Recent articles | Peace News

Is Zelenskyy seeking a way out?

Real friends of Ukraine can help the president by demanding he enters peace talks

A senior advisor to Volodymyr Zelenskyy has indicated that the Ukrainian president wants to open the door to territorial compromise of some kind over Crimea – but Zelenskyy himself cannot even say these words because of the diehard political culture that he has done more than anyone else to create.

The government may not have a way off its self-imposed path of never-ending escalation, leading ultimately to national disaster – unless there is huge and unrelenting pressure for peace talks from allies such as Britain and the US.

Three days of the candour

At the Journal of Peace and Nonviolence peace research workshop

By the end, my head was buzzing with new ideas, insights and possibilities. Should ‘care’ be the foundation for radical politics rather than ‘justice’? Is this another way of asking: aren’t relationships the foundation for (sustained and collective) action for change?

Heavy sentences do not deter climate activists

Just Stop Oil continue daily 'slow marches' as pair jailed for multiple years

The longest sentences yet imposed on climate activists were handed down on 21 April, at Southend crown court, when a jury found two Just Stop Oil activists guilty of causing a public nuisance. Judge Shane Collery KC sentenced Morgan Trowland, 40, to three years in prison and Marcus Decker, 36, to two years seven months, to ‘deter’ copycat actions.

The two were arrested last October after they had climbed 200 feet up onto the QEII Bridge over the Dartford Crossing in East London, leading to the bridge being closed for 40 hours.

Not my king? Not our police

How to resist the new Public Order Act that is stripping away our right to dissent

The Metropolitan police took ‘swift’ action on 6 May to shut down protests at the coronation of king Charles, in a series of arrests that showed how little the idea of ‘policing by consent’ now means in practice.

Ride for Roy

Call for mass bike rides on 18 June

Sadly, our dear friend Roy St Pierre, a cornerstone of Peace News Summer Camp, died on 5 April while cycling through Spain on his way to the UK. There will be a tribute to Roy in our next issue. Roy’s family are calling for mass bike rides in his memory on Sunday 18 June. Please carry peace flags! In Hastings, the ride starts at 2pm at the pier. Please send us your photos: editorial@peacenews.info

Editorial: ‘Vital interests’ rule

British nuclear weapons are there to protect investors’ interests

‘For 77 years, nuclear weapons have not been used at all. We should not allow the current situation to negate that history.’ – Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida, 28 April

‘We underscore the importance of the 77-year record of non-use of nuclear weapons.... Our security policies are based on the understanding that nuclear weapons, for as long as they exist, should serve defensive purposes, deter aggression and prevent war and coercion.’ – G7 leaders’ ‘Hiroshima Vision on Nuclear Disarmament’, 19 May

SoulsINQUEST

A photographic exhibition about deaths in police contact, prisons, mental health and care units

SoulsINQUEST is a photographic exhibition created by photographer Sarah Booker with 17 families bereaved by deaths in police contact, prisons, mental health and care units, in collaboration with the charity INQUEST, curated by Languid Hands. SoulsINQUEST uses photography and writing as a lens onto state violence, death, grief and resistance. The exhibition took place on Brixton’s Railton Road, a historic centre of resistance to state violence and racism, at the gallery of 198 Contemporary Arts & Learning from 12 – 28 May.

Roy's PN photos

A selection of photos by Roy St Pierre

Roy St Pierre loved Peace News Summer Camp and Peace News Summer Camp loved Roy.

These are a few of the many, many photos taken by Roy at Summer Camp over the years:

Group picture at PN Summer Camp 2013:

Muste and revolutionary nonviolence

The foremost task of someone committed to nonviolence is ‘to denounce the violence on which the present system is based'

‘In a world built on violence, one must be a revolutionary before one can be a pacifist: in such a world a non-revolutionary pacifism is a contradiction in terms, a monstrosity.’ – AJ Muste, 1928

This insight is a foundation stone for the tradition of revolutionary nonviolence that Peace News comes out of and, in decades past, has contributed to.

AJ Muste’s life of activism

Described by some as ‘the American Gandhi’, this lifelong activist was called ‘the Number One US Pacifist’ by Time magazine in 1939

Abraham Johannes Muste, known to the public as ‘AJ Muste’, was a remarkable and in some ways enigmatic figure bridging the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Born in Holland on 8 January 1885, Muste was brought to the US as a child of six and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan, by a Republican family in the strict Calvinist traditions of the Dutch Reformed Church. In 1909, he was ordained a minister in that church, and married Anna Huizenga, with whom he was to share the next 40 years and raise three children.

#PeaceTok

How peace campaigners are using TikTok for Peace

With a billion users every month, TikTok has gone from a social media platform known for silly dances to a powerful political weapon. This has been demonstrated by the fact that two successive US presidents have tried to ban the app on ‘national security’ grounds.

COs jailed in Ukraine

'I can't kill a person' says Christian jailed for year

In Ukraine, Mykhailo Yavorsky, a 40-year-old Christian from the southwestern city of Ivano- Frankivsk, is out on bail, preparing to appeal against a one-year jail term handed down on 6 April for refusing military service on grounds of conscience, reports Forum 18.

Ukraine has suspended the right to conscientious objection (including the right to alternative service) – something that has been denounced by the European Bureau for Conscientious Objection (EBCO).

Russian anti-war action

Opponents met with fines, jail and beatings

Some recent news from the Russian human rights monitoring group OVD-Info.

19 May

The Miass city court in the Chelyabinsk region sentenced local resident Sergei Korneev to two years in a penal colony after he allegedly posted an anti- mobilisation message on a social media network. After allegedly suggesting that Russian soldiers break military equipment and weapons, Sergei was arrested back in February. He was found guilty of making a public call

to carry out activities against the security of the Russian Federation.

Russians who refuse to fight should gain asylum in UK

Call for UK to welcome COs

Rather than pouring fuel on the flames by sending more and more weapons, the government should be supporting those resisting war and welcoming conscientious objectors in the UK.

British prime minister Rishi Sunak and the home secretary Suella Braverman should offer asylum to Russians who refuse to be part of the war in Ukraine.

Since the invasion of Ukraine began, calls to offer asylum to Russian objectors have been backed by MPs including Labour’s Lloyd Russell Moyle and the SNP’s Tommy Sheppard.

CO Day

Belarusian peace activist sends message to London ceremony

Raised Voices sing songs by Sue Gilmurray and Holly Near in front of the Conscientious Objectors commemorative stone at the National Conscientious Objectors Day event in Tavistock Square, Central London, on 15 May 2023. A message from Belarusian peace activist Olga Karach was played at the ceremony.

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