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A Refuge From Militarism?
The Canadian Tradition of Supporting American War Resisters Workshop
In the 1970s the Prime
Minister of Canada said, “Canada should be a refuge from militarism.” We know about
all the soldiers that took him up on it and they were welcomed with open arms.
However, the climate and leadership has changed in Canada. They just voted for $15 billion more dollars for
the military in the last week while cutting some social projects. That is above
the current $11 billion that was budgeted.
But the American war resisters are coming anyway.
Sarah heads up the War
Resisters Support Campaign in Vancouver, Canada
– www.resisters.ca and they are gearing up for more people to come. A
couple soldiers that have applied for refugee status were turned down at the
initial level. They are appealing to the Federal Court of Appeals with the
defense that these soldiers should be considered refugees if they participated
in an illegal war. After the World War 2 principles were established in Canada that countries are obligated to accept war
resisters in an illegal war. They have support of some liberal Canadian
Ministers of Parliament (MP’s), but a conservative government is now in power.
So far 20 have applied for refugee status. She made an emotional appeal to the
audience for:
People to
volunteer their homes to resisters
Money for
resisters to eat
Social support
Legal support
Political
pressure
Adopt a
resister pledge.
A National
Lawyer’s Guild intern from Washington State, Larry Hildes (360) 715-9788,
spoke up and said they estimate that there are 30,000 AWOL soldiers now. The estimate is based on the fact that over 3,000
AWOL soldiers call the GI Rights Hot Line
each month.
In Canada there is an estimated 200 American soldiers who are
AWOL or are deserters. Approximately 30 are in British Columbia now. We met 2 young women who had just left the Air
Force, because they didn’t want to be giving support in any way to the killing
going on in the Iraq War. Canada looked to them to be their only viable choice in
the matter.
The Canadian War
Resisters Support Campaign is a strong service in support of the soldiers who
have to make the difficult choice. It is a national group and is looking like a
better option since applying for Conscientious Objector status now has such a
poor success record. In fact it is very difficult to get out of the US military with any type of discharge.
The First United
Methodist Church
in Tacoma, Wash. is now the first church in the US to offer sanctuary to military war resisters. See
http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/4671/2/
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