PN Staff

More than 7,000 people marched for a free Western Sahara in an annual march in Madrid on 17 November.

While Western Sahara continues to be illegally occupied by neighbouring Morocco, it is illegal to extract resources from the territory (because there cannot be consent from the Saharawi people).

Irish/UK oil company San Leon Energy, registered on the Alternative Investment Market in London, is the only company to have drilled onshore for oil in Western Sahara during 43…

What’s been happening with the Colombian peace process since November 2016?

PN used to track the Nepali peace process, and the state of play in Colombia has some similarities to what happened in Nepal.

Disarmament of the guerrillas and the political side of the peace process have made big strides but social reforms, the integration of former fighters and ‘transitional justice’ have moved more slowly.

Eight former guerrilla leaders of the FARC (…

On 24 October, Aberystwyth peace activist Mary Millington travelled to Shrewsbury with messages for Theresa May, Jeremy Hunt and other MPs, writes Lotte Reimer. The locally-collected letters and petitions demanded that Britain sign up to the UN’s Treaty on Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Having picked up more signatures at stations along the way, handed over by local activists, Mary (pictured with her placard at Shrewsbury railway station) got on the ‘…

After four years of touring, PN’s The World is My Country exhibition had its final show in Hastings from 30 October to 11 November.

Emily Johns displayed her powerful posters celebrating anti-war resistance during the First World War – and some other political and war-…

New climate direct action group Extinction Rebellion (XR) held three large civil disobedience protests in central London in October and November, as well as a number of smaller actions.

The group has received wide backing for its militant stand against runaway climate change. 100 academics wrote a letter of support on 26 October, including former archbishop of Canterbury,…

On 17 October, three anti-fracking protesters were released after spending three weeks in Preston prison. Roscoe Blevins, 26, and Richard Roberts, 36, had been sentenced to 16 months in prison; Richard Loizou, 31, had been given 15 months inside.

The court of appeal replaced the prison sentences with two-year conditional discharges (no punishment unless you commit another offence within two years, in which case you will be sentenced for both crimes).

Lord chief justice…

On 6 October, a plaque was put up at 3 Blackstock Road, North London, to honour the designer of the peace symbol, Gerald Holtom. It was there, in the PN office, in February 1958, that Gerald first presented sketches for the symbol to PN editor Hugh Brock and other organisers of the Direct Action Committee. They accepted the design as the theme for the first Aldermaston march for nuclear disarmament.
 

The issue of undercover policing gained more attention in June because of a brave stand by Lush, the vegetarian/vegan cosmetics company. Then the Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance (COPS) and COPS Scotland held conferences in London and Glasgow on 7 July and 23 June, marking 50…

At the end of June, hundreds of people joined a mass action camp blockading energy company Cuadrilla’s Preston New Road (PNR) fracking site in Lancashire, three years after Lancashire county council rejected the company’s application to drill for shale gas.

Anti-fracking network Reclaim the Power organised ‘Block Around the Clock’ as a 48-hour non-stop non-arrestable festival of resistance…

Over 2,500 arrests were made this summer during a massive wave of nonviolent civil disobedience across the United States in a new ‘Poor People’s Campaign’, 50 years after the original campaign led by civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

The original Poor People’s Campaign ended with 3,000 activists camping for six weeks in May–June 1968 on the National Mall in the centre of Washington DC.

In…

Image

https://peacenews.info/node/9413/ten-ways-join-climate-strikeEurope’s largest single-issue peace group, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) is joining Ethical Consumer magazine, Five Leaves Bookshop in Nottingham, 10:10 Climate Action and Freedom Bookshop in London, Peace News and many others in the Global Climate Strike.

Here…

At 1.30pm on 20 June, while Britain's Westminster parliament was sitting inside, 60 activists from across the UK chained themselves to the railings outside the houses of parliament in central London. They are calling for the UK to sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) and disarm the Trident nuclear weapon system.

This action echoes similar actions by women’s suffrage campaigners 100 years ago.

The activists from the campaign group Trident Ploughshares…

‘June 11’ is the name of a US-based anarchist support group for long-term political prisoners around the world. Most of them have been imprisoned for violent crimes. While PN readers are likely to strongly disagree with their methods, this is an opportunity to offer comfort and solidarity to people in very difficult conditions.

If you do write, it’s suggested that you write about your day-to-day life, and what you are passionate about, and put your address on both the envelope and…

On 15 May, boats of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla set out from Gothenburg, Sweden on a two-month journey to the besieged Palestinian territory. Three Swedish ships, the Mairead, the Falestine/Palestine and Freedom to Gaza, were joined by a converted Norwegian fishing boat, Al Awda/The Return. The Mairead is named after Mairead Maguire, the Peace People activist from Belfast, northern Ireland, who was joint winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976.…

On 16 April, hundreds protested in Parliament Square, London, after 100 missiles were fired at targets inside Syria two days earlier by Britain, France and the US. The three governments claimed to have proof that the Syrian government was responsible for chemical weapons attacks the previous week in Douma, on the outskirts of Damascus. Inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons collected samples from Douma…