PO
Box 287 London NW6 5QU UK
Tel 020 7209 4751 Fax 020 7209 4761 10 May 2005 We
are glad to endorse the National
Day of Action for GI Resisters on May 10, and send our
wholehearted support in
particular to Pablo Paredes and Kevin Benderman, who on the same day face
court martial for refusing to kill. The
international anti-war movement of which they are part is growing by leaps
and bounds all over the world (As can be witnessed on our www.refusingtokill.net
website). In
our experience, military resisters depend on the support they receive from
their families – most often mothers, grandmothers, wives, partners,
aunts, sisters and daughters, but also fathers, sons and brothers. Thus
Monica Benderman
(Kevin Benderman’s wife),
Victor Paredes (Pablo Paredes’s brother), Sue Webster (Abdullah
Webster’s wife), Gloria Paciss (Stephen Funk’s mother), Maritza and
Norma Castillo (Camilo Mejia's mother and aunt) have tirelessly campaigned
alongside their loved ones, speaking out when they are silenced by prison
and other restraints. In the
UK, Rose Gentle, the mother of Gordon Gentle, a soldier killed in Iraq age
19, is part of the same uncompromising opposition to killing.
Her organisation, Military Families Against the War (MFAW), is
spearheading legal action charging Prime Minister Tony Blair with war
crimes in the International Criminal Court.
Reg Keys (MFAW), whose son was also killed in Iraq, ran in the
general election and polled over 4,000 votes for the same seat in
Parliament as Blair. Payday
is supporting refuseniks and their families in this and other countries
because, with the Global Women’s Strike, we demand that societies and
governments invest in caring not killing, and that the billions squandered
on military budgets be used to finance the caring work on which all human
life and the life of the planet depend.
We
acknowledge on this Day of Action the vital anti-war contribution of
family members and friends of refusers.
This provides a glimpse of how much greater than what the media
tells us is the resistance to war, militarism and the arms trade, and to
the killing poverty and devastation they cause in every country, but
especially in the global South, where people have least resources but the
most wars (promoted from the North). Recognizing all those who are
creating a grassroots global movement with their life-saving work of
resistance strengthens us all. Power
to the sisters and brothers for investment in caring, not killing, Giorgio
Giandomenici
Dean Kendall Payday,
UK
Payday, USA |