Seeking Alternatives to Militarism

Vucje, seminar, August 24-28, 2000

This seminar took place as part of a regional conscientious objectors conference entitled "Seeking Alternatives to Militarism" held from August 24 to 28, 2000 in Vucje, near Niksic in Montenegro. This meeting was organized with the support of Connection e.V., a German organization, and Objeción Fiscal, a Spanish organization. Women in Black Belgrade and the Niksic SOS Telephone for women and children victims of violence organized the meeting. Thirty-eight peace activists attended. Most of them came from Serbia (including Kraljevo, Kragujevac, Nis, Raska, Belgrade, Pancevo, and Ruma) and Montenegro (Kotor and Ulcinj), but there were also attendees from Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Germany and Spain.

On August 24, 2000, participants met in Niksic and traveled to Vucje. The afternoon was devoted to getting to know one anoth­er. People from Serbia already knew each other because of their previous activities in the Conscientious Objectors (CO) network, but most of them met the activists from Montenegro for the first time.

First meeting of this kind in Montenegro
On August 25, work started. After a warm welcome, Lino Veljak, a University professor in Zagreb, and a peace activist, addressed the audience:
"This is the first international CO meeting celebrated in Montenegro. At the same time, it is one of the first meet­ings of this type held in the territo­ry of the former Yugoslavia. This meeting has its own history. After 1991, many of us born in the territory of the former Yugoslavia rejected the so-called national interests; we reject the war, crime, terror, and violence that strengthens the political elites. We hope that these nationalistic wars are drawing to an end. I'd like to men­tion that in Serbia, where all this evil started, a women's group was born in October 1991. Since that time, it has always been protesting, first against war in Croatia, then against war and aggres­sion in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and later against violence, terror and war in Kosovo. Also, at that time, two political parties were founded in Montenegro which have opposed war and violence from their beginning, and which are related to today's democ­ratic changes in Montenegro."

SLAVKA KRIVOKAPIC, member of Niksic SOS Telephone and from Centre Rome (a community organization for the Roma population): "From the beginning we fought for human rights as women, because we women, with our 'invisible' work, have always helped peo­ple. It is also a way to defend our country. When we support COs and the right to become a CO we do not intend to become equal to men but to make men to equal us."

IGOR SEKE, from Ruma, CO: "Conscientious objection is the right of every man to not to take part in war, nor in its preparations. We demand the legal right to become COs and that we are not persecuted, ill-treated or discriminated against because of our antimilitarist and pacifist attitude."

RANKO KRIVOKAPIC, vice-presi­dent of the Social Democrat Party of Montenegro and president of the Council for Human Rights of the Montenegro Parliament: "When I see you sitting on the floor, I remember when we started our struggle in each city. We were in the cellars. We were considered a "gang" of deserters and traitors. We refused to use violence against Dubrovnik. I deserted my military unit (I was doing my mili­tary service) two days before the attack. Since then, I have joined a political group that doesn't deal with politics in typical ways. This is because it began as a movement. When you reduce politics to the basic questions, it becomes a fight against war, violence and crime and stops being the typical politics. It becomes a supreme moral question. We are the first genera­tion in Montenegro that considers it courageous to say NO to arms. For the first time in the history of Montenegro, it's been courageous to refuse to use weapons. We have shown that there are other types of courageous acts when you fight against war. Non-violent resolution of conflicts is also courageous. In today's situation, I hope people are sensible enough to avoid war and enable Montenegro to achieve its freedom without the use of violence, with nothing like what we have seen throughout our former nation. I hope our NGOs learn from us how to do real actions. Women in Black has shown us many times how you can do that under unbearable circumstances and I hope our NGOs learn from them."

DUSAN JANJIC, coordinator of the Forum for Ethnic Relations in Belgrade:
"Perhaps we are in the last moments for undertaking antiwar actions. Evil is lurking. However, there are people in Montenegro who want this evil to stop. The action model shown by Women in Black - flexible activities with no rigid structures - are a puzzling enigma for dictators. An extended organization with a lot of places of action and a lot of individual, not necessarily coordinated actions motivated by a shared idea is the model to overthrow a dictator."

At the beginning of the seminar, the coordinators – Sergio Bollain Perez, a social educator and antimilitary activist from Madrid, and Marco Aparicio, a law professor at the University of Barcelona and antimilitarist activist – introduced the work that was going to be done:

Sergio: "The main target is learning about each other and then considering what each of us can do."

Marco: "Our methodology is participative. That is, we need your active participation so we can know each other better and so we can know ourselves better."

After the opening, participants played some group dynamic games. These games helped participants to know each other and to identify their interests and values. (There were 12 different games.) The aim of the games, as the two coordinators explained, was to become aware of one's own attitudes, values, reactions, and to connect imaginary situations to the reality around us. As a result of the game "Imagine Your Ideal Planet," a rich discussion that dealt with the following issues took place:

Globalization: Igor started the discussion, highlighting the fact that Serbia is isolated from the rest of the world today and that the country has two possibilities: to stay isolated or to open up completely, which runs the risk of ‘McDonald’s-ization.’ "A man or a group of people shouldn't be allowed to concen­trate so much power in their own hands."

Koko then asked: "Does that mean that we should take a step back cultural­ly and economically and, perhaps, recover the communist model we had before?" Lino added that the issue of globalization is very important but that if we consider it the most important issue, we run the risk of indi­rectly helping those who wish to maintain the status quo. It is good that we are aware that the changes we seek do not imply an ideal world but the beginning of a long and persistent struggle for democratization and for keeping capital under democratic control. This is the only way in which we can avoid the world becoming ruled by one global dictatorship sometime in the future. Stasa emphasized that "the globalization argument in the context of a fascist dictatorship can be a smokescreen – leading local impe­rialism to be overlooked and placing the blame on others. This would be extremely dangerous because it is very convenient for the dictatorship." Gile considered that globalization is a contradictory issue because in addition to all of its negative consequences it has positive consequences too, for instance, bringing people together (as in the case of the European Union). Pop said he was aware of the danger involved in the creation of an external enemy, which "justifies" dictators, but that the discussion about globalization cannot be left for later on.

Accountability: Lidia posed the question of accountability, stating: "Our local dictator (Milosevic) is not the only one who must be held accountable for the situa­tion. We created him; we gave him the power he has. He didn't drop from the sky and he wouldn't have been able to do anything without our support. I repeat; the problem is that we have put him where he is." Referring to an aspect of accountability, Sichko asked: "To what extend does love for the homeland justify everything that is done during wartime in the name of that homeland?" Linked to the issue of accountability is the question raised by Igor: "Expressing one's resignation and apathy or else one's anger... is it each individual’s responsibility?" Jelena added a warning: "It is dangerous to focus the discussion on the issue of the aggressiveness and resentment felt by Serbs towards other Serbs, instead of encouraging solidarity that empowers people to struggle for a change."

Later Sergio spoke about how he had overcome the outrage he felt before. He went to university and met a group of students. Together, they changed their outrage into organized action. That was when he realized there were alternatives to outrage.

Strategies – 'The Worse Things are, the Better They are: 'the conversation on the issue of strategies focused on the analysis of this well-known strategy. Marco explained that in Spain "this strategy came into use when growing repression 'suppressed' resignation and triggered anger. However, if fear or the media are unable to turn this anger in outrage, this is bad." Slavica stated that the opposite of this strategic was 'people's wisdom', which she described as the idea that "while it isn't worse for me, things can stay as they are." She said that when this idea prevails, things continue to be bad because people accept the situation. Sergio gave some examples of the negative consequences of this strategy: "In Spain, the Socialist Party (PSOE) was in power and the right wing parties in the opposition had no charismatic leader. The ETA tried to kill a right wing politician and failed. After the attack, this man got charisma and the right wing parties are now ruling."

No recipes - Spanish cases
On the issue of whether the antimilitarism movement will stop having a reason to exist when there is no compulsory military service, Sergio stated, “we will achieve our goal if military service stops being compulsory. Many think that then we will 'die of success,' and that we won't have any more reasons to exist.

However, the members of the movement know that there is a lot of work still to do. We will denounce other injustices (the issues North-South relations and centralism versus autonomies), and extend and strengthen our network that urges nonviolent resolution to all conflicts, particularly those at a global level. The squatting movement, ‘occupying’ public spaces to serve public needs and goals, is also strong."

Confronting Power with Imagination!
Here are several very creative actions about which the coordinators told us. It was very difficult to choose which actions to list here because they mentioned many creative actions:

- "We changed the name of streets which were named for members of the military. On the street signs, we wrote the names of peace activists and non-violent groups.
- We painted military buildings bright colors and tanks white.
- We went to public meetings where soldiers are told where they will be deployed and undressed.
- When the soldiers held the loyalty to the flag ritual, we went there and undressed and handed out flowers
- The last action we did was during the military parade in Barcelona on May 27. We also marched - instead of rifles, we carried brooms. The army had to change their route," said Marco.
- One of the most daring actions took place in Rome. A banner with text against the construction of a hydroelectric dam in the Basque Country was hung from the dome of the Vatican.

Contradictions within antimilitarism
Nora from Kosovo asked if it was possible to analogize between the refusal of Basque youths to do military service and the widespread refusal of Kosovar Albanian youths' to serve in the Yugoslav army. It must be mentioned that most of the youths who didn't want to serve in the Yugoslav army enrolled in the UCK (Kosovo Liberation Army).

Marco answered: "In our movement of insumisos ('rebels', 'defiant', or 'unsubmissive' in Spanish) we have dealt with this issue, although we have no established position. The insumisión group in the Basque Country is closely linked to the rest of the groups in Spain and it confronts all military structures. However, there probably are individuals who have become insumisos just to confront the Spanish army. Many Basques oppose the army but aren't antimilitarists.

"We can see this because they do civilian service. Those who seek Catalan inde­pendence are in a similar situ­ation, but they are a minority. I mean, for instance, we didn’t allow them to use our action against the military parade. The creation of antimilitarist networks has allowed us to learn more about the real situation in the Basque Country."

Goran's question was: "Are there any COs among the workers in weapon fac­tories or in factories producing poiso­nous chemical substances?"
Sergio answered: "CO is not limited to military service - it has extended to other fields. In terms of weapon factories, there is an antimili­tarist group in Madrid working on the issue of conversion, turning military industry into civilian industry. When we are asked the demagogical question, ‘what will happen with those who lose their jobs?’ (The police once warned us that the workers in a chemical products factory would beat us because they would lose their jobs if we achieved our target.), we answer with the idea of converting military industry into civilian industry.
Peace Education is also very important. Within peace education there is tax resistance (to military expenditure). This is one of the most solid activities that the antimilitarist movement has been working on. The movement of tax resistance is about claiming the right to decide where you want to "invest" the percentage of your taxes that would be allotted to military expenditure. We use this money in antimilitarist projects mainly. Tax Resistance (OF, in Spanish) is not a legal activity; it is civil disobedience.

German and local experiences

Andreas made a very interesting con­tribution with his discussion of civil disobedience in Germany. There have been massive protests related to the issues of nuclear waste. He explained in detail an action by 9,000 people who the police could only manage to control after 9 hours.

Stasa spoke about Women in Black and their actions linking feminism and antimilitarism and the support these women for peace offer men who don't want to join the army and deserters - men who they consider their allies in the antimili­tarist struggle.

The contradictions within pacifism
The following question was raised in the game ‘the barometer:’ if a war began, would you accept joining the army or would you refuse? Those who didn't know would stand in the middle, those saying yes would move to one side and those saying no to the other. We realized the answer to this question depends on time and place. Here are some of the answers that illustrate the contradictions in pacifism. The contradictions are related to the different con­texts in which we live. We are talking specifically about the differences between the situations in Serbia and in Montenegro.

VESO (Cetinje, Montenegro): "There is an extreme case: if the Yugoslav army attacked Montenegro, we would have reasons to fight against the Yugoslav army."
GORAN (Pancevo, Serbia): "I think all armies are fascist and if I were called up I would not move. I would not become a soldier."
IGOR (Ruma, Serbia): "According to international law, this is still Yugoslavia. If there was a referendum and Montenegro voted for independence, I think that we would have to allow a 30-day period of time for the Yugoslav army to leave. It would be provocative to state on that very day that the Yugoslav army is an aggressor. We would have to allow some time for it to leave and then, if it didn't, do that analysis. Then, if the people decided to resist with weapons, I'm not sure if I'd move or stay there just watching."
PINDO (Niksic, Montenegro): "Let's consider the situation in Bosnia: the city was besieged. The men who were antimilitarists felt forced to take up arms to protect their daughters from rape or murder."
LJUPKA (Kotor, Montenegro): "All towns in Montenegro are besieged and I consider that an attack. When cannons are pointing at my town, I think it is an attack. The Yugoslav army isn't standing at the frontiers with other states but around Montenegrin towns. Some people in Montenegro think that it is protective, but I think that it is aggressive."
VANJA (Niksic): "What you do or don’t do depends on what your political beliefs are."
MIRA (Niksic): "The situation in Montenegro is very complex. The country is divided, but on both sides there are people who are against war. I do not believe that everybody in the DPS (the ruling party) is for independence in Montenegro regardless of the circumstances, nor that everybody in the SNP (a pro-Milosevic opposition party) would rather stay in Yugoslavia regardless of the circumstances."
All these different views have not harmed the meeting but enriched it!
One of the results of the seminar is that people agreed to establish regular cooperation between groups in Montenegro and Serbia and that the first step towards this end will be an action called "Rejecting War." This action was undertaken on September 21-23, 2000, in several towns in Montenegro and Serbia.

Report by
Lino Veljak (Zagreb) and
Stasa Zajovic (Belgrade/Niksic).
In Niksic, August 29, 2000