British Military Families Against the War

international | anti-war / imperialism | other press

Wednesday July 05, 2006 19:44

by Miriam Cotton

Blair plans life-imprisonment for conscientious objectors

In an even more serious reflection of the experiences of the Pitstop Ploughshares in Ireland, Flight Lieutenant Malcolm Kendall-Smith has been put through the ringer for his conscientious objection to the Iraq War.

Kendall-Smith was imprisoned for three months and released last week from gaol under the following conditions:

He is electronically tagged
He is forbidden to talk to press
He is subject to a 6.30pm curfew.

Anti war groups in Ireland should demonstrate their support for Kendall Smith and other soldiers like him, if they have not done so already. For these men, women and their families the reality of the war is of course altogether more urgent. In a trial that was a travesty of justice Kendall Smith’s evidence proving that the Iraq war was illegal was dismissed as irrelevant although it was the entire basis for his objection.

The UK Government is now proposing new legislation which states that any soldier who refuses to take part in a "military occupation of a foreign country or territory" can be jailed for life.

Mark Steel, Mark Thomas, Tony Benn and many others were present at the Night of Conscience benefit for Military Families Against the war and which, because of the conditions imposed on Kendall-Smith, he was unable to attend himself. He did manage to pre-record a message to the people gathered which can be listened to on the MFAW website, however.

“I mean, imagine if soldiers had always refused to obey their superiors. They'd never have gone to the Somme to capture three miles of Belgium at a cost of more than one million lives - and then where would we be?”

(Mark Steel, The Independent (UK), 5th July 2006.) Full column here:
http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_m_z/mark_st...1.ece

For more information about Military Families Against the War :

http://www.mfaw.org.uk/mkspage.html