Military War Resisters - the Right of Soldiers to Refuse to Participate in Wars Violating International Law
Report on a hearing in the European Parliament on 14 March 2006 hosted by the Intergroup for Peace Initiatives
Background
The Iraq war, as no other recent war in which several Member States of the European Union have been involved, has raised the question of the legality of war, and especially the question of the legality of wars of aggression.
This brings into sharp focus the invidious position which soldiers find themselves in when they are expected to serve in circumstances where the orders they are asked to follow would, in their view at least, make them into criminals.
There can be no doubt – at least since the Nürnberg Tribunals – that soldiers cannot ever use the argument that they were following order to excuse participation in illegal or criminal activities. That much should be clear. But in the context of the Iraq war, this issue has actually forced individual soldiers to examine very closely their own conscience to – in a number of cases – to bear the consequences.
The Intergroup for Peace Initiatives was approached by two groups of Americans in Europe (American Voices Abroad - http://www.avaworld.org/ and Military Counselling Network - http://www.getting-out.de/index.html) with a proposal to hold a hearing on these issues.
But it is, of course, clear that not only US soldiers are affected by these questions and issues and so the hearing was arranged to include both US and European voices.
Introduction by Tobias Pflüger
German Contribution to the Iraq War
The hearing was co-chaired by Intergroup Co-Presidents Tobias Pflüger, MEP, GUE/NGL and Caroline Lucas, MEP, Green Group. In his introductory remarks, Tobias set out the political context in terms of the German contribution to the Iraq war. His speech is available in full in English (http://www.wri-irg.org/news/2006/pflueger-en.htm) and German (http://www.wri-irg.org/news/2006/pflueger-de.htm).
The Witnesses
Cindy Sheehan, mother of US soldier Casey Sheehan who was killed on 4 April 2004 in Iraq, has been an active campaigner against the war and is one of the many people who have lost family members in this war. She had been invited to come and speak but, having been arrested and injured during the arrest a few days before the hearing at a demonstration in New York she was unable to come to the hearing in person. She recorded a message to the hearing and to the European Parliament which was screened both at the press conference and the hearing.
Florian Pfaff, major in the German army (Bundeswehr) highlighted both the now no longer so secret support to the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ by Germany and also recounted his own experience of coming to understand that his work for the German army would assist the US forces in Iraq and that he therefore had to refuse to carry on with this work. He was subjected to psychiatric assessment, was taken to a court martial, was demoted and, finally, on appeal to the German Federal Administrative Court, won his case in a landmark decision. You can download an English Translation of the summary of this judgment (PDF 68Kb). You can find more information about Florian Pfaff at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florian_Pfaff. He also talked about the response of the Ministry of Defence of the German Government to this judgement which was essentially to decide to ignore it and to reassert that it is for the military hierarchy and the government to decide whether or not an order is lawful and not for individual soldiers. Florian Pfaff, holding a white rose whilst he spoke, likened his campaign against this authoritarian and illegal approach to the campaign against the Nazi regime by the student group ‘The White Rose’ in Munich.
George Solomou, a lance corporal in the Royal Army Medical Corps, attached to the London Irish Rifles, decided to resign from the military because, as he said at the hearing with reference to the Iraq war: ‘this is not a war, this is a war crime’. He told us of the intense research he had done into the legality or otherwise of this war and that he had come to this stark conclusion. This left him with no alternative other than to leave the military. He also told us that having made this decision his application for Conscientious Objector status was delayed for so long that the end of his contract with the military occurred first and was not renewed. In other words, and despite the fact that British soldiers have the right to be recognised as conscientious objectors and discharged honourably on those grounds, the deliberate delaying of making the relevant decisions prevented him from obtaining such a discharge. You can read more about George Solomou at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1393503,00.html and at
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/comment/0,12956,1414956,00.html
Hart Viges, US Veteran of the Iraq war and conscientious objector, originally enlisted in the wake of the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York because he ‘wanted to do something’ for the defence of his country. His experience in Iraq – the invasion of Fallujah, the regular and systematic abuse of civilians, the broad order such as ‘shoot at every cab (taxi) no matter who is in there’ – led him to the conclusion that this war was wrong and that all war was wrong. He applied for and obtained conscientious objector status and now campaigns actively against the war. You can read more about him at:
http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article314745.ece,
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/092405A.shtml and
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2005/09/hart-viges.html
Rudi Friedrich, secretary for the association Connection e.V. in Germany, works actively for conscientious objectors and deserters from war zones. He spoke about the need to ensure that brave people who are willing to oppose war because they cannot in all conscience condone it or participate in it (either generally or in specific cases because of the question of the legality of such wars) have access to protection and asylum in third countries if their stance would lead to persecution in their own country. The text of his speech in full can be read at
http://www.wri-irg.org/news/2006/friedrich-en.htm.
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