1. Introduction
a. Paying for peace:
is it a human right?
2. The roots of war
tax resistance
a. Background
b. Some examples from
the history of the movement
3. War tax resistance
in our time
a. Background
b. The changing nature of warfare
c. Resource priorities
d. Forms of resistance
in the USA and the UK
e. Alternatives
f. CPTI working at the
UN
4. Peace tax in Norway
a. Background
b. Peace tax law
presented in Parliament
c. Support from the
director of the Norwegian Institute of Human Rights and the Norwegian Peace
Council (NFR)
Thanks to
my three Friends in the Peace Tax Committee:
Elizabeth Chapman, Bernt Skarsholt, Unni Skarsholt for invaluable help and
support.
Thanks also to Laura Castor, University of Tromsø
Bjørg Berg
The question could also be put like
this: is it a Human Right not to be forced to pay for war? Or is it a Human
Duty to pay for peace?
In many countries people are
campaigning for the legal right of those who have a conscientious objection to
war to have the military part of their taxes transferred into a fund, a Peace
Tax Fund for peace building initiatives.
Then, what is conscience? I know of
none to formulate an explanation shorter and more to the point than Thomas Merton
(1915 – 1968, American trappist monk, author and peace activist): “Conscience
is the soul of freedom, its eyes, its energy, its life. Without conscience
freedom never knows what to do with itself. .…. Conscience is the summary of
the whole man.”
One more appropriate Merton
quotation: “It must be possible for every free person to refuse consent and
deny co operation to the greatest of crimes.”
The right to act in accordance with
one's conscience has a long an honourable history. Many of the best known leaders
of civil rights movements have all sought to appeal to a higher moral or
ethical law which they say, justifies a refusal to follow the usual decision
making process, whether this be democratic or not.
The international branch of the
peace tax campaign is Conscience & Peace Tax International, CPTI (with
consultative status at the UN – ECOSOC). Every other year an international
conference on War Tax Resistance and Peace Tax Campaigns is arranged. Norwegian
Quakers have been represented at six of these conferences. The three last ones
were held in India, United States and Germany. At the ninth conference near
Berlin in September 2002, more than 100 participants from 16 countries and all
parts of the world shared information and experiences, a most inspiring and
empowering event. The CPTI states: “We cannot support any attempts to prepare
for war and to train citizens to kill. Our conscience does not allow us to
support that. Even if we are granted the right to be free from participating in
the military with our bodies, we are forced to participate with our tax
contributions. We do not dispute the right of the State to impose taxes on its
citizens. But we claim that, by spending our compulsory taxes on war and war
preparations, states are making us accomplices to killing.”
Peace tax laws have now been
presented to Parliaments in eight countries: Australia, Belgium, Germany,
Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, UK and USA.
Now let us take a look at the roots
of the movement. For me the roots are spiritual and religious. If I ask myself:
Do I work and pray for peace and pay for war? If the answer is yes, the next
question ought to be: What shall I do about it? The three Peace Churches (the
Church of the Brethren, the Mennonites and the Society of Friends, Quakers)
have been pioneers. Quakers believe that there is that of God in everyone, and
because we believe each person to be capable of responding to the Light Within
or the Christ Within, there is room for change in everyone. For this reason
Quakers historically have refused to engage in military activities, and have
sought to achieve change through non-violent means. We are asserting the
fundamental Human Right to freedom of belief and expression, asking simply to
be allowed to live our daily lives in consistency with our basic beliefs about
right and wrong actions. We see paying for peace as a fundamental part of our
religious practice. Work for a peace tax law is also solidarity work. We
consider our right to pay for peace and the poor and oppressed peoples right to
a decent life as two sides of the same coin.
The following will mainly be
glimpses from the USA and the UK with which I am familiar. Paying for war has
troubled many people’s conscience for a long time. The first case we know of
was an English bishop, now St Hugh of Lincoln, who in 1097, refused to pay
taxes for Richard the Lionheart’s war on France. St. Hugh of Lincoln is
considered patron saint of the Peace Tax movement.
Russia was apparently the first
nation to officially exempt pacifists from paying military taxes. In 1820
thirty British citizens were invited by Czar Alexander 1 to establish a cotton
mill in Tammerfors which is now in Finland. James Finlayson, the manager,
submitted a petition to the Czar, signed by the employees from Britain some of
whom were members of The Society of Friends (Quakers). The petition asked for
freedom of conscience to practice their own religion, for exemption from
military service, church taxes and the swearing of oaths. The Czar also agreed
to free Quaker manufacturers from taxes in support of the military.
The American Quaker John Woolman who
worked against slavery, was extremely troubled by paying taxes for war. In his
journal he wrote that to refuse to pay a tax which most Quakers paid was
exceedingly disagreeable, but “to do a thing contrary to my conscience appears
yet more dreadful.” During the French-Indian wars in North America, the
Quakers, in 1757, presented an appeal to the authorities who wanted to raise
money to pay the bounty which the Governor was offering for the scalps of
Indians. They asked that money instead be raised “to cultivate our friendship
with our Indian neighbours”. The most influential statement against the paying
of taxes for war was prepared by Samuel Allinson in 1780 entitled “Reasons
against war and paying taxes for its support”. He said that those whose
conscience forbade them to fight ought not to contribute to violence.
Quakers began to resist payment of
military taxes during World War 2 and particularly after the dropping of the
first atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As military preparations in the
USA during the cold war increased, one group of Quakers left the USA
altogether, to establish the Quaker community of Monteverde in Costa Rica. A
major factor in their choice of location was Costa Rica’s 1948 decision to
abolish its military.
In the USA the war in Vietnam in the
1960's triggered the first campaigns for a peace tax law. As opposition to the
war in Vietnam grew, proposals for alternative peace funds emerged during the
balance of the decade. In 1970 the Quaker David Basset, after consultation with
several others, asked Professor Joseph Sax of the University of Michigan Law
School for assistance in writing a bill. Money from the special fund would be
used to prevent international conflict or to assist in its peaceful solution. I
was lucky to meet David Basset at the 9th International Peace Tax Conference
near Berlin in September 2002. He is now in his eighties, but still bubbling
with enthusiasm and vitality.
In Britain the Quaker Stanley Keeble
was the first to try to put the idea into practice. He stated that there must
be a legal right for the individual who has a conscientious objection to war,
to have the military percentage of his tax transferred into a fund for the
prevention of war. He did extensive travelling to Quaker meetings to educate
and convince. In 1977 he started to co-operate with The Peace Pledge Union, and
the first issue of a peace tax newsletter came into being. Thanks to his
stamina and perseverance the British Peace Tax Campaign was born.
Peace Tax groups continue to spring
up all over the world. In Denmark and Sweden there have been small groups for
several years .The most recent group to start this work is the country Sierra
Leone.
But the movement now is by no means
restricted to religious persons. When we collected names for our list of
supporters to present to the politicians, the leaders of the Humanist Society
were more than willing to sign as are most persons concerned with human rights.
To pray and work for peace and pay
for war is a contradiction. To be consistent in our objection to military
training and war we need to object conscientiously to conscription of both
personnel and money. We feel that we have to consider the option of
conscientious objection to the conscription of money as seriously as
conscription of personnel. Refusing the call to support the military is based
on the fundamental moral reality that there is no longer any threat greater
than war itself. We could not oppose war in every other way and then help pay
for it. Peace claims our commitment. War claims our money.
Conscientious objection to military
service is becoming increasingly irrelevant, as one country after another
replaces compulsory military service with sophisticated high tech weapon
systems and specially trained personnel to operate them.. There is an
overwhelming disparity between enormously high military expenditure and the
minimal support given to the development of civilian peace work. While the
military tends to get the resources it asks for from the treasury, the peace
movement is constantly being choked by lack of money. This disparity must be
brought to the attention of the public. In June 2001 a highly important UN
report was presented by the UN General Secretary, Kofi Annan: Prevention Of
Armed Conflict. He states
“Since assuming office I have pledged to move the United Nations from a culture
of reaction to a culture of prevention”. But this report so crucial to our
future on this planet goes unheeded by the media, subjected to “a conspiracy of
silence”. It has been translated neither by the Foreign Ministry nor the
Norwegian UN association. The latter has been unable to give it priority for
financial reasons. I have twice written articles to the newspapers to rouse
public awareness of this document. It has also been presented to 47 handpicked
MPs, but with no apparent response so far. To be able to point to alternatives,
to the possibility of a defence system based on non-violence, is crucial. A
peace tax fund would make this option visible. From the coverage in mainstream
media, it is difficult to really understand what is happening in the world. The
media have a major responsibility to educate the public by focusing on truth
and coherence. If people started to pose some simple questions on military
matters, we would well be on the road to disarmament.
The evolving nature of modern
warfare has had a particularly dramatic impact on the question of military
spending. It has long been clear that expensive high tech weaponry rather than
troop strength would determine the path of modern warfare. The transition from
soldier–centered warfare to technological warfare using remote-controlled
weapons of great destruction, puts more emphasis on paying for the weapons than
on conscription of personnel. Fewer soldiers are needed because technology can
do the job instead.
Approximately six million people
died during the years of the Holocaust, and the world was stunned by the horror
of it. Yet we allow millions of people to die annually for lack of food, clean
water and rudimentary medical attention. It is estimated that a mere 10% of the
world's military expenditures could eliminate the causes of these deaths. As
armaments are being designed for use from space, there is a quantum shift in
the nature and expense of warfare, making it even more costly and more risky
than most people can fully comprehend. Our minister of defence, Kristin Krohn
Devold boasts that Norway is the NATO member, after USA, which is budgeted to
spend most money for military purposes: 29.6 thousand million NOK this year.
USA is budgeted to spend one hundred times as much: 3, 000 000, 000 000 NOK. In
an interview she says that 33% of the Norwegian budget is for “modernisation”,
which means new high tech weaponry as the USA demands. (Nationen 9th October
02).
We consider the weightiest moral
questions of our modern world to be inherent in the issue of militarism and
military taxes. The UN report Impact of Armed Conflict on Children
(1996) states: “Civilian fatalities in wartime have climbed from 5 per cent at
the beginning of the 20th century to more than 90 per cent in the wars of the
1990s”. An old question is asked with new urgency: are those who willingly pay
for weapons to be supplied to others, less responsible than those who use them?
Coerced collection of taxes from military tax objectors is a form of
governmental oppression, an encroachment on the integrity of the individual.
Both in the USA and in the UK the
campaign for a peace tax law has proved to be quite costly for those people who
have been able to make a statement by refusing to pay their war taxes. As we
know, most people have their taxes deducted directly from their pay. But it is
possible for the self-employed to refuse to pay the military percentage of
their taxes and to face the consequences.
Religious and civil liberties come
under stress through forced conscription of taxes for military use.
1.
Seizure
of funds reduces family income through confiscating portions of wages and bank
accounts.
2.
Voluntary
poverty affects citizens who reduce their incomes below the taxable level by
“earning down” and by giving large amounts to charity (especially in USA).
3.
Property
seizure deprives citizens of cars, furniture or other belongings.
4.
Imprisonment
and court appearances may result from following conscience.
Of the three first-mentioned
consequences there are numerous examples. There are also some examples of the latter.
The most known is perhaps the case of Arthur Windsor, living in Britain, who
was sentenced to three weeks' imprisonment. After the imprisonment, the
Windsors continued their witness for peace. Ursula Windsor, Arthur’s wife,
writes in the booklet My Conscience, my Tax: “For a change, we invited
the collector of taxes to come and see us and pick up the money personally. He
did so, saving us the hassle of the court hearing which is necessary for an
“Attachment of Earnings Order”. Such an order made against us for two years
running, means that a certain sum has been taken out of Arthur's pension for a
number of months.” A Quaker in Brussels, Franco Perna, tried some years ago to
do the same, calling on the media, but the tax collector did not turn up. Instead
the money was deducted from the bank account of his wife.
There are also examples of more
spectacular responses: Nigel Wild, a Newcastle baker, served 26 days in Durham
prison in 1990, after five years of tax resistance and several court hearings.
Nigel, who had withheld 182 GBP offered to pay with 182 buns, but this offer
was rejected. “It is the military industrial machine we are resisting. We must
trust our conscience in believing in a more just world,” he says.
Roger Franklin has been resisting paying
tax on interest from investments for over ten years. In November 1995 he was
sentenced to 28 days in prison for refusing to pay 600 GBP of capital gain tax.
Roger told the court: “As a pacifist, I object to supporting the armed forces.
I would not, however take the extreme position of tax resistance, even on that
issue, except when an unjust war is actually being waged. But when it comes to
genocide, to preparations for the massacre of the population of whole cities, I
feel it is impossible to resist only moderately. An extreme evil demands total
withdrawal of support.”
Three cases from the USA: Don Mosley
from Georgia, tells: “When the IRS seized the unpaid taxes from our bank
account, plus penalties and interest, we decided to stop filing income tax forms.
Every year we sent letters of explanation to both the President and the IRS. In
1988 I was summoned to court. The IRS asked that I be imprisoned until I agreed
to co-operate. In early 1989 the court ordered me to report to the city jail.
In that facility, plus a second prison to which I was transferred, I served a
40-day sentence.”
Bill Ramsey, co-ordinator of a human
rights network in St Louis, Missouri tells: “During Holy Week vigil in 1992, I
was arrested in the reception area of the IRS office. Convicted of distributing
leaflets without permit, I was sentenced to three years' probation with the
provision that I “pay any tax to be owed.” When I could not disregard my
conscience and pay my tax, I was sentenced to a month in jail. Since my release,
I have continued to withhold war taxes. The courts have threatened to sentence
me to an additional year in prison. After continued threats of criminal
prosecution and attempts to garnish my wages, I ceased full-time employment in
1995.
Paula Rogge MD in Austin, Texas
tells: “As a Quaker and a physician I cannot pay for weapons that maim and
kill. During the first year of my medical residency, I began resisting war
taxes. The IRS seized my bank account, towed my car away and garnished my
wages. When they first garnished my wages, I asked my employer to lower my
income to one hundred dollar per week, because anything above that might also
have been seized. After they took my car, I was forced to use a bicycle and
borrow cars from friends to get to work and make my hospital rounds. I have
always filed income tax returns with IRS and sent letters explaining my refusal
to pay my taxes. I donate one fourth of my income to non-profit life-affirming
groups.”
It is worth mentioning that in the
USA, the peace tax fund is now named the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund. Both
religious and secular non-pacifist groups support the principle of religious
freedom. Freedom of religion is valued above many other rights.
Credible and functional non-violent
alternatives to military “conflict resolution” are fundamental, and they have
been available for a long time. Non violent intervention is a recurrent vision
among people who refuse to believe that humankind is condemned either to fight
or stand by helplessly when violence rages.
A recent study found that
non-violent intervention does work. One outstanding, but unfortunately almost
unknown, example is the non-violent army which participated in Gandhi's
struggle to liberate India from British rule. This army of about 100 000 men
was organised and lead by the Moslem Abdul Ghaffar Kahn of the fierce and
belligerent Pathan tribe. Eknath Easwaran has described him in his book Non
Violent Soldier of Islam - a Man to Match his Mountains. One of the many
newer initiatives of non-violent intervention is Peace Brigades International
(PBI), also called "unarmed bodyguards". PBI representatives have
successfully accompanied threatened human rights workers for 20 years now, all
over Central America, East Timor, Sri Lanka and elsewhere. They monitor, and
thus moderate or prevent, abuses of human rights. In the extreme they can even
stand between armed groups to stop violence. A few of the many other peace
initiatives include Witness for Peace, Christian Peacemaker teams and the
Balkan Peace Teams. In Germany, Ziviler Friedendienst started a four-month
study in conflict management in 1997. The students came from Germany, Bosnia,
Serbia and Croatia. In an appeal, they say “The Civil Peace Service should be
part of an international network and be financed by tax money. This is the way
for the reunited Germany to carry out its Constitutional duty: to serve world
peace.”
In the Autumn 2002 issue of YES,
a journal of positive futures (USA), we read about a promising non-violent
peace force. With established bases in Europe and USA, it is building up a
network of participants and potential volunteers from around the world,
emphasising the global South to avoid the problem of peace imperialism.
It goes without saying that
non-violent soldiers need a thoroughly and comprehensive education and
training. To apply integrative power instead of threat power, a soldier of
Peace needs such qualities as communication skills, empathy and patience.
Quakers work in connection with the
UN Human Rights office in Geneva. They are working on the right to
Conscientious Objection to Military Service (COMS), which many countries have
not yet introduced. Together with CPTI they also work for the right to
Conscientious Objection to Military Taxation (COMT), which no country has
introduced so far.
Some parts of the European
Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) were, as of 21st May 1999,
incorporated into Norwegian law. This process may be beneficial to the peace
fund campaign. The British peace tax campaign engaged a lawyer, Rajeev Thacker,
in order to determine if the ECHR can provide legal basis for the right to
object to paying for war. He concludes that COMT would be strengthened if there
already is a law on conscientious objection to military service. Whilst it may
remain difficult to show the existence of such a right, it can safely be said
that the ECHR provides the potential for arguments in favour of such a right
which would previously have been unthinkable in domestic law. But this will not
be easy.
CPTI is becoming familiar with the
work of the UN Commission on Human Rights (53 UN member states) and some other
bodies like the treaty-monitoring Human Rights Committee (18 legal experts). Both
bodies are based in Geneva and work mainly there. CPTI also works at the UN
office in New York and was able to present oral statements at the annual
sessions of the UN Commission on Human Rights both in April 2001 and in April
2002.
The Board of the CPTI has recently
come to the conclusion that an appeal to UN bodies and to accredited NGOs to
recognise the right to conscientious objection to military taxation is only
credible if specific examples of violation of conscience can be presented.
General declarations made by CPTI representatives are no basis for action,
because nobody sees the need to do anything. To further the concern in forms of
policy, evidence of violation of the right not to pay for the military, is
needed. The Board appeals to war tax resisters world wide to provide such
evidence.
Peace Tax law was on the agenda for
the first time at the Quaker yearly meeting in 1985. An appeal was sent to
Parliament, but there was no response. In 1989, Quakers arranged a conference
at the Norwegian Peace Centre at Lillehammer which two foreign lawyers also
attended. In 1990 a suggestion for a bill was set up, under the guidance of a
lawyer.
In 1993 two Quakers happened to be
sitting next to MP Kjell Magne Bondevik, then leader of the Christian Peoples
party, at the party's seminar on how to lobby politicians. He seemed to be
genuinely interested in our concern, so we asked to meet him to discuss the
matter more deeply. We met with him in the Parliament, and he advised us to
send an appeal to the party group. They turned down the appeal. Then he
arranged a meeting for us with the Minister of Defence and also facilitated
other important contacts.
We met with Kjell Magne Bondevik
three times and exchanged several letters. In his last letter he expressed
doubt about the wisdom of establishing a Peace Tax Fund, but wrote, “You have
triggered a process to which I hope I have contributed”. At our last meeting he
advised us to collect and document how much money is used for military purposes
versus non-violent peace building. A Foreign Office report from 1997 showed
that the “peace, democracy and human rights” budget was a little over 573
million NOK while the military budget amounted to 24 thousand million NOK. We
made a graph to shows the disparity, hoping it to make an impact in Parliament.
We asked the Peace Research Institute in Oslo to help us with a report, but
they informed us they only did commissioned research. Their budget was 6.5
million NOK whereas the Defence Research Institute was granted 350 million NOK
and freedom of research (1997).
In 1996 we sent letters of appeal to
each Member of Parliament asking for support. No reply. In 1997 the idea of a
Culture of Peace came more and more to the fore. Federico Mayor, then general
secretary of UNESCO, travelled the world promoting peace as a human right. He
stated that peace is both a human right and a duty, and that it is the obligation
of Governments to promote a Culture of Peace. The Norwegian Human Rights
expert, Asbjørn Eide, says that this may be a contribution of amendment to the
UN Declaration of Human Rights in the light of the changing world situation
(Aftenposten 9th June 1997). Federico Mayor describes a Culture of Peace as “a
transformation from the logic of power and fear to the power of reason and
love”.
It is also worth mentioning that in
September 1996 Gro Harlem Brundtland initiated a UN-fund for preventive
diplomacy. An appeal went out to the nations of the world to create a culture
of prevention of armed conflicts and make it “a cultural inheritance”. I have
not been able to find out what has happened to this fund.
The Minister of Development and
Human Rights advised us to contact lawyers and economists to explore practical
solutions. The lawyer-economist we contacted said this was nonsense. “Political
will is what is lacking”, was his comment. He later provided office space and
facilities for a CO doing alternative service to assist us for about six
months.
Bishops in the state church and
leaders of other denominations and religions have also been lobbied with meagre
results so far.
For many years some people, myself
included, have accompanied every income tax return with a letter of protest,
stating how much we are forced to pay to the military. To make it simple we
divide the military budget with the number of taxpayers (1.6 million). Copies
are sent to the tax department, Minister of Culture, Minister of Defence, Minister
of Development, Minister of Justice and the Prime Minister, as well as a letter
to the editor in the local newspapers.
During winter 2001 and spring 2002
we talked to twelve MPs from nearly all the parties, some of them clearly in
favour of our concern. None was clearly against the idea.
We have felt that the idea of a
peace tax is so novel that people are wary. When the idea is explained to them,
the majority of people are supportive: they find it logical and right. But to
some people the word TAX has such negative connotations that they do not read
or listen further. We now use the term peace fund.
In June 2000, Hallgeir Langeland, MP
for the Socialist Left Party, proposed a bill for a Peace Tax Fund in
Parliament. “A proposal to consider an extension of the principle incorporated
in the Law for Conscientious Objection so that opportunity exists for diversion
of tax to peace creating work.” The proposal was passed to the Finance
Committee, and we were present at their hearing. The former head of Amnesty
International (Norway) also attended and gave a strong plea for the proposal's
further treatment. This was not to be, and the committee along with
representatives from the political parties then in power, gave the proposition
a thumbs down. We had hoped that it would at least lead to a wider discussion
.The refusal was based entirely on logistical points, the main objection being
that such a law would present the danger of precedence. This gave us an excellent
opportunity to refute their reasoning, point by point, stressing the inadequate
treatment which ignored our key argument: a person's right not to be made
accomplice to the nation's war effort. This letter we sent to the leader of the
Parliament, who passed it on to all the political parties. No response .On
questioning the secretary of the Finance Committee, we were told that the
Parliament has no legal obligation to respond. Anyway the document is important
for our future lobbying for legislation.
Hallgeir Langeland has promised to
continue to support us, but we have to wait till after the next election in
2005 before we try again. Wider support is crucial. So in the meantime we
continue lobbying as creatively and extensively as we can manage.
It is important also to work
locally. We have approached (autumn 2002) all the political party groups in one
borough (=kommune) in southern Norway, making the cause known, and have had
support from the Socialist Left party and the Left party groups. The Left sent
a letter to the party group in the larger county (Vestfold) asking them to
include a peace fund law in their programme. No luck yet.
The director of the Institute for
Human Rights at the University of Oslo, Nils Butenschøn, in an interview on the
radio (Programme 2, 2nd October 1999) expressed his opinion that since Norway
exempts COs from fighting, the right to financial objection is a logical extension
of this right. Coerced tax money is an indirect participation in the military
system. This should be open to public debate, he states.
The Norwegian Peace Council has
given valuable support. The leader, Fredrik Heffermehl, helped prepare the statement
we presented to the Finance Committee and co-signed the document.
The Non-violent Peace Force (NP) I
mentioned earlier is quietly attempting to institutionalise an alternative to
armed conflict. If all goes well, an international convening event will take
place in Delhi, India from 28th November to 2nd December 2002. At this event,
delegates will elect an international governing committee to carry the dream
further, and select a pilot area for its first field effort based on the
in-depth study completed in 2001. If the Peace Force succeeds, the world will
have two kinds of standing armies to choose from. The NP study concludes that
non-violent intervention is humanity’s greatest chance to mobilise civil
society against the war system and finally to bring it to an end. The NP will
be a perfect recipient of our peace fund money. For peace to be promoted and
sustained a holistic approach is fundamental. Many peace-related processes have
to go on simultaneously. And not least of all “we, the people of the UN, have
to reclaim our organisation. For the UN there is no higher goal, no deeper
commitment and no greater ambition than preventing armed conflict. The
prevention of conflict begins and ends with the protection of human life and
the promotion of human security. Ensuring human security is, in the broadest
sense the UN’s cardinal mission. Genuine and lasting prevention is the means to
achieve that mission.”(Kofi Annan, 1998)
We must have no illusions that
prevention will be easy, but there is no alternative. There is no other choice
than trying to convince people in power to start moving resources from war and
planning for war, to peace and planning for peace. Our endeavour to establish a
peace fund is among the many tools to promote a global shift. It is crucial to
try to unveil how the military industrial scientific complex is interwoven with
the global market economy, and to arouse public awareness of the alternatives
to a violent and unjust world. It is fundamental to try to overcome the
prevailing apathy and the “there is no alternative” attitude. For a global
shift to occur many people have to work on many levels. To work at the grass
root level with local politicians is as necessary as writing to MPs, explaining
the moral and ethical background to military tax redirection.
When lobbying we always point to
four fundamental facts:
·
over
90 per cent of war victims are now civilians
·
Kofi
Annan's report Prevention of Armed Conflict
·
the UN
Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-violence for the Children of the World
·
the
World Council of Churches' Decade to Overcome Violence
Work for the human right to pay for
peace is a continuing and arduous process, from time to time rewarded with
feelings of empowerment and liberation. If we dream alone, it is only a dream,
but when we dream and work together, it is the beginning of a new reality. When
enough people protest and stop paying for war, the Government will have no
choice but to give us a policy of peace.
A global shift is under way. We can
all help to make it happen - perhaps in a special way, you students of peace.