Soldiers refusing to kill in Iraq face possible life sentence

international | anti-war / imperialism | other press Monday June 12, 2006 18:59 by Terence

Britain: Soldiers refusing to serve in Iraq face possible life sentence

And figures reveal up to 3,000 soldiers have deserted the British Army since March 2003 amid reports of growing numbers were “questioning the morality and legality of the occupation.”

To counteract this, the British parliament -that bastion of democracy - have passed a Bill -Section 8 of the Armed Forces 2006 where those refusing to take part in the military occupation may now be sentenced to life imprisonment.

According to the report:
The bill directly contravenes principles outlined at the Nuremberg Trials in 1950, which enshrined in law the responsibility of individuals to refuse to obey illegal and immoral orders from any superiors. The Fourth Nuremberg Principle states, “The fact that a person acted pursuant to an order of his government or of a superior does not relieve him of responsibility under international law, providing a moral choice was in fact open to him.”

While the main title above is not exactly the same as the title from which this report (the correct title is in the subtitle) is sourced it may as well as be because clearly many soldiers are getting a conscience about killing innocent civilians and want no part of it and as the report says over 3,000 have deserted each year since the start of the war in Iraq.

And what do the democracts, the public representatives of the people of Britain do? They brought in a law to hand out life imprisonment to those who refuse orders. We know from earlier times of course that during war you could be shot for desertation. But in our supposedly more democratic times this is quite plainly at odds and reveals many things. And the main one is that the people pushing this Bill certainly do not represent the broad opinion of ordinary people and shows how real power is held behind the daily facade of parliament and the so called free press.

The bill faced little opposition and a final amendment to reduce the imprisonment to 2 years or less was defeated by 442 votes to 19. We can look at this two ways. Either all the MPs really do oppose the war and were forced to vote by the Party Whips which would therefore prove the system is totally undemocractic or they all voted willingly. But if they represented the people properly then this would basically mean 442 * 100 / (442+19) = 95.8% of the populace are in favour of the war or at least this bill. That seems highly unlikely. Therefore it once again proves that the MPs are not representing the people and so the system is undemocratic.

In reality of course they will now try and let this threat hang over the existing troops and see if it stems the tide of deseration and perhaps hand out one or two sentences with 8 to 10 years imprisonment to see if that works its magic. I would conclude that the British government will only impose the life imprisonment sentence if they can whip the public up into a frenzy of fear. So if this goes badly, it just may require that they do just that.

Full report at URL below