the border with Venezuela after the xenophobic outbreaks is an example of this.

In Central America, borders are migratory filters to stop migration to the United States. Those who manage to reach the Mexico/United States border meet heavily armed soldiers playing the role of the wall they have yet to build but have already constructed militarily.

After the announcement of the controversial wall on the border with Mexico, in 2018 the Donald Trump government signed a proclamation announcing the mobilisation of troops from the National Guard to the border with Mexico to combat illegal immigration. In this regard, Trump pointed out that “the lawlessness that continues at our southern border is fundamentally incompatible with the safety, security and sovereignty of the American people,” therefore 600,000 troops from the National Guard were mobilised as an initial measure in compliance with the government order.

The Latin American region is experiencing a period of an intensification of regional militarisation.The effects - including the normalisation of violence, arms trafficking, armed gangs disputing and dividing territories with the police, who are militarised in turn by the formation of armed special police groups (such as the "Lynx" in Paraguay) are being felt by local communities across the region. The region lives in an endless spiral of lethal violence, and the military and the police are a constituent element and not the solution.

In Venezuela, despite the economic embargo and a diplomatic blockade by the right-wing governments of the region, the militarisation of the state has intensified since Hugo Chavez was in power, of the last 15 Interior Ministers, twelve (80%) have been military officials. The current government of Nicolás Maduro is based essentially on the power that the military provides for him and that counters the coup attempts of the opposition.

Venezuela is becoming more and more militarised every year, ceding participation to its armed forces in the economy, security, -9-

Reflections from the Antimilitarism in Movement conference

Tory, USA "Landing in Bogota I had no real understanding of what the Anti-Militarism in Movement conference and the WRI gathering actually was. A week later, bonding with organizers from across the globe, cocreating new anti-militarist visions, and learning about people’s movements, the experience of going to WRI showed me of what truly powerful internationalist organizing lead by the Global South looks like. From the plenaries showing the organizing happening from the hyper local to the global, to the breakout tracks tying so many disparate projects together in a creative and intuitive way, folks coming to the conference were pushed to expand their visions of what is possible in the antimilitarist future we are trying to create together.

My late night chats with organizers brainstorming how we can connect our work together is leading to joint teach ins, speaking tours, and planning new actions against targets here in the heart of US Empire. The new models of facilitation and programming we picked up from the conference planning are being brought back and shared with conference organizers here.

Both the WRI Staff and the volunteers who put on the conference did an amazing job, and especially handling the difficulties of running a multi-lingual conference.

A few months back, I asked the previous organizer at WRL if it was worth going to the WRI conference? Was I just going to be in a room with crowd of people more interested in reliving the previous almost 100 years of international anti-war organizing than building the kind of movement we need to confront militarism today? They said, “Go, and the way you think about this work will be profoundly changed.” They were completely right.

CONOVA, Colombia The event was important for the CoNova Collective (Active Nonviolent Consciousness) because it allowed us to meet with different antimilitarist collectives and organizations from around the world. It opened our minds to understand different problems in other countries, and to know that in spite of these problems there are people giving everything to make a change.

Today, we keep acquaintances and friends thanks to the spaces offered, we manage to - 10 -

make links and relationships to strengthen ourselves as individuals and as a collective.

The meeting gave us more reasons not to give up, and to continue to support each other among the different agents who believe in the construction of peace, in nonviolence and in the fact that around us there will always be a place to continue serving from an anti-militarist standpoint.

For this reason, we are grateful to all those who allowed us to be part of this space, to share and listen to the different stories that are lived in their territories.

No one is alone. Together, uniting our initiatives, we will achieve with a firm step, to see that change that we committed to the moment we decided to resist the war.

Katie, Germany Though I've been to many conferences, I had never attended a WRI event before I left for Bogotá this summer and frankly had only little idea of what to expect. This much can be said right away: The event was easily one of the best conferences I have ever participated in. Working in the peace movement in Germany and mostly dealing with the injustices and problems at home, it

was instructive to gain insight into current issues in Latin America and many other places around the world. It was powerful to hear how activists from conflict areas offer resistance against oppression and violence, making the things that I am working for at home seem less significant. After all, I am not living in an oppressive system, I never had to experience war and I am not living in fear of being incarcerated or killed.

However, the organisers of the conference accomplished to create a space where everyone could come together and share their stories and struggles which, in my opinion, led to a great sense of solidarity among the participants. It made people connect with one another and appreciate each other’s work. The use of new, interactive methods fueled these interactions, the expressional ways of communicating, the singing and dancing filled the event with life. At the conference, the assembly and the council meetings of the WRI, I was fortunate enough to meet some of the most interesting activists from different places of the world. In that regard, it was most striking to me, especially during decision making processes at the WRI gatherings, that despite the different cultures, beliefs and working methods, decisions were made in consensus. I think diversity is crucial to that. Something that

the WRI already knows and my organisation still has to learn.

Annika, Finland My trip to BogotĂĄ was really long and full of turbulence. So when I finally arrived I was desperately tired. Do you know the level of tiredness where you can't help it but just cry? Yup, that was it. But that all changed when I arrived to our hostel. I had some trouble finding it but when I did, it soon became the lovely meeting point for us. I still miss those evenings with my colleagues, friends and family. At the hostel I got some sleep and in the morning I realised I was with my people. That feeling just got stronger day by day. I truly found my international peace family. All that genuine caring, same values and safety. I wasn't fully prepared to find my safe place in the middle of Colombia. It truly surprised me and made me and my heart happy.

All these important, hardworking professional activist and peace workers just made me feel so welcome. I felt so honoured to be there and meet everyone. I was very impressed of all that wisdom that was shared. At the WRI meetings and in the conference I really noticed how passionate - 11 -

people are towards WRI and the whole different situations going on. I have noticed in myself that sometimes I run out of energy. We are put down so often, we are left alone to fight for recourses instead of really being able to fully focus on affecting on the important things we want to change.

This whole week gave me hope, energy and a passion boost. It gave me inspiring friends, colleagues and most importantly loving, caring and harworking international peace family.

I learned so much and fully understood that together we are stronger.

Our ways to be and act supports each others and makes us more stronger and united. There is room for as all, there is support, respect and care. Most importantly there is also action. Peace work needs to be done together because there is no freedom until everyone of us is free.

One wise man once said 'It is easy to be warm when everything around you is so cold.' I hope we all find strength to be that warmness in sometimes so cold world.

Greetings from rainy Finland.

Resistance in the US borderlands Pedro Rios When Donald Trump initiated his presidential campaign by framing migrants, primarily those from Mexico, in despicable and denigrating terms, he was regurgitating the same tired rhetoric from past decades that justifies the militarization of border communities.

Trump initiated his presidential bid in 2016 by stating about Mexican migrants, “They’re bringing drugs.

They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”

These appalling remarks were meant to frame his electoral campaign on white supremacist terms of who belongs and who doesn’t in the United States. The remarks were meant to drum up political support, not only for his presidential campaign, but also to tap into a false Americana, defined by manifest destiny and other doctrines that have used military might to displace First Nation people in North America, and impose a capitalistic power structure where only few are its legacy benefactors.

It is this same militaristic legacy that continues to define border policies today, where the premise of war is a foundation from which policymakers impose measures impacting our quality-of-life, and with little care to centering human rights concerns.

Trump outlined a strategy for securing the Southern Border that included peddling the idea that as president, he would build a large wall to keep out dangerous migrants (read: poor and of color) from the United States.

This strategy of building border walls, which was significantly expanded under Presidents Bush, Clinton, and Bush Jr., has created a human rights disaster that barely gets any reasonable attention in United States media.

The militarization of the US-Mexico border did not begin when Trump took office in 2017. The infrastructure that allows children to be detained and die in cages,

what some now call concentration camps, has existed for a long time under both Democrat and Republican presidents. In fact, the legacy of the US-Mexico border is its violence. The impunity with which border enforcement agencies operate can be traced, in part, to the imperialist war of aggression that the United States waged against Mexico in 1846-1848.

Challenging the narrative Resisting that legacy of violence, though, is also an important part of the landscape of the borderlands. That resistance takes multiple forms, beginning with challenging the state narrative that seeks to normalize violence and militarization.

The state uses specific rhetoric and language to normalize abusive conditions which instill fear in marginalized communities. This has the effect of paralyzing them so that they don’t feel able to change the repressive conditions. In 2010, after immigration and border enforcement agencies brutally murdered Anastasio Hernandez Rojas, a 42-year-old father of five children, our organization, American Friends Service Committee, strategized with other organizations to counter the defaming narrative about the incident by highlighting how Anastasio was a working family man. In fact, directly impacted community members, those who have lost loved ones, have led the calls for justice in other cases as well. Anastasio’s widow, Maria Puga, has actively worked with other families to bring out their stories and offer a truth about the lives lost that the state would otherwise defame. In this way, stories of victims of state violence get told in a way that values their humanity.

When Anastasio was brutally beaten and tortured by over a dozen agents, the United States Border Patrol quickly attempted to slander his character. They tried to blame - 12 -

him for his death suggesting he was violent and under the influence of a narcotic. The government did this to shape public opinion, suggesting that Anastasio deserved the beating that led to his death.

Maria and other family members worked with civil society organizations to challenge the false narrative. Anastasio’s mother travelled to Washington DC to deliver previously unseen video footage to the Department of Justice, which had called for a grand jury as part of the investigation.

Though the Department of Justice eventually choose to not charge the Border Patrol agents with a crime, public opinion about the incident shifted and it exposed the brutal nature of immigration enforcement agencies. The advocacy that the family has done has contributed to a more critical opinion of how border enforcement agencies operate. This could not have been possible without large mobilizations calling for greater accountability and oversight in the immigration and border agencies involved in Anastasio’s cruel death.

Taking action at the border Non-violent direct action has been an important way of rejecting militarism and the legacy of violence inherent in border policies. On December 10, 2018, the American Friends Service Committee mobilized over 400 faith leaders in San Diego to conduct a water ceremony at the border wall that divides the United States and Mexico in an action called Love Knows No Borders. In the water ceremony, the blessed water was to be spilled on the ground with the intention of calling for the return of peace, with justice, to the embattled region. The action was in protest Photo: Faith leaders attempt to conduct a water ceremony calling for peace with justice to return to the land as U.S. Border Patrols agents look on.

of the Trump Administration’s policies targeting migrants and those seeking asylum. As organizers of the event, we called on the U.S. government to respect the human right to migrate, end the militarization of border communities, and end the detention and deportation of migrants. After walking for over a mile in procession to the international divide, Border Patrol agents prevented the group from approaching the border wall. They blocked the passage and eventually arrested 32 of our participants – most of whom were faith leaders. Though we were not permitted to conduct the water ceremony at the border wall, the visual story was this: heavily armed Border Patrol agents, dressed in riot gear with batons, Taser stun guns, pepper-ball projectile launchers, and other weapons, violently arrested faith leaders, dressed in religious attire, who were singing songs of justice. The Love Knows No Borders actions, like many others, challenged the state’s lack of righteous moral compass that militarization represents and imposes on communities.

Resisting militarism every day Resisting militarism doesn’t only occur in large actions. Much of it happens in lowerscale activities where community members learn how to actively organize with others.

In San Diego and elsewhere, the American Friends Service Committee conducts rights education with informational sessions.

These Know-Your-Rights seminars occur at schools, community centers, and people’s

homes. They are a first step to building an organized collective process with individuals who identify problems, and together develop solutions to those problems. The Know-Your-Rights workshops have been effective in preventing immigration agencies from detaining community members who have participated in the trainings.

In addition to the Know-Your-Rights workshops, community members undergo a more extensive Human Rights Observer training that has the intention of developing local grassroots leadership, where the participants commit to developing a work plan, defining goals for their work, and joining with other human rights committees in justice-oriented campaigns. Since many who participate are people without a formal immigration status, their participation is already an act of defiance. Where immigration authorities would rather they live in fear and immobilized, the community members are actively constructing social justice networks with the intention of protecting and defending their right to live with dignity.

Community members working through community-based organizations also resist militarization of their communities when they monitor law enforcement agencies conducting enforcement raids. Volunteers organize community patrols to document how those immigration raids take place, and provide witness to how people are targeted.

Often, the immigration agencies will leave and thus, their enforcement operations are

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thwarted by an organized community presence.

Other forms of resistance to militarism include cultural and athletic events that point out the contradictions in enforcement tactics that endanger the lives of vulnerable community members. These include a 5K “break down borders” run that occurs parallel to the border wall, a binational Fandango Fronterizo musical event that occurs simultaneously at both sides of the border wall, and an ecumenical Posada Sin Fronteras event that tells Jesus’ nativity story with an immigration lens. The cultural and athletic events challenge the inhumanity that militarization represents by functioning as a performative critique of the state apparatuses that seek to destroy lives.

The long history of militarization in border communities now serves as a foundation for Trump to expand upon, and to exacerbate suffering for migrants and border community members. It is the resistance and resiliency of those affected, though, that consistently affirms their own human worth. This occurs each time there is a protest, a cultural event, or a Know-YourRights presentation – it is a social justice legacy that we need to build upon to end militarism in our communities.

Photo: María Puga addresses a crowd during an action against Customs and Border Protection's concentration camps, where migrant children have died.

El Garzal, Colombia: A Colombian peasant community's 40 years of resistance Wendy Ramos and Danilo Sepúlveda The following article explores the experience of the El Garzal community, in the South of Bolívar in Colombia, and is based on the presentation made by Pastor Salvador Alcántara during the WRI "Antimilitarism in Movement" Conference.

Land ownership and its concentration has been part of the history of the Colombian armed conflict. Historically, peasant, indigenous and Afro-descendant communities have denounced the unequal distribution and dispossession of land, and have demanded decent access to land.

More than 40 years ago, families from the departments of Bolívar, Cesar, Córdoba and Santander came to El Garzal to settle mainly on nearly 4,000 hectares of wasteland owed by the state, and dedicated themselves to agricultural production and livestock, sustainability and family food security with crops of corn, cocoa, banana, rice, cassava, avocado, mango, among others. The rest of the land of El Garzal, which amounts to about 15,000 hectares, is made up of savannas, beaches and seven marshes and wetlands.

Different attempts of agrarian reform have unsuccessfully tried to redistribute rural property, that has become concentrated in a few sectors of Colombian society. In the meantime, actors in the armed conflict have appropriated land, increasing the concentration of its ownership to just a few individuals and leaving millions of victims along the way.

During the 1980s and the mid-90s, the National Liberation Army (ELN) and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia People's Army (FARC-EP) had total control of southern Bolivar. In this context, Manuel Enrique Barreto arrived in the region. He was later linked to the illicit activities of the Bolívar Central Block of the United SelfDefense Forces of Colombia (AUC), which sought to obtain full control over the community's lands. Because of his activities related to drug trafficking Barreto left the south of Bolívar at the end of the 1980's, and there was no news of his whereabouts for almost a decade.

Many rural communities in our country have suffered state violence, corruption, indifference and abandonment. One of example of this is found in the South of Bolívar, in the municipality of Simití: the community of El Garzal, which is currently home to more than 300 families who claim ownership over state lands that they have been working for two generations.

The community of El Garzal has been the victim of forced displacement, extortion and threats from groups wanting to deprive them of the land they have dedicated more than half a century to in order to provide sustainable food for their families. The groups threatening the community want to use it for for their own economic benefit through intensive livestock farming, - 14 -

monocultures and extractivism. These facts have been documented by the Ombudsman's Office1 and made known to local authorities.

Between the end of 2003 and the beginning of 2004, the threats of dispossession became daily occurences again. Comments were made to the community that Manuel Enrique Barreto would enter El Garzal to draw blood and attack those he considered to be invaders of their lands. In this scenario, the figure of Salvador Alcántara, Pastor of the Foursquare Church of El Garzal, became relevant. Alcántara became the leader of a process of peaceful resistance through faith to these warnings.

Finding strength in their faith, the peasants remained on their lands knowing that at any moment they could be banished. Some who did not belong to the church preferred to safeguard their lives by leaving the township. Others, seeing the determination of the Pastor and the church members, joined together to face the threat.

However, these have not been the only means to try to strip rural families of El Garzal from their lands. Since 2004, Manuel Enrique Barreto, his successors and his allies have filed various judicial and administrative actions in order to prevent the State from handing ownership of land to the peasants of El Garzal. The legal uncertainty that these actions have generated has meant that these families do not currently own the Photo: Pastor Salvador Alcántara addresses his congregation.

land they have worked for so many years, and also prevents them from having access to essential public services such as drinking water and electricity, as well as to agricultural subsidies that can ensure food security and economic sustainability.

The process of peaceful resistance to violence and the organization of the community around the objective of having their rights over the land they have worked and taken care of has been accompanied by national organizations such as Justapaz and international organizations such as Equipos Cristianos de Acciรณn por la Paz - ECAP and Peace Watch Switzerland.

After years of peaceful resistance and as a light of hope for the inaction of the State for so many years, the Constitutional Court will review a guardianship action filed by the community in 2018, with which the peasants requested the protection of their

rights to the land, to the territory, to human dignity, to work, to submit requests, to access information and to administrative processes.

The Constitutional Court is expected to protect the rights of the community and order the agrarian authority, today known as the National Land Agency (ANT), to respond to its claims for land, within a reasonable time and without undue delay.

Meanwhile, with the strength of the Magdalena River, this organized and peaceful community will continue with the exercise of resistance from faith, demanding and claiming their rights. El Garzal, like hundreds of rural and ethnic communities, will continue to demand respect for life and guarantee of fundamental rights as tools for building a culture of peace in Colombia.

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Dialogue is key to demilitarizing the police and society in South Sudan Moses Monday John Before gaining independence from Sudan, South Sudan experienced two major civil wars 1955-1972, 1983-2005. In December 2013 the country relapsed into a deadly conflicts which was responsible for the death of about 400,000 lives, as well as causing mass displacement of over 2.2 million civilians to the neighbouring countries, hunger and economic meltdown.

In South Sudan, thousands of lives were also lost in inter-communal revenge killings, and the loss of several hundreds and sometimes thousands heads of cattle.

In the midst of this violence, civil society actors engaged with the communities and the police to reduce gun violence, and to restore peace and stability. This paper discusses how South Sudanese have resisted and continue to resist violence and militarism and promote nonviolent alternatives to violence.

South Sudan: country profile and background After more than 50 years of armed struggle with Sudan, South Sudan won it’s independence on July 9, 2011, and this history has left a serious burden on the country’s psyche. Much of the violence that has now come to engulf the world’s newest country is unquestionably rooted in that history, as well as in the lack of postindependence statecraft and nationbuilding. South Sudan’s society is highly militarized and so is the country’s politics, a

product of the decades of armed struggle.

The political history of many countries is often associated with armed struggle for freedom and independence, and these narratives support the common belief that violence is the indispensable weapon to win freedom from foreign subjugation. The strength of these narratives means that the power and historical role of nonviolent civilian-led resistance has played in many national quests for liberation is ignored. The narratives of violence have overshadowed the history and potential of nonviolent action in South Sudan. This paper aims to uncover this potential by highlighting how civil society actors employ nonviolent action and peacebuilding techniques such as dialogue, negotiations and mediation to demilitarize the police and the whole society.

The long history of armed struggle with Sudan and the subsequent internal armed resistance created opportunities for the proliferation of weapons and for military and militia recruitment.

Militia groups have recruited thousands of young people who are not in work or school, allegedly to protect lives, livestock and political leadership from danger. They use machine guns not only in war with the state but in intra- and inter-communal conflicts often triggered by cattle raiding, theft and abduction of children and women.

Armed and militia groups are often tolerated by political elites, and co-opted when needed to realize military and political objectives of those striving for power. The state military and armed opposition groups have also recruited young people under 18 years of age since December 2013.

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Response: demilitarizing the police and society Civil society actors like ONAD create space for the community to engage with the police, to discuss concerns that affect their lives. Similarly, we have brought pastoralists and farmers together to build opportunities for common understanding of their needs, to prevent conflicts and revenge killings.

The continuous engagement, awareness raising campaigns on crime and gender based violence prevention, also through radio talk shows, trainings on community security and police dialogues mean that gun violence in Juba has started to fall. We have educated community leaders on their roles and responsibilities to provide oversight to security service providers and hold them to account for their actions. The police were also educated to know that their roles and responsibilities are that of service provision, crimes prevention and to provide safety to citizens and to safe guard their properties.

These approaches mean that communities were able to take part in decision making on peace and security matters.

Peace clubs In 2012, ONAD initiated peace clubs in primary and secondary schools in Juba. The concept of peace clubs is part of a sustainable peace infrastructure and peace education. The clubs are used to educate students (boys and girls) on the principles and methods of nonviolent actions. These activities are followed with nonviolent Photo: Young people take part in a nonviolence training organised by ONAD. Credit: ONAD.

campaigns, using tactics such as protests, peaceful demonstrations, vigils, poetry, fine arts, petitioning, peace implementation monitoring, research and use of collective social media. For instance ONAD launched a campaign; ‘I stand for nonviolence in South Sudan, what do you stand for?’ The campaign used a debate approach, with tshirts promoting nonviolence as opposed to the military response which has caused hundreds of thousands of lives. Peace club members have resolved conflicts nonviolently and in 2018 marched to the national parliament protesting environmental pollution in the oil rich Upper Nile region, where a number of children and animals had died.

Other nonviolent campaigns As the civic space shrinks, alternative means of campaigning - such as street theatre and fine arts - are being used to communicate opposition to militarisation of children and young people. Arts-based peace movement #AnaTaban (Juba Arabic for #IamTired) has widely painted on fences in Juba pictures of a father helping his child to read a school textbook, and another of a father teaching

his child how to use and fire an AK47 rifle with “NO” written across it. In December 2017 more than one thousand women and men marched in the streets of Juba protesting ongoing war. They carried placards with messages such as ‘Stop war, bring back our men’; ‘War don’t solve problems - silence guns’; ‘Give pens NOT pistols to your children’ - to mention but a few. These campaigns are debated, and sung about during peace concerts and traditional dances.

Similarly, the South Sudan Action Network on Small Arms (SSANSA) campaigns against armed violence, civilians’ prevention and combating the proliferation and misuse of small arms and light weapons in South Sudan. The campaigns involve dialogue with communities, the police and the army, as well as lawmakers. SSANSA is a network of civil society organizations from across the country.

actions. The resistance should aim beyond denouncing war as morally and unacceptable - we need to focus on addressing the underlying causes or war, wasteful and corrupt military spending, and building alternative means to realizing peace, justice and prosperity to all. Peace is never free. We need to use multiple strategies to confront militarization including community dialogue with the police, peace club education on nonviolent action and peacebuilding with civic and faith based groups.

We believe that the context in South Sudan is unique and that it requires a careful study to better understand the root causes of violent conflicts to inform designing the best conflict mitigation and management strategies to realize lasting peace and human security for all. South Sudanese nonstate actors have resisted violence using nonviolent campaigns to demilitarize the police and their society.

Conclusion War and militarization of society cannot end on its own. It needs to be confronted through dialogue and nonviolent collective

Country profile: Western Sahara

For The Broken Rifle 111 we are introducing a new feature - a country profile focusing on the history, militarisation and resistance in a specific country. Our first article is on Western Sahara. We hope you enjoy this new feature!

Western Sahara is located in the north west of the African continent. It is bordered with Morocco from the north, Mauritania from the south and east, Algeria from the east, and the Atlantic ocean from the west.

Western Sahara has a population of just over 500,000.

Western Sahara was a Spanish colony from 1884 until 1976, holding a strategic location

on the Atlantic coast. During the period of Spanish colonialism there were several resistance campaigns led by the Sahrawi people, some of them peaceful. These inlude the 1969 "Vanguard Movement" led by the leader Mohamed Sidi Brahim Bassiri.

Bassiri organised a clandestine group called the Harakat Tahrir, which planned a petition to the Spanish governor demanding liberation of Western Sahara of the colonialism. On 17th June 1970 the group organised a big demonstration which became known as the "Zemla Uprising". The protest demanded independence and was violently broken up by Spanish Foreign Legion, who opened fire and killed at least eleven people, and kidnapped and - 17 -

imprisoned Bassiri. His fate remains unknown. There has also been armed resistance campaigns, such as the" national military of liberation" in the mid-50s, and the "Khanga battle" led by the Polisario Front, on 20th May 1973. The Polisario Front is an armed Sahrawi rebel national liberation movement aiming to end Moroccan presence in the Western Sahara.

On 31 October 1975, Morocco invaded Western Sahara with Spanish consent. On 6th November 1975 Morocco began a major settlement process, organising a big march of more than 350,000 Moroccan citizens to occupy Western Sahara in a campaign called “the Green March”. On Continued on page 19

The body as a practise of freedom: Collective creation laboratory for nonviolent action Paola Castaño Antolinez As we reflect on the Antimilitarism in Movement conference, the escalating conflict in Colombia, throughout Latin America and the world, as well as the encounter between the different manifestations of resistance from civil society, we can see how nonviolent direct action continues to be a strategy of nonviolent empowerment that interweaves ideas, stories and alternatives.

By articulating the ethical, the political, the aesthetic, the bodily and the communicative, active nonviolent action seeks to resonate in human consciousness, awakening and allowing transformation to take place from below. Nonviolent action involves the community in the construction of solutions to oppressive situations, affirms life, and, through the exchange of experiences concretely transforms social injustice.

Therefore, with the goal of strengthening dialogue on the importance of inspiring nonviolent collective actions and practices that illustrate the militarisation of societies, and to allow international actions across borders, Colombian antimilitarist organisations Cuerpo Con-siente1 and La Acción Colectiva de Objetores y Objetoras de Conciencia (ACOOC)2 started a "Collective Creative Laboratory". Over a period of two months, the "Laboratory" explored, as described by Estefanía, the founder of Cuerpo Con-siente, a "return to the body, to become aware of our actions in correspondence with our thoughts and emotions, which in turn embody our political and social stakes" (Gómez. E. 2019).

Next I will describe some of the elements of a Laboratory, explore how this process can be used to build a nonviolent action, and explain how this intersects with my identity as a conscientious objector and with my own commitment to spaces for relational transformations, within the current context of sustained and much-needed popular struggle.

Personal experience and vital learning The laboratory begins, encounters await... one by one, we arrive in a space where we will be challenged to create collectively, becoming a conscious mass. A little anxious, full of excitement at being able to interlink lives, personal memories, political subjectivities, human sensibilities, our deepest fears and hopes, our incarnated anger... this is how we begin the Collective Creative Laboratory.

The Laboratory is a space that comes with a commitment to remain; to listen; to propose; to strengthen and articulate proposals, ideas, and feelings in a scenic, aesthetic, sonorous, sensitive construction.

It is a space that allows us to raise our voices and manifest ourselves.

Because: We are still standing to stop the efforts of wars and silence to govern our rebellion.

We honour those who resist patriarchy, borders, armies, extractivism, oblivion, forced disappearances, dispossession, death and those who, even in their absence, continue to inspire us, because their struggles are our struggles, and here they sustain us.

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May the blood spilt by the power of our veins, of life and love, in our actions and territories, stir hope. Let freedom come, the gleam in the eyes, resistance and disobedience without condition; Let our organized rage come beating wide, to the rhythm of our dreams and utopias.

How to cure pain and war? They say with time and distance, but we are Here and it is Now. Feeling your life, and seeing your eyes, mobilises me. Heal me and I heal you, let's heal both of us, the three of us, all of us.

Because even though we live miles apart, we are bodies that love and resist.

May freedoms, cries and songs come in disobedience and in defence of life, territories, differences and encounters to confirm that we are more.

(Antimilitarist Manifesto to heal hearts: written with several hands and feelings, with Ana, Laura, María Camila, Silvia, Estefanía, Diego and Leonardo.)

The Laboratory is a space that explores ways of looking at life through art and movement. A space of restoration for the body and being in the body, an essential element of our resistance in the era of neoliberalism, an exploratory and transgressive space that builds our committed to our cause. Participants have a powerful eagerness to rediscover themselves, and to learn to be with others.

Through movement, I remember the immense power of the interaction of the individual body with the collective body, discovering the relationship between thought, body, and action.

Photo: Participants in the street action organised as part of the Antimilitarism in Movement conference.

Credit: LIMPAL.

Nonviolent action as pedagogical, and resistance experience As an educator, and based on the methodological approach of Cuerpo Consiente (what we call “LA MAR”, or “the sea”) I see a Laboratory as an alternative approach to learning that arises from the idea of subverting the established forms of relationship with oneself, with others and with the world. It is a strategy that aims to open a space in which participants can share their knowledge, feelings and experiences through exercises that involve the body and the image, movement, singing, writing, the relationship with space, the construction of new collective notions that make it possible to understand and experience life from the bodily and sensitive powers in articulation with different relational environments.

As Leonardo Boff rightly states: "[...] pedagogical measures that go beyond the academic sphere and penetrate not only institutions, but also consciences". (Álamo Santos. 2011. P. 249). Corporal and creative work gives meaning to pedagogical action, articulating with the dialogue of knowledge, cultural negotiation, participation and cooperation as relevant principles for the

process of collective construction.

Proposing sessions in which there are no correct forms of movements or specific “body phrases” (choreographies), a space is made for the discovery between movements, the enjoyment of uncertainty during the process of creative construction, by means of body work as an enabler of individual and collective transformations in the dimensions of "the intimate", "the public-private", "the political" and "the social". Building a nonviolent direct action as a result of this process of liberation and configuration of the body as a communicative channel means "understanding the fabric of intentions, actions and experiences of individuals who, through movement, create senses and meanings to engage in dialogue" (Gómez, 2019).

Thus, the Laboratory becomes a body of relationships, a composition of plural bodies that bring with them the contents of a sonorous, tactile, rational and sensitive experiences; embodied identities that together build collective ones. It is territory susceptible of being inhabited, in which the possibilities of verbal and non-verbal communicative action are explored; as well as the reflection on what we communicate.

The space is an exchange, a sharing of the symbolic universe that reconfigures

Continued from page 17

14th November of the same year, Spain signed the "Madrid Convention" with Morocco and Mauritania. According to the convention, Western Sahara was divided between Morocco and Mauritania, leading to a new era of colonisation of the region.

On 26th February 1976 the last Spanish soldier left Western Sahara, and the following day was marked with the establishment of Saharawi Arabic Democratic Republic (SADR) by the "Polisario front". The SADR is a state claiming the whole of the Western Sahara as its territory, but in fact controls the easternmost one-fifth along the border with Mauritania, a very barren desert region.

There were a lot of wars between Western Sahara and Morocco, and between Western Sahara and Mauritania. In in 1979 Mauritania withdrew its troops and relinquished control of Western Sahara, but Morocco continue to occupy around 75% of Western Sahara today. Morocco divided Western Sahara by building a 2700 km long wall (or “berm”, made out of sand), and has used more than 7 millions of landmines to militarise the area. The SADR govern the region between the wall and the border with Mauritania.

The war between the SADR and Morocco continued until September 1991 when the United Nations organised a “Peace Convention” and ceasefire. According to the

convention the United Nations promised to hold a referendum of the Saharawi people, but this has not happened yet for a variety of reasons, primarily because it is blocked by Morocco. The peace convention means that the SADR pursue Western Sahara's independence through peaceful means, but there are a lot of violations of human rights of Saharaui people by Morocco and the area remains highly militarised.

Non-violence Group in Western Sahara NOVA stands for The Non-violence Group in Western Sahara. NOVA is a volunteer activist group in the Saharawi civil society and was established on 17th June 2012.

NOVA believes in the principle of nonviolence and works to promote and spread the culture of non-violence, and to solve conflicts peacefully. The group is composed of committees committed to accomplishing the group programs The various committees include administration, committee of dialogue, committee of media and the committee of activities. The membership is open to every Saharawi volunteer who believes in non-violence and respects the conditions of membership. The new participants begin their work after taking training in non- violence. NOVA activities include: - 19 -

messages and concrete actions denounce, make visible and sensitize.

to

Because the "body as experience" endows gives clarity to our thinking around geopolitics, violence, capitalism, the exercise of militarist power that today occurs as a global phenomenon with localities and temporalities, it explains the limits of the ontological and the human possibilities; it provides a kind of experience of itself in which the invisible individual emerges as a proposition of itself.

And so, the Collective Creative Caboratory becomes a space for subversion of the disciplinary regime, which regulates the development of certain relationships between human beings, integrates them into the socio-political system through cultural practices incorporated into the body,and normalises our thought processes as a governmental strategy to establish a particular model of social functioning.

Therefore, it is through the body as the narrative of the action that this subversion occurs, in the opportunity to enunciate the meanings of the action itself (NVDA) for social organization and the struggle for the demilitarization of bodies, minds and territories.

• organising

inter-generational dialogues, and between citizens and politicians,

• organising a dialogue about the role of women in peace building to highlight the U.N resolution 1325 about women, peace and security,

• dialogues

about the peaceful resistance and non-violence strategies,

• human rights and non violence trainings for young people,

• participation in International and

Magarebien forums to empower the Saharawi civil society,

• participation in dialogues between

Saharaui, Algerian, Tunisian and Morrocan young people according to 2250 Resolution.

The campaign for independence for Western Sahara - the last African colony – is in dire need of international solidarity, support and global aid to enable its people their legal right to self-determination and freedom. Solidarity can come in many forms, including protesting outside Moroccan embassies and the embassies of the countries who contribute in the peterpetuation of this occupation, joining media campaigns that call for our freedom, and condemning this colonialism.

Resisting militarisation and militarism within the Spanish state

Koldobi Velasco Vázquez and Ander Eiguren Gandarias In the heartlands, where dominant power constructs its hegemony, war is part of the programme: on economic lines, where money is spent on the military, research is carried out, arms are manufactured, traded, and financed, and the mechanisms of border control and securitization of our societies are deployed to such ends; in human resources, which promote the professionalization of the army, posited as just another public job…; and with ideological resources too, where the army is given a makeover, is reinvigorated, like when the military is deployed to do jobs that require civilian response. This militarization is an emergency on many fronts: in the military operations taking place abroad; in the militarization of schools; and in the militarization of social, cultural and political life in general. We see the normalization of the army’s presence in all dimensions of life, through its use of our communal spaces to train for war, through the militarization of minds in the futures we imagine, and through the use of resources to construct notions of the enemy as the Other, the foreigner, as ‘different’.

Struggles against this militarization and against militarism come in different colours and forms, in order to seek to put an end to

this savagery which militarizes everything it touches, naturalizing violence and weapons as the only ways to resolve conflict.

We start from a key premise, which is that this fight is interlinked with other emancipatory struggles. We are looking for a systemic transformation; a move from domination, exploitation and forms of oppression to a model of development that is non-capitalist, non-racist, anti-colonial, anti-patriarchal, non-extractivist, nonStatist, non-ableist, not based in ecocide nor homicide… this other world without violence. In this way, our links and work in solidarity with other movements is key to these struggles, since all the axes of domination and privilege are fundamentally linked, and therefore so are our responses to them, which we seek to articulate with a more global and less fragmented outlook.

In this article we would like to explore some of the antimilitarist actions and campaigns in Spain.

An exploration of some campaigns and actions of resistance Throughout the last few years - with varying intensity, location, levels of involvement, and impact - different acts of resistance to militarism and wars have been developed alongside form of nonviolent - 20 -

popular defense. We have learned by experimenting with civil resistance, cultures of popular mobilization, and taking strategic steps that build empowerment on personal, group, community-based, organizational and societal levels.

The common slogan we use is: “War starts here, let’s stop it here”, which started off as a motto for actions by the European Antimilitarist Network, and gives a sense of the meaning of our actions in each of our fights:

Resisting the military budget Tax objection to the military budget The campaña de objeción fiscal al gasto militar (OFGM, or Tax Objection to the Military Budget in English) is a civil disobedience campaign sustained in Spain since 1983 - some 36 years ago. The campaign roots itself in the traditions and strategies of nonviolence. Participants refuse to collaborate with the State’s spending on war preparations and the maintenance of the military structure, the army and other armed forces, by actively disobeying when asked to declare one’s personal income (for the purposes of income tax), and redirecting some of these taxes to a project that stands for solidarity and social progress. The aim of the tax objection campaign is the total elimination Photo: Activists in Spain "lock on" to a tank, stopping a NATO war game exercise from taking place in 2015.

of armies, military research and the military industrial complex through a gradual reduction in military budgets.

Condemning military spending and social control In Spain, €87 million are spent every day on the military, a figure which increases to €104 million if we include other forms of social control. We are undertaking the task of making this data and its harmful consequences to our society visible, through denunciation and by linking with other struggles.

The Global Campaign on Military Spending (GCOMS) GCOMS is an international campaign, set up in December 2014 and promoted by the International Peace Bureau (IPB). The objective of the campaign is to convince governments to invest in health, education, jobs and climate change instead of investing in the military sector. We urgently need to build humane security structures around the world, putting an end to war and destruction at the same time.

Financing the arms trade Campaign against militarized banking The Campaign against militarized banking arises from the need to expose the links of a high number of Spanish banking institutions with companies that manufacture arms, through their financing. The importance of funding for the military-industrial complex cannot be overstated. Arms companies need banking services, as much to carry out their ongoing commercial operations as to acquire extraordinary amounts of funds which allow them to undertake the development of new arms, to export to new markets and, ultimately, to maintain their competitive strength in an eminently private sector. There are nine organizations currently participating in the campaign.

They write reports, articles, and other informative materials, and carry out direct actions at stockholder board meetings and elsewhere in the streets, with the aim of preventing and interrupting business as usual.

More information here: http://www.bancaarmada.org/es/.

Militarization of borders Campaign: Spain is at war on its borders These actions seek to denounce and make visible the neo-fascist and militarized politics towards migration of the Spanish state, using diverse methods:

the walls of the world and attempts at disobedience against them; For example, on the 5th May “The embrace of the peoples” against fortress Europe. https://5m5.eu/es/

• In defense of humanity, of migrants

and their freedom to move and asylum in Europe, and against neo-fascism; ADNVFRONTEXMATA: https://www.antimilitaristas.org/FRO NTEX-mata-Accion-DirectaNoviolenta-de-interrupcion-de-lasede-en-Gran.html. Also, 4 caravans opening borders in the Spanish state: Tour of the realities and struggles against borders and condemnation of the militarization and securitization of borders. https://abriendofronteras.net/

• Support to Walking Borders: Support to migrant networks, awareness raising, and condemnation. Reports, information sharing, interviews, critique: https://caminandofronteras.wordpres s.com/

• Reports and studies of Fortress Europe. http://www.centredelas.org/es/publi caciones

Fighting social militarization, war, and its manoeuvrings Development of different actions:

• Against the military operations abroad,

in which Spain is involved in 21 interventions. We condemn these operations, their reasons and causes, and the consequences for their populations.

• Against troops abroad and war training

in different territories. Condemnation of war manoeuvres in different territories.

• Protests against wars. A range of events against existing armed conflicts. Show of support for nonviolent resistance occurring in any relevant area. Condemnation of international meddling.

• Nonviolent direct actions on Armed

forces days and fairs, pledging allegiance to the flag, military street parades. Denunciation of the normalized military presence in different areas: parties, drills, exhibitions, sport, culture, politics, religion, social activities...

Fighting the politics of war

Development of peace cultures, demilitarizing education

internationally

Participation in different campaign actions, such as:

Influence defence policies in the EU: Some organisations focus on researching and exposing othe military industry lobby in the EU. They petition the different parties before EU Parliament elections, asking them to not sign up to the project to rearm the EU, in order to reject four areas of development for European military power: the European defence budgets; the European Defence Industrial Development Programme; the European Defence Research Programme (EDRP); and the proposals for a new European army.

Campaigns include:

• Against NATO: Nonviolent direct actions against the summits and military manoeuvres of NATO. In places where these summits and Trident manoeuvres are taking shape every year.

• NATO GAME OVER Campaign. Massive actions against the general headquarters of NATO in Brussels.

• Marches against NATO and the

celebration of the No victory against NATO in the 1986 referendum, in some Spanish state territories.

• Exhibition: Realities and resistances.

Photography and text to take stock of - 21 -

and

• Demilitarize

Education (https://desmilitaritzem.blog.pangea. org/es/) which aims to prevent the spread of the presence of military institutions and their values in educational spaces. Under the banner ‘Guns don’t teach, they kill’, we want to show our disagreement with the gradual militarization of certain public spaces. We take action at school fairs and activities in the street where there is military presence; and support public declarations of schools objecting to militarization.

• War is not a Game. Campaign for the withdrawal of the Army and any armed force from childrens fairs and education in general. We want the army out of all childrens fairs and the education of young people. The campaign existed between 2007 and 2017;

• Commemorating 30 years of the campaign to refuse military service: Exhibitions, videos, documentaries, etc.

• Training workshops on nonviolent direct action. In different places, with a variety of groups and social movements.

• Development of anti-military summer schools. These take place every year in Spain.

• Monthly programme of community radio - The programme is called Peace News for a Nonviolent Revolution: https://www.ivoox.com/podcast-panrosas-noticiaspaz_sq_f110305_1.html

• Workshops, interviews, conferences; • Web pages: https://www.antimilitaristas.org/; https://www.antimilitaristas.org/Webs-Amigas-.html

Platforms for peace and neutrality and against the criminalization of protest We develop actions against gagging laws, the criminalization of hospitality and solidarity, fostering the creation of areas free from armies and militarization, promoting initiatives that create areas through the Peace and solidarity platform (the Canary Islands, for example).

Demilitarization of the environment and spaces occupied by the military Fostering action such as:

• Marches on military zones demanding

its restoration to civil use and recuperating areas under communal control. Resisting shooting ranges, military barracks, ports, and against the installation of military equipment.

• Protest

against transnational stockholder meetings that are plundering resources and destroying communities.

• Against extractivism in the Canary Islands; Campaign against repsol http://canariasporlapaz.blogspot.com /2014/11/concentracioes-dedenuncia-al-ataque.html and participating in Extinction Rebellion, in

campaigns against ecocide and pointing out links between ecology and militarism.

Constructive alternatives We are part of community-level-working towards humane safety and nonviolent popular resistance such as:

• Joining together in self-managed social centres

• Building spaces of sovereignty (in food, energy, democracy) and

• Cooperativism (Banca Fiare, Som Energí, Som Communicación…) and

• Struggles for social justice and against all forms of inequality and oppression: platforms, collectives, fair trade…

In everything we continue to: take on nonviolent direct actions and conscientious objections, in the spirit of civil disobedience and non-collaboration in war, militarization and oppression; carry out campaigns to raise awareness and exert political pressure which demand commitments to disarmament, demilitarization, conflict prevention, full respect of human rights, and the active promotion of peace culture; promote research for peace in order to better understand the causes of violence and wars and understanding of how to avoid them (workshops, seminars, publications, etc.); undertake actions and offering education for peace as a means of gradually replacing a culture of violence with a culture of peace, participating in building alternatives, and supporting individuals and groups that promote peaceful conflict resolution in different countries.

In every journey, new challenges or areas for improvement are bound to arise, such as: deepening our efforts in the organization of joint and intersectional action campaigns; developing and improving links between networks, organizations and emancipatory movements; building relationships, archiving processes and make them available for deeper learning; deepening our commitment to building alternatives and demilitarized processes; paying greater attention to the development of new aspects of violence, war, and femicide; expanding prevention-side action and assist

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activists that suffer the consequences of risks to their lives; weaving community spaces and cities sustainably; raising awareness of nonviolent culture as a sociopolitical strategy common to emancipatory movements, and improve organizational and methodological coherence rooted in our nonviolent principles.

And lastly, a spirit which we carry with us, described by Galeano in this story, with which we invite you to finish: One afternoon we were driving in the van down a faded track and in the distance we saw a girl riding a bicycle. I slowed down so I didn't cover her all over with dust. When we got closer we opened the window and asked her, how long until we get there?... A never ending silence filled the surroundings and her gaze. The girl looked back at the path she had walked and looked ahead at the path left to go… and after an eternity filled with pauses, she replied with an endless message: “There’s not long left. Perhaps we are like those who walk, or those who build: we see what has been walked, and we see what is left. And we see that there’s not long left to go”.

In brief:

[Translator’s note: the grafitti is a play on words. When said aloud, the sentence “ven, seremos” - literally meaning something like “Come, we shall be” - sounds the same as "Venceremos”, the name of the Chilean protest song written by Claudio Iturra, alternatively by Víctor Jara, and composed

by Sergio Ortega for the 1970 election campaign of Salvador Allende; it means "We Shall Triumph".]

Translation by Laurence Tidy. Many thanks to Carlos AG & Laura Salazar for translation assistance.

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Published and printed by War Resisters' International, December 2019

War Resisters' International is an international grassroots network of pacifist and antimilitarist organisations, working together for a world without war. www.wri-irg.org || www.antimili-youth.net info@wri-irg.org 5 Caledonian Road, London, N1, 9DX, UK